Visual studies and visual culture are widely taught, but it isn't clear what either might be. Art historian James Elkins unpacks our uneasy relation to "the visual" and offers an introduction to what visual studies might be. In a series of chapters written in his engagingly clear prose, he offers a pocket history of visual culture, an explanation of the concept of visual literacy, an introduction to the Benjamin and Foucault as their work illuminates visual studies, and goes on to examine key concepts in visual culture, among them the theory of the gaze, the idea of hybridity, the use of semiotics, the concept of the "scopic regime." This groundbreaking book ends with the challenging questions "what does visual culture teach, and why does it seem so easy?" Visual Studies offers a coherent introduction to one of the most dynamic and problematic areas across the humanities.