Art's Queer Stories (870V4B)

30 credits, Level 7 (Masters)

Spring teaching

The module investigates:

• how queerness has been represented in modern and contemporary art and visual culture
• how artists have worked within and against such representations.

You will explore a range of theoretical responses to queer art and visual culture – including transfeminist, post-/de-colonial and affect theories – in order to interrogate how sexuality and other markers of difference, such as race and class, appear in art history and visual culture.

Discussions will be driven by close analysis of a selection of ephemera, artworks, documents and “sticky objects” within Sussex and London collections. This will allow you to find your own ways to analyse non-normative representations of gender and sexuality in the context of private and public spaces, archives and museums.

This module provides a forum for critically looking at queer art and visual culture from the past and present, taking into account the narratives of museum curators, the queering of collections and art activism.

Contact hours and workload

This module is approximately 300 hours of work. This breaks down into about 22 hours of contact time and about 278 hours of independent study. The University may make minor variations to the contact hours for operational reasons, including timetabling requirements.

We regularly review our modules to incorporate student feedback, staff expertise, as well as the latest research and teaching methodology. We’re planning to run these modules in the academic year 2024/25. However, there may be changes to these modules in response to feedback, staff availability, student demand or updates to our curriculum.

We’ll make sure to let you know of any material changes to modules at the earliest opportunity.