This volume explores the many facets and ongoing transformations of our visual identities in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Its chapters engage with the constitution of personal, national and cultural identities at the intersection of the verbal and the visual across a range of media. They are attentive to how the medialities and (im)materialities of modern image culture inflect our conceptions of identity, examining the cultural and political force of literature, films, online video messages, rap songs, selfies, digital algorithms, social media, computer-generated images, photojournalism and branding, among others. They also reflect on the image theories that emerged in the same time span-from early theorists such as Charles S. Peirce to twentieth-century models like those proposed by Roland Barthes and Jacques Derrida as well as more recent theories by Jacques Ranciere, W. J. T. Mitchell and others. The contributors of Imaging Identity come from a wide range of disciplines including literary studies, media studies, art history, tourism studies and semiotics. The book will appeal to an interdisciplinary readership interested in contemporary visual culture and image theory.

This volume explores the many facets and ongoing transformations of our visual identities in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Its chapters engage with the constitution of personal, national and cultural identities at the intersection of the verbal and the visual across a range of media. They are attentive to how the medialities and (im)materialities of modern image culture inflect our conceptions of identity, examining the cultural and political force of literature, films, online video messages, rap songs, selfies, digital algorithms, social media, computer-generated images, photojournalism and branding, among others. They also reflect on the image theories that emerged in the same time span-from early theorists such as Charles S. Peirce to twentieth-century models like those proposed by Roland Barthes and Jacques Derrida as well as more recent theories by Jacques Ranciere, W. J. T. Mitchell and others. The contributors of Imaging Identity come from a wide range of disciplines including literary studies, media studies, art history, tourism studies and semiotics. The book will appeal to an interdisciplinary readership interested in contemporary visual culture and image theory.

The twenty-one essays collected in this volume offer a broad range of critical views on the intricate interdependence between verbal and visual representation. Drawing on recent research, scholars from Europe, America and Asia approach the topic from a host of different angles, exploring topics such as popular visual cultures in Japan, devotional graffiti in a Piedmontese chapel, textual trompe-l'oeil in Jaques Derrida's Memoirs of the Blind or the relationship between the landscape paintings of Albert Bierstadt and the representation of landscape in the texts of James Fenimore Cooper. The International Association of Word and Image Studies was founded nearly twenty years ago - 1987 - and is based in Amsterdam. One of the aims of the association is to be a forum for both theoretical debate and innovative research in different disciplines. Over the years, the IAWIS triennial conferences and the IAWIS publications have established themselves as internationally acknowledged sites where literary critics, art historians, architects, art and design specialists, semioticians, artists, psychologists and art critics can meet and engage in a sustained dialogue.