BA (Hons) Fine Art with Contemporary Cultural Theory Bachelor's degree at the University of Leeds

You'll be given the chance to explore contemporary and traditional approaches to fine art across a range of disciplines, making use of our excellent resources, including, film, experimental printmaking, ceramics, art writing, sculpture, photography and audio-visual practices. You'll be introduced into the broader context of contemporary art practices, engaging with artists, tutors and curators through practical studio workshops, live projects and exhibition opportunities. You'll begin to develop

This module continues with the development of independent studio work for developing self-directed practice-based research. You'll be encouraged to develop artwork that reflects your research interests and locates your work within the contextual framework of contemporary art practice. You'll work in self-selected groups as you develop an independent practice and work towards a public presentation of your work.

This module introduces ways of reading different aspects of culture. It should enable you to discuss the full range of cultural forms including film, television, popular literature and music as well as more canonical modes of culture such as opera, philosophy, art and architecture. This module will equip you with the skills to appreciate, criticise, and understand culture through intellectual approaches. This module covers questions of cultural studies, representation, authorship, meaning, close

This module introduces you to different methodological and critical approaches to the analysis and study of cultural production and consumption, in a range of different social, historical and political contexts. Week by week you are taken through a range of relevant questions, topics and themes relating to the critical and contextual analysis of culture and are shown the ways in which culture itself informs how it is theoretically interpreted.

This module builds on your achievements of the previous year as you take on your own studio in a shared communal studio space. The emphasis is on independent, self-directed, practice-based research and continuing to address questions of its dissemination, presentation and audience. You'll develop your work supported by individual tutorials, group crits and technical workshops that allow you to explore processes, materials and technologies available to realise your creative aspirations and suppor

Working in research focused studio groups, you'll develop a body of work that explores your ideas of audience in relation to appropriate methods of display for your work, building your awareness of the social and cultural contexts, networks and histories that inform contemporary art's production and presentation. This module will be supported by individual tutorials and group crits, that continue to support your analytical approach to your own work and that of your colleagues. Specialist Technic

This module offers a detailed encounter with the work of Roland Barthes, and provides, more generally, an introduction to structural linguistics, critical semiology and its poststructuralist afterlife. Taking its cue from Barthes' extreme attentiveness to language in the broadest sense of the word, the module explores important philosophical questions of thought, meaning, art, culture and human relations. The module follows the arc of Barthes' work, from the rigour of his structuralist phase, wi

This module offers you the opportunity to explore a multitude of different ideal cities and model communities from the sixteenth century to the present day. The tracing of the various forms utopianism has adopted since Thomas More will take us into the fields of architecture, art, literature, politics, philosophy, sociology, women's studies and religion. In parallel to this historical approach to utopian thinking, you'll be encouraged to think critically and imaginatively about our contemporary

You'll consider how cultural theory and contemporary aesthetic practice critically engage with current social and political issues. Focussing on two "live issues" for five weeks, you'll be encouraged to focus on subjects that incisively bear on what it might mean to be alive in the 21st century. Both issues will be framed with an appropriate theoretical framework that introduces you to the complexity of the topics being addressed. The "issues" focussed on will vary so to reflect recent works and

This module explores a range of feminist, postcolonial and queer theories of the embodiment of gender, its performance, performativity and representation in art and visual culture, showing the relations between the two. You'll address shifts in the representational schema of the woman's body by the study of a range of feminist perspectives that offer a critical framework for thinking about the body, embodiment and difference in all its intersectional complexity. This module also covers a range o

Are there fundamental differences between the ways you see familiar objects and those from Asia? Are there ways in which the power and meanings of 'seeing' change in an Asian context, so that even though we are 'seeing' the same object, we understand the object differently? How do cultural and historical values and standards shape the act of seeing and how we interpret images? By engaging with wide-ranging historical and cultural examples drawn from a range of specialities from art to science, t

This module focuses on the historical practice of collecting and exhibiting Asian objects, both within and outside Asia. It offers you a thematic survey of the history of engagements that displayed "Asian" cultures from 19th century to today by exploring wide-ranging primary sources from catalogues of Crystal Palace exposition to internet home pages. You'll analyse the interconnected ways through which political and social forces shape the access to and formation of knowledge of art in/of Asia.

This module explores how art and curatorial practice can offer an investigative lens on scientific and technological innovation. You'll engage with and challenge the logic of art as a medium for the communication of science and consider the collaborative potential within these fields and the reciprocal dialogue between artistic and scientific methods and practices. Through discussion of contemporary issues in art, science and technology, you'll be encouraged to critically reflect on the socio-po

In this module, you'll continue to develop your research-driven creative practice to produce a highly consolidated body of work and apply critical skills to its presentation. By the end of the module, you'll have gained advanced technical skills in your chosen media and a highly critical understanding of contemporary art practice and its history. The focus is towards the public platform of the degree show exhibition. In addition to exhibiting, you'll have the opportunity to volunteer on the cura

The aim of a dissertation is to foster your own independent research and scholarship alongside your studio practice, by identifying appropriate critical, historical and theoretical frameworks for your chosen subject. Your project is supported by a dedicated dissertation supervisor who is aligned with your research interests. You might use this arts-based research opportunity to further your own practice concerns, helping you to address critical cultural que