AR115-4-AU-CO:
Art, Sex and Death
2015/16
Art History and Theory
Colchester Campus
Autumn
Undergraduate: Level 4
Current
15
-
Requisites for this module
(none)
(none)
(none)
(none)
(none)
BA V314 Art History,
BA V350 Art History (Including Foundation Year),
BA V35A Art History (Including Year Abroad),
BA V351 Curating,
BA V352 Curating (Including Year Abroad),
BA V359 Curating (Including Foundation Year),
BA V35B Curating (Including Foundation Year and Year Abroad)
SAINTS, MIRACLES AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS IN LATE MEDIEVAL AND RENAISSANCE ITALY
Sociologists define 'social problems' as conditions that some or all members of a given community view as undesirable. Such problems include social conditions (e.g. poverty or homelessness), actions (e.g. murder or rape), behaviors (e.g. substance abuse or loitering), and other phenomena (e.g. diseases or environmental crises). Popular culture plays a pivotal role in shaping perceptions of such social problems, including which concerns are viewed as being of vital importance in a particular time and place. Today social problems are constructed in large part through popular media: social websites like Facebook and Twitter, reality television programmes, and 24-hour news outlets; the visual and textual forms at work include photographs and videos, hashtags and memes, GIFs and banner headlines.
In late medieval and Renaissance Italy (ca. 1300-1600), the situation was not so very different. Then as now, images and texts worked together to frame and condition public perceptions of social problems-problems like slander, vendetta, madness, infanticide, plague, infidelity, suicide, infertility, and illegitimacy. This module focuses on one category of visual evidence-representations of miracles performed by saints-in order to uncover the role played by such images in shaping views of social problems in the period. Biographies of saints (know as hagiographies) were everywhere in late medieval and Renaissance cities, in both image and text. Like popular media today, tales of the miracles performed by saints-raising the dead, curing the infertile, rescuing ships, freeing the unjustly convicted, healing the sick-helped late medieval and Renaissance people to make sense of their world. Paying particular attention to the ways in which images shape ideas, this module will examine a wide range of visual and material culture, including painted and sculpted altarpieces, fresco cycles, prints, and illuminated manuscripts.
Aims
to provide students with a grounding in the history of late medieval and Renaissance Italy;
to explore issues related to the main developments in visual hagiography and to be able to relate those issues to the politics, social contexts and ideological debates of their times, and subsequently;
to introduce students to specialised debates in past and recent literature around the role and interpretation of both visual hagiography and social problems;
to learn to summarise and re-present key theoretical and historical arguments concisely;
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 essay and oral communication and debate in seminars.
No information available.
No information available.
No additional information available.
Learning & Teaching Methods:
1 x 2 hour lecture/seminar per week.
1 x 2 hour gallery visit.
1 x Reading Week.
Assessment items, weightings and deadlines
| Coursework / exam |
Description |
Deadline |
Coursework weighting |
| Coursework |
Weekly reading summaries |
|
10% |
| Coursework |
Autumn Term Essay 1 |
|
45% |
| Coursework |
Autumn Term Essay 2 |
|
45% |
Exam format definitions
- Remote, open book: Your exam will take place remotely via an online learning platform. You may refer to any physical or electronic materials during the exam.
- In-person, open book: Your exam will take place on campus under invigilation. You may refer to any physical materials such as paper study notes or a textbook during the exam. Electronic devices may not be used in the exam.
- In-person, open book (restricted): The exam will take place on campus under invigilation. You may refer only to specific physical materials such as a named textbook during the exam. Permitted materials will be specified by your department. Electronic devices may not be used in the exam.
- In-person, closed book: The exam will take place on campus under invigilation. You may not refer to any physical materials or electronic devices during the exam. There may be times when a paper dictionary,
for example, may be permitted in an otherwise closed book exam. Any exceptions will be specified by your department.
Your department will provide further guidance before your exams.
Overall assessment
Reassessment
Module supervisor and teaching staff
Dr Diana Bullen Presciutti
Barbara Brickman, First Year Administrator.
Email: bbrick@essex.ac.uk
Yes
Yes
No
No external examiner information available for this module.
Available via Moodle
No lecture recording information available for this module.
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