New Year -- New Stuff

Viz Cult had its first meeting of the Fall semester Thursday, September 24th. We spent most of our time introducing ourselves and talking about our wish list for the year but we ended our meeting with a discussion of what this group might offer Elon's review of the General Studies Program. We made no final decisions, of course, as one might expect from any good Viz Cult meeting (we hate to limit ourselves!). In attendance were some very cool people, Phillip Motley, Randy Piland, Ken Calhoun, Tony Crider, Evan Gatti, Ken Hassell, Shriya Sridharan, Brian Crawford, David Neville, Ben McFadyen, Rissa Trachman and Safia Swimelar. Whew. There was a lot of good energy at the table and many, many different perspectives on visual culture (and yeah, we had excellent snacks, thanks for asking).

We did talk about the possibility of leading a "double life" this year. We hope to host a series of colloquia open to the whole university, foregrounding work our faculty are doing in visual culture, studies, pedagogies, etc. I will float some ideas soon so keep your eyes open for them! In addition, those of us who might want to work on what visual studies could or should look like at Elon will act like a "real" committee, and do "real" committee work, in other words we just might generate a white paper. A rockin' multi modal interactive sensory stimulating white paper...

That's where it's at. Join us when you can. Send ideas when you can't.