Visualizing Cultures - Image-Driven Scholarship

Visualizing Cultures is an interesting project created and developed at MIT. Visualizing Cultures consists of thirteen visual narratives accompanied by essays. The project combines visual narratives and essays to tell the history of Japan since the arrival of Commodore Perry or as MIT describes it, the history of Japan in the modern world. The essays can be read on the website or downloaded as PDF's for printing. Each visual narrative consists of several sections, each section consists of ten to fifteen images with captions. In some ways Visualizing Cultures could be described as an academic picture book.

Applications for Education
Visualizing Cultures could be used at a wide range of grade levels. The essays could be used in a high school history class and the visual narratives could be used in a middle school or possibly elementary school class. Visualizing Cultures provides a model for students to use as they create visual narratives of their own.