ABSTRACT
I chose the expression visual literacy, initially in the book Visual Studies: A Skeptical Introduction, because its two words compress the common and unavoidable contradiction involved in saying that we “read” images. Visual literacy does not avoid that contradiction, or try to improve on it, but starts with the most succinct form of the contradiction itself. Tropes of reading are unavoidable in talk about images, as W. J. T. Mitchell argues in this volume, and visual literacy has the virtue of not trying to solve that structural problem. Th at is the fi rst reason for the title of this book. A second reason has to do with pedagogy. A search of newspaper and magazine databases revealed that visual literacy has been in uncommon but intermittent use for over a hundred and fi ft y years; it has been used to denote low-level, secondary school appreciation, of the sort that enables a student to identify Michelangelo’s David. I like that somewhat dusty feel, because it is a reminder that these issues of visuality impinge on undergraduate curricula. Visual literacy, or literacies-the plural will be at issue throughout-are as important for college-level education as (ordinary) literacy, and far less oft en discussed.
