Program Overview
The History of Art BA program at the University of Leeds delves into the interconnectedness of art with social dynamics, fostering a global perspective and critical engagement with societal issues. It emphasizes the institutional and professional dimensions of art, preparing students for careers in heritage, museum, and art sectors, among others, while also valuing independent learning, research, and employability skills.
Program Outline
Degree Overview:
The History of Art BA program at the University of Leeds offers a comprehensive exploration of art practices and interpretations across diverse cultures and periods. It emphasizes the interconnectedness of art with broader social dynamics, delving into questions of power, politics, society, and the potential of art history to illuminate cultural frameworks like race, gender, sexuality, and the environment. The program aims to equip students with the knowledge and skills to become global citizens, experts in their field, and socially aware thinkers.
Objectives:
- Develop advanced art history knowledge.
- Enhance research, independent thinking, and communication skills.
- Foster a global perspective on art and its histories.
- Engage with critical social and political questions.
- Equip students with a deep understanding of the institutions and spaces where art is encountered.
Program Description:
The program is distinguished by its location within a Russell Group university, where art historians study alongside fine artists in a purpose-built space that includes studios, a gallery, seminar rooms, and a shared student common room. The program boasts expertise in social history of art, feminist art history, critical study of race and global cultural encounters, and emerging interests in sustainability, climate, and the environment. It is the second oldest art history course in the UK, driven by cutting-edge research and a dynamic approach based on emerging issues and questions.
Outline:
Year 1:
- Compulsory Modules:
- Art History as Practice (20 credits): Introduces students to the combined challenges of understanding past cultures, engaging with current issues in the field, and developing independent research. Covers a wide array of art-historical topics with a global perspective and broad chronology, emphasizing the meaning of being an art historian today.
- Ways of Seeing (20 credits): Analyzes assumptions about art, exploring the act of "seeing" and its relation to society, ideas, art, and writing. Examines how visual culture conveys and constructs social values and how "seeing" is intertwined with verbal representations and conceptualizations.
- Ways of Thinking Seeing (20 credits): Explores ideological and conceptual structures associated with shaping the process of seeing. Through close reading, students gain awareness of categories and structures for seeing, questioning notions of "meaning" and "interpretation."
- From Art History’s Myths to Critical Art History (20 credits): Covers a broad range of art-historical topics, focusing on modernity and the contemporary, while critically engaging with prevailing myths of the discipline. Equips students with an understanding of key moments in the history of art in texts, practices, and institutions, and the ability to reflect on how the history of art illuminates and shadows their work as art historians.
- Critical Approaches to Display, Institutions and Engagement (20 Credits): Introduces a range of approaches to the critical study of curating practices and the institutions, spaces, and cultural formations through which art is encountered. Covers topics from the origins of museums to socially engaged participatory practice, equipping students to engage with the wider structures and relationships that underpin our lived experience of the art world.
- Optional Modules:
- Discovery module (20 credits): Offers a range of options to expand intellectual horizons outside or within the subject area.
- Cultural History (20 credits): Introduces students to social and cultural formations underscoring the history of "the West" since the Enlightenment.
Year 2:
- Compulsory Modules:
- Methods in Practice: Art-Historical Research (20 credits): Builds core skills through a focused critical engagement with methods in art-historical research. Combines detailed reflection on the concerns and approaches of key art historians with work-in-progress explorations of live research.
- Origins, Structures, and Critique: Framing the Discipline of Art History (20 credits): Interrogates the history and legacies of the discipline of Art History, exploring its formation and complex entanglements with discourses of nationalism, racial hierarchies, and other structures of power.
- Expanding Fields of Display, Institutions, and Engagement (20 credits): Builds on the critical study of display, institutions, and expanded practices of curating. Develops a strong, reflexive approach to research on the varied ways in which art is encountered.
- Optional Modules (Selection of Options from the Full List):
- Cinema and Culture (20 credits): Comparatively examines specific films and their remakes, discussing cultural, social, and technological shifts over time.
- Seeing in Asia (20 credits): Addresses the age-old problem of "nature" versus "nurture" through the perspective of Asian Culture.
- Variant Modernism (20 credits): Looks at different definitions of "modern" or "contemporary" art at different historical moments in 20th century England.
