Teaching Social Analysis of Images

Visual literacy is a set of skills that enable an individual to search, analyze, interact, and create images and media through a critical lens. In preparing post-secondary students for the media-saturated information environment of the twenty-first century, it is important that educators promote visual literacy by encouraging interpretations and discussions of the social, cultural, technological and historical, contexts of images and media. This article offers a brief review of literature regarding pedagogical practice in using the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL)’s Visual Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education and a case study of how these skills can be developed for undergraduate students in a 2000-honors-level sociology course taught by a faculty-librarian partnership through the Fine Arts Library at the University of Arkansas.