Visual culture, as a contemporary academic field evolving from the historical study of art, investigates the production, form, and reception of images past and present. It incorporates the painting, sculpture, and architecture conventionally defined by art history, but it extends throughout the fields of visual imagery, beyond the cultural boundaries formerly drawn by academic tradition. The history of art and visual culture program at UCSC focuses its cultural and historical investigation across a wide variety of representations in the cultures of Africa, the Americas, Asia, Europe, and the Pacific Islands, from masks and mountains to mass media.