Visual Culture
A Minor in Visual Culture trains students in current approaches to a range of visual materials and issues, covers the history of the discipline, and gives students a grounding in the wide range of areas of visual cultural study (including different media, genres, cultures, historical periods and theories).
Honours Bachelor of Arts
Program Plans
Plan your degree with these academic and co-curricular program overviews.
Tip Sheets
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- Communications Specialist
- Art Director
- Production Assistant
- Arts Administrator
- Curriculum Specialist
Admission Requirements
Regional Requirements
Admissions RequirementsLife in Visual Culture
Buzz Around Campus
Filmmaker Richie Mehta was finishing a project in Delhi when the Nirbhaya (Hindi for “fearless) case broke out. The 2012 gang rape and murder of a 23-year-old student in the national capital territory was front-page news worldwide, but the crime shook India to its core.
Elizabeth Wijaya is one of the rare scholars who can claim a listing on IMDB, the Internet Movie Data Base. The new assistant professor of East Asian cinema at U of T Mississauga studies the transnationality of cinema – how stories and people cross borders throughout Asia. She also has credits as a writer, director and producer with E&W Films, the film production company she runs with partner and U of T Mississauga sessional lecturer Lai Weijie.
From 20th century strongmen to Gwyneth Paltrow’s infamous jade egg, a new course at U of T Mississauga explores how self-styled health-and-wellness experts influence and profit from the pursuit of the perfect body. Special topic course "Visuality and North American Fitness Culture" uses advertising to explore the ever-changing—and sometimes repeating—health and fitness fads of the past century.
Sample Courses
This course will introduce students to culture and social theory via the lens of popular culture. Commodities, advertising, and new technologies will be considered in light of their cultural content.
Introduces students to histories and theories of urban spaces emphasizing the modern city. Drawing from history, architecture, geography, and media studies, the course explores how urban change is evident in the spaces, forms, and sounds of the modern city.
This course examines the relationship between mass media technologies and the idea of "reality" with an emphasis on the electronic and digital forms that dominate the discourse of "reality" in contemporary media culture, television, and the Internet.
Other Programs to Consider
Art & Art History
Art History offers students an exciting forum for developing critical skills in interpreting visual imagery and understanding the significance of art in a variety of cultures and historical periods, including the contemporary moment. Courses span the history of art from the ancient to the contemporary worlds, and investigate art from Europe.
Cinema Studies
The Cinema Studies program is devoted to the stylistic, historical, and theoretical analysis of film. Students learn about film as a unique mode of communication in the 20th and 21st centuries, while also investigating what it is that film can be said to share with allied art forms.
Art History
Art History offers students an exciting forum for developing critical skills in interpreting visual imagery and understanding the significance of art in a variety of cultures and historical periods, including the contemporary moment. Courses span the history of art from the ancient to the contemporary worlds, and investigate art from Europe.