Compulsory for students on the BA Art History. Optional for student on art history joint courses. Also available as an outside option to students on other courses with Module Supervisor's permission.
The module is open to all first year students within the Faculty and the School welcomes students from Social Sciences backgrounds with an interest in images of all kinds.
An excellent opportunity for students with an interest in `the visual` to be introduced to the discipline of Art History and to explore the wide ranging transferable skills employed by Art Historians.
Art and architecture exist only in relation to their geographical and historical contexts. Through a balanced series of lectures and site visits (four per term), this module will explore the relationships between art, architecture and visual culture, and the spaces, places and localities from which they emerge. Moreover, we will aim to understand the cultures which produced these spaces, and the cultures they, in turn, produce, in order to interrogate the relationships between spaces and the people who inhabit(ed) them.
If you have an interest in the visual and would like to know more about 'why' and 'how' the visual works in the much wider context of the everyday, then a one term module in the skills of art history will be of interest to you. 'Space, Place, Locality' is an introductory skills module for students of art history and those interested in the visual and in visual culture, aiming to equip students with the fundamental tools of art-historical enquiry and academic study, from writing and research, to discussing and analysing art and buildings in the real world beyond the classroom.
Over ten weeks, we will visit four galleries, buildings, places and spaces in Essex, London and the South East of England - from places and spaces perhaps including galleries and museums, via churches, castles, cathedrals and ruins, to parks, piers, power-stations and prisons. Each trip, buttressed by lectures and guided independent study, will involve an associated skills task. Designed to offer you the key skills of visual analysis which will enable you to engage with a broad range of art works and buildings, this module is intended to develop your understanding of why images, buildings and things appear as they do, and how their contexts have constrained and produced particular responses. This module is also designed to develop your transferable skills as we consider the visual arts in various broad contexts and the impact that art has on our lives.
The study skills required in 'Space, Place, Locality' will develop your skills of description, comparison, analysis and interpretation as well as academic reading and writing - all of which are now vital for future career paths within the creative industries and which are likewise crucial for personal development. This skills module, compulsory for students on the BA Art History, will provide a foundation for your individual research methods and for progression through your undergraduate degree course and beyond, to the levels of postgraduate study.
Aims
This introductory module aims:
- to introduce students to a wide range of methods, research materials, scholarly approaches and relevant terminology associated with a study of art history, architecture 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.
Learning Outcomes:
a sound grasp of the history, art and culture of the sites visited;
the ability to interpret art in situ based on sound knowledge of the appropriate historical and interpretative contexts;
the confidence to subject the artworks seen and texts studied to critical analysis;
some experience in textual analysis relevant to works and theoretical debates;
an ability to analyse works of art in situ, both with preparation and sight-unseen;
an ability to talk lucidly about art and buildings in situ.