Visual Global Politics

"This book is a landmark step in addressing the role of visuality in global politics. Rich, diverse, and innovative, it represents a vital contribution to understanding some of the most pressing analytic and political questions of our time."

- Michael C Williams, University of Ottawa, Canada

"This is a wonderful anthology. Typically these alphabetical collections are best for reference, but I was surprised to find myself reading through from one to the next. Many of the entries speak to each another, and together they paint the best available picture of images as "political forces." Visual culture studies has often made the promise of being political in a way that art history hasn't, but this is the only book that puts the politics first. It will be a useful reference for the current political moment, in which each of us has the responsibility to witness, interpret, and also produce political images."

- James Elkins, School of the Art Institute of Chicago, USA

"This sparkling collection of essays brings the visual aspects of global politics to the fore, challenging the traditional scholarly focus on texts. It illuminates the power of images in shaping the way we interpret and respond to global phenomena. The book will quickly become an indispensable resource for all scholars of international politics and law."

- Hilary Charlesworth, Melbourne Law School, Australia

"We live in an age of the visual turn in politics, one in which images work upon several registers of life. But the professoriate still mostly responds to politics through the hegemony of the textual. Visual Global Politics takes several huge steps to redress this imbalance. Consisting of multiple image-rich essays, it engages bodies, borders, torture, climate, democracy, security and several other domains by addressing their image/word intertexts. A timely and indispensable volume."

- William E. Connolly, Johns Hopkins University, USA

"Through 50 chapters, covering diverse visual areas as well as a wide range of topics – from body, face and gender to protest, violence and war, Visual Global Politics speaks to an audience far beyond the field of IR, and lives up to its ambition of providing an “accessible, one-stop source for anyone interested in understanding the role that images play in today’s world”."

- Inez v. Weitershausen, University of Zurich, Germany