- The Grand Tour: Travels, Excavations, Collections (20 credits): Follows a typical Grand Tour itinerary, assessing the importance of travelers, guides, artists, and dealers.
- The Art Market: Moments, Methodologies, Meanings (20 credits): Introduces main themes in the histories of the art market, focusing on key notions like the Primary and Secondary art markets.
- Bodies of Difference: Gender, Power and the Visual Arts (20 credits): Explores feminist, postcolonial, and queer theories of the embodiment of gender, its performance, and representation in art and visual culture.
- Renaissance / Anti-Renaissance: Critical Approaches to Early Modern Art in Europe (20 credits): Engages with questions fundamental to a critical and historical approach to Renaissance art.
Year 3:
- Compulsory Module:
- Dissertation (60 Credits): The final outcome of this module is a BA dissertation, a coherently argued, thoroughly researched, and carefully edited written work based on the knowledge and skills acquired throughout the program.
- Optional Modules (Selection of Options from the Full List):
- From Trauma to Cultural Memory: The Unfinished Business of Representation and the Holocaust (20 credits): Addresses debates in literary, historiographical, and psychological theory about the ways in which witnesses provide testimony and the legacy of the Holocaust is represented.
- Anthropology, Art and Representation (20 credits): Examines specific objects and "texts" and their interpretation in relation to larger questions concerning gender, embodiment, technology, and representation.
- Unmaking Things: Materials and Ideas in the European Renaissance (20 credits): Attends to questions generated by historical consideration of the materials from which Renaissance artworks and objects were made.
- Critical Approaches to Photography (20 credits): Excavates the multiple layers of philosophical issues embedded in concepts such as "truth," "reality," and "mediation" in thinking about and writing about photographic images.
- Postcolonial Feminisms (20 credits): Examines feminist theory and politics as they have developed in the context of decolonization.
- Art, Ecology and Empire (20 credits): Explores the emergence of an ecological imagination in nineteenth century British art and visual culture, including its Imperial contexts.
Assessment:
Assessment takes varied forms, including different kinds of written assignments, presentations, group work, and innovative practice-led approaches. Assessment is led by principles of relevance, fairness, and inclusivity, and the development of vital skills beyond university, such as problem-solving, adaptability, self-reliance, and reflexivity.
Teaching:
Teaching is delivered through a range of innovative approaches, emphasizing inclusive, active learning and student input. Approaches include lectures, seminars, screenings, tutorials, field trips, workshops, and other forms of learning generated through dialogue between tutors and students. Students can also attend talks by visiting artists and speakers, as well as events and exhibitions both on and off campus. Independent study is a crucial component of the degree, allowing students to form and express their own ideas and develop a broad range of important transferrable skills.
Careers:
The History of Art course provides training in critical thinking about the ways in which practices, objects, and ideas shape the world. It embeds high-level intellectual skills, flexibility of approach, independence, collaboration, and problem-solving. Graduates of History of Art at the University of Leeds go on to enjoy a wide range of career choices, including:
- National and international heritage
- Art gallery and museum sectors
- Public relations
- Advertising
- Public service administration
- Commercial art galleries
- Broadcasting Many also pursue postgraduate study, including completing PhDs as a route to teaching in higher education institutions around the world.
Other:
- The University Library offers classes and resources on topics such as exam technique, public speaking, research, and structuring essays throughout the degree.
- The School of Fine Art, History of Art and Cultural Studies has a strong commitment to enhancing student employability and embedding transferable, career-oriented skills.
- The school organizes a Visiting Artist Talk Programme with leading artists regionally and internationally discussing their careers and practice.
- The School's exemplary Year in Industry programme has led to students successfully undertaking work-based placements locally, nationally, and internationally, some of which have led to permanent full-time employment upon graduation.
- The University of Leeds offers a unique approach to helping students make the most of their university experience through Leeds for Life, which supports academic and personal development.
- The Careers Centre and staff in the faculty provide a range of help and advice to help students plan their career and make well-informed decisions along the way, even after they graduate.
- The program has a strong emphasis on the institutional and professional dimensions of art and culture, and on understanding the practical side of how they take shape and affect our lives in the real world.
