In addition to the Curtiss text and the very fine Paul Messaris text already mentioned, I find Donis A. Dondis, _A Primer of Visual Literacy_ (MIT Press) generally helpful; and please don't THINK of doing a course on Media Literacy that doesn't include Marshall McLuhan's _Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man_. The rest is commentary -- including next year's forthcoming _Screen Smarts: Visual Literacy for the Age of Multimedia_. by Brian Stonehill [log in to unmask]