BA (Hons) History of Art with Cultural Studies Bachelor's degree at the University of Leeds

Taking art-historical research as a dynamic and inclusive set of practices grounded in questions that matter now, this module draws on the varied expertise of teaching staff to introduce you to the combined and converging challenges of a deep understanding of past cultures, engagement with current issues in the field and methods for developing independent research. This module presents a wide array of art-historical topics, with a global perspective and covering a broad chronology, placing empha

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 sets out a broad range of art-historical topics and questions, with a focus on modernity and the contemporary, together with a direct, critical engagement with some of the prevailing myths of the discipline. You'll be equipped with an understanding of key moments in the history of art in texts, practices and institutions, and with an ability to reflect on how the history of art both illuminates and shadows our work as art historians today. While gaining in-depth knowledge of art move

This module introduces a range of approaches to the critical study of practices of curating and the institutions, spaces and cultural formations through which art, in its widest senses, is encountered. From the origins of museums to the most recent forms of socially engaged participatory practice, from heritage sites to the international biennale, you'll be equipped to develop an informed engagement with the wider structures and relationships – political, social, and cultural – which underpin ou

Taking the act of 'seeing' as its starting point, this module asks you to analyse assumptions about art that may appear natural, obvious or unquestionable. By exploring the many ways in which 'seeing' is thought and theorised, you'll question the relation between society, ideas, art and writing. You'll consider how visual culture conveys and constructs social values and how 'seeing' is wrapped-up with verbal representations and conceptualisations, gaining skills of critical thinking, visual anal

This module maps social and cultural formations underscoring the history of 'the West' since the period known as the Enlightenment. We draw on events and developments to interrogate and challenge ideas and assumptions informing modernity and postmodernity. Texts you encounter range from academic writings to autobiography, fiction, cartography, paintings, memorials, photography and film. Contexts in which these are explored include rights, revolutions, enslavement, colonialism, the modern city, 2

Throughout your degree you will benefit from a range of opportunities to expand your intellectual horizons outside or within your subject area. This course gives you the opportunity to choose from a range of discovery modules. They're a great way to tailor your study around your interests or career aspirations and help you stand out from the crowd when you graduate.

This module builds core skills through a focused critical engagement with methods in art-historical research. Combining detailed reflection on the concerns and approaches of key art historians with work-in-progress explorations of the development of live research, the module equips students to build their own projects with a strong sense of the resources and choices open to us, and of the discipline of Art History as an inclusive, dynamic space to be developed though the questions that matter no

This module interrogates the history and legacies of the discipline of Art History, with a view to a critical reflection on what art history can do in the world we face today. We explore the distinct formation of Art History as a discipline rooted both in historical or antiquarian studies and in philosophical aesthetics, while also reflecting on its complex entanglements with discourses of nationalism and racial hierarchies and other more or less hidden structures of power. The module equips stu

Representation, Form, Context, Interpretation and Power are words one hears often in the School of Fine Art, History of Art and Cultural Studies (FAHACS). They are heard frequently because they are actually concepts used by teachers and scholars in these fields to analyse works of art and cultural practices whether realised as paintings, texts, buildings, actions or otherwise. What do these concepts mean; how are they used; when and why were they produced; what debates have they stirred? These a

Can art be 'social'? Taking this question as its starting point, this module examines how global art practices have engaged with the idea of the 'social' from the 1950s to today. Focusing on debates around 'community', 'relationality' and 'socially engaged' practice, you will study the contested and ever-changing nature of the 'social' in art. By exploring how people have been brought together through a wide and diverse array of creative practices, you will examine the idea of the 'social' in th

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 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, considering 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

The Grand Tour's origins lie in the early 17th century, when a small number of British aristocrats left their native islands to explore the cultural capitals of Europe. By the 18th century, it had developed into a rite of passage for privileged young men sent abroad to expand their knowledge of the visual arts, architecture, music and foreign political systems. Its culmination was Rome, where a thriving cultural industry arose to meet the demand for paintings, objet d'art and antiquities. This m

This module introduces some of the main themes in the histories of the art market. It is a chronologically ordered and thematic investigation that focuses on key notions, such as the Primary (production) and Secondary (resale/collecting) art markets, and key segments such as the Fine and Decorative Art ('Antiques') markets.