Module Directory

This module will involve a week-long study trip to a destination abroad. Full details will be provided before the start of the academic year.

The aims of this module are:

• To experience art and architecture in situ, and to be able to engage in sustained visual analysis of real art objects.


• To develop a deep and sustained sense of a single city's art, architecture, culture, and politics across time.


• To learn how to research and write about artworks and buildings in situ.


• To learn to summarise and re-present key theoretical and historical arguments concisely.


• To introduce students to specialised debates in past and recent literature around the city visited.


• To raise student awareness of different methods of approaching the discipline through analysis of chosen texts.


• To stimulate students to develop skills in written communication through essays and oral communication and debate in museums, galleries and architectural sites.


• To raise student awareness of different methods of approaching the discipline through analysis of chosen texts.

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

1. A sound grasp of the history, art and culture of the city studied.


2. The ability to interpret art based on sound knowledge of the appropriate historical and interpretative contexts.


3. The confidence to subject the artworks and texts studied to critical analysis.


4. Some experience in textual analysis relevant to works and theoretical debates.


5. An ability to analyse works of art, both with preparation and sight-unseen.
   

Skills for your Professional Life

By the end of this module, students should also have acquired a set of transferable skills, and in particular 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.

The School provide a subsidy for students on Art History and Curating courses. The School will cover travel, accommodation and entrance fees but students will be required to cover the remainder of their costs.

Students on other courses who wish to take this module will be required to self-fund the trip.

Costs will differ each year depending on the destination and details for the trip.

Students must attend all teaching sessions prior to the trip; Students who miss teaching sessions without an excused absence will be asked to select another module. Students who do not engage and/or attend during the trip may be asked to repay costs to the School.

This module will be delivered via:

• Two preparatory lectures.
• Study trip.

Preparatory lectures will be given in the latter half of the spring term. The study trip abroad will take place in the Easter Vacation.