About

Afterimage: The Journal of Media Arts and Cultural Criticism features unique, high-quality coverage of digital media, film, games, photography, television, video, and visual arts, as well as addresses current scholarship, issues, and debates within art history, media studies, visual and cultural studies, and related fields. The journal seeks to serve as a diverse, inclusive, and interdisciplinary forum for visual culture and cultural criticism that extends across theory, research, and practice. 

Areas of particular focus and interest include activism, art and environment, art history, book arts, contemporary art, digital and new media, gender studies, media archeology, politics, queer cultures and media, race and ethnicity, religion and visual culture, television, and video games. 

Founded and launched in 1972 by photographer and curator Nathan Lyons, Afterimage has served as an important voice in the media arts for more than 45 years.  Afterimage was published by the Visual Studies Workshop in Rochester, New York from 1972 to 2018. University of California Press began publishing the journal in 2019 with volume 46. 

Building on the journal’s impressive publication history, UC Press will be working with the Afterimage editorial team to continue the legacy of the journal and to expand its scholarly scope and reach, including the addition of peer-reviewed research beginning with the 2020 volume, while remaining a relevant and accessible publication to both scholarly and non-scholarly readers alike. With the move to UC Press, the journal has ceased print production and moved to an online-only, quarterly format. 

University of California is pleased to collaborate with the University of California, Irvine Ph.D. Program in Visual Studies on publication of Afterimage: The Journal of Media Arts and Cultural Criticism. 

About the UCI Ph.D. Program in Visual Studies 

• Since its founding in the 1990s, the program has remained at the forefront of innovative interdisciplinary scholarship in the social and cultural production of visual expression and has established itself as one of the premier interdisciplinary graduate programs worldwide.
• Its students have been equally successful in winning fellowships and active participants in professional activities spanning the fields of Visual Studies, Film and Media Studies, and Art History.
• One of the special things about the Program community is the camaraderie shared by its graduate students, all of whom hail from different places, walks of life, and work on a wide array of different topics, but who all find a home in the experimental and supportive environment of our program.
• Particular strengths of the program include cultural studies, critical race theory, digital technologies, feminist and queer studies, global modernism, postcolonial theory, and television studies. In addition, graduate students may choose to supplement their Visual Studies degrees with graduate certificates in Critical Theory, Feminist Studies, Asian American Studies, Latin American Studies, and Chicano/Latino Studies.
• Following in the footsteps of the Program’s impressive group of students and graduates, each year the Program welcomes an equally diverse and talented first-year cohort, coming to UCI from all across the globe that brings an incredible variety of interests.
• Alongside a stellar group of current students, past alumni and core faculty members the Program strives to maintain historic and present vibrancy of Visual Studies at UC Irvine that portends an equally electric future.
• The Program works on the long-term challenges of changing expectations of career outcomes for doctoral students by engaging both faculty and students in collaborating in professionalization opportunities that prepare students for multiple career paths.

For more information on the University of California, Irvine Ph.D. Program in Visual Studies, please visit https://www.humanities.uci.edu/visualstudies/.