SEMINAR 2022

NATIONAL STUDENTS'
CreatEng
The English Literary Society

DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH

VIVEKANANDA COLLEGE
UNIVERSITY OF DELHI

GENDER AND
VISUAL
CULTURE
3 & 4 March, 2022

CALL FOR PAPERS

Abstract Submission deadline: 15.02.2022

to:
visualcultureseminar2022@gmail.com

Dr. Hina Nandrajog Teacher-in-Charge

Officiating Principal Dr. Jyotika Elhance

Teacher Coordinators
Dr. Chaandreyi Mukherjee and Dr. Anchala Paliwal
Visual Culture refers to the tangible, or visible, expressions by a people, a state
or a civilization, and collectively describes the characteristics of that body as a
whole. Nicholas Mirzoeff in The Visual Culture Reader defines visual culture
as, “visual events in which information, meaning or pleasure is sought by the
consumer in an interface with visual technology.”

It is intertwined with everything that one witnesses on a daily basis and is

manifested within our culture through visual means. Any discussion on visual
culture must entail the cultural codification through production, reception,
intention and should also analyse the socio-economic, political, historical,
psychological and ideological aspects. Visual culture also brings to the
forefront the curious and ever transforming relationship between the visible
object and the viewer; how implicitly and intimately gaze, knowledge and
power are effectively maintained and manifested within the garb of culture.

Discussion regarding gender and its multifarious expressions is a fairly recent

phenomenon. With the advent of queer theory, with special emphasis to
Butlerian hypothesis, the traditional idea of gender as an immobile,
monolithic, permanent entity has been continuously challenged and rejected.
Visual culture and representations of gender (positive, negative, problematic)
are intrinsically linked. From female stereotypes and objectifications,
solidification of the male gaze and graphic depictions of women as passive
sexual objects for violent male appetites, visual culture has shown signs of
evolution to incorporate emancipated, powerful gendered beings.

The inalienable visuality of LGBTQIA+ brings to one’s notice the extensions of

the range of queerness beyond a simple opposition to straight sexuality, the
collapse of boundaries between and within concepts of gender and sexuality,
and the absolute dismantling of patriarchal renderings of desire.

Visual culture is used to designate a set of thematic individual or community

based concerns around the ways in which politically motivated images are
produced, circulated, and consumed to both construct and reinforce/resist and
overthrow articulations of sexual or racial ontologies, identities, and
subjectivities – such as black visual culture or feminist visual culture or queer
visual culture. It sustains investigations that are concerned with the production,
circulation, and consumption of images; the changing nature of subjectivity;
the ways in which we visualize or reflect upon or represent the world to
ourselves; what Irit Rogoff has called “viewing apparatuses,” which include our
ways of seeing and practices of looking, knowing, and doing.
 This seminar wishes to delve into the myriad possibilities of visual culture, to understand the
term and the tenets (if any) and to look into its critiques. In approaching the idea of how visual
culture functions in a rapidly changing globalized world, the seminar wishes to provide an
intellectual platform for exploring the idea in the public imagination, in different historical
periods and geographical locations. It also wants to explore how visual culture has continued
to achieve a transnational, even global impact by changing perceptions, attitudes and the way
individuals live their lives.

Few suggested Children’s Literature and

Visual Culture
Performance Art and

sub-themes Visual Culture

Disability and Visual
Culture
Surveillance/Webcams
Race and Visual Culture and Visual Culture
Women and Visual Culture Colonialism and Visual
LGBTQIA+ and Visual Culture Culture
Diaspora and Visual Culture Popular Media and
Folklore/Folk Art and Visual Visual Culture
Culture Erotica/Pornography and
Virtual Bodies and Visual Visual Culture
Culture
State/Nation/Transnationality
and Visual Culture
Graffiti/Street Art/Installation
Please mention your
Art and Visual Culture
name, institutional
Graphic
affiliation, class,
Novels/Manga/Webtoons/
course and contact
Comics and Visual Culture number with your Abstracts of
abstract. approximately 250
words may be sent by
15.02.2022 to
visualcultureseminar
2022@gmail.com

The seminar is open for B.A.,

M.A., M.Phil. and Ph.D. students.

For further information, contact-

Durga Dhyani Sana Ubaid
B.A. (H) English, III Year B.A. (H) English, II Year
President Vice President
76685 31202 78273 78038