Art on Site

15 credits
Spring teaching, Year 1

This module provides you with the opportunity to learn how to make in-depth studies of objects, across historical time and about particular centres of production. The spring term lectures prepare you for field work to be undertaken as part of the module. This will includes grasping the first principles of the relations that develop between artists and their patrons, the relationship between artistic production and a particular geographical site and the way that meanings can evolve in particular places.

Film Analysis: Hollywood Narrative and Style

15 credits
Autumn teaching, Year 1

Film Analysis 1 explores the diverse uses to which filmmakers put such key techniques of cinematic expression as narrative, cinