How do the things we see shape values, beliefs, and actions? Why do viewers come to different conclusions when looking at the same thing? Why do people assume that “seeing is believing” in the age of AI-generated imagery? On Visual Rhetoric responds to these questions, helping readers and viewers consider how the visual intervenes in the world in ordinary and extraordinary ways. Looking at a wide array of pictures, habits, processes, and contexts, Christa J. Olson and Brandee Easter make the case for defining “the visual” broadly so that it includes not only visual objects, but also intangible images, visual technologies, and the cognitive-physical act of seeing. On Visual Rhetoric provides a robust, flexible heuristic for studying visual rhetoricity that not only draws together the vast array of existing case studies and concepts but also raises new questions and concerns for scholars.
Christa J. Olson is Marjorie and Lorin Tiefenthaler Professor of English at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Brandee Easter is Assistant Professor of English at the University of Tennessee
On Visual Rhetoric Website On Visual Rhetoric Book at U-M Press