Module Directory

This introductory module asks students to consider how art historians look (and have looked) at art and visual culture across history, thereby training them to see and think like an art historian.

Weekly lectures will present art made in different media (such as painting, drawing, prints, sculpture, architecture, photography, moving image and performance) from a wide swath of historical time, with a focus on helping students develop the skills of visual analysis and their application to the social and cultural meanings of art. Through an exploration of these media, the module will also present a broadoverview of both the art-historical canon and the historiography of art-historical engagement with the visual world. Students will be asked to consider primarily questions of style, genre, period, context and medium as they relate to art and visual culture, along with the limits of these frameworks in contemporary, globalised art-historical study.

In the final lecture, the module will also ask how we as art historians might ‘look’ at images and objects beyond what is immediately visible: for example, by considering not only novel imaging technologies and forensic analysis of materials but also the metadata and other hidden code embedded in digital images online.

The aims of this module are:

• To introduce students to a wide range of methods, research materials, scholarly approaches and relevant terminology associated with a study of art history and the visual.


• To stimulate students to develop skills in oral and written communication through essays, debate in seminars and written exercises.


• To introduce students to original works of art and architecture in galleries, museums and in situ as appropriate, in addition to their classroom studies.

By the end of this module, students will be expected to be able to:

1. Define the task in which they are engaged and exclude what is irrelevant.


2. Seek and organise the most relevant discussions and sources of information.


3. Process a large volume of diverse and sometimes conflicting arguments.


4. Compare and evaluate different arguments and assess the limitations of their own position or procedure.


5. Write and present verbally a succinct and precise account of positions, arguments, and their presuppositions and implications.


6. Be sensitive to the positions of others and communicate their own views in ways that are accessible to them.


7. Think 'laterally' and creatively (i.e., to explore interesting connections and possibilities, and to present these clearly rather than as vague hunches).


8. Maintain intellectual flexibility and revise their own position based on feedback.


9. Think critically and constructively.


10. Utilise their skills in visual memory.

From sculptures of ancient Roman politicians and Renaissance Florentine narrative paintings, to virtuoso engravings and feats of Baroque illusionism, if you have an interest in the visual and would like to know more about `why` and `how` art and society interrelate, then this module will be of interest to you.

Designed to foster the skill of visual analysis, which will enable you to engage with a broad range of art works, this module is intended to develop your understanding of why images and things appear as they do.

This module will be delivered via:

• One 2-hour lecture/seminar per week.

There will also be a Reading Week.