ABSTRACT
This chapter offers an overview of the topics and methodologies employed by several scholars when researching particular visual manuscripts—images of all genres depicting specific events, personalities, social and cultural contexts-that document the development of some of the British imperial and post-colonial visual literacies. The concept of visual manuscripts, alongside theories of visual anthropology and memory studies, is addressed in this chapter, and across the entire volume, thus allowing the readers to approach with greater ease the discourse on imperial iconography and historiography. This approach is meant to highlight central comparisons between various schools of thought-written manuscripts versus visual manuscripts—and to provide an accessible, coherent, and persuasive account of current developments in visual sociology and culture relevant to the study of British colonial and post-colonial constructions of personal and national identities.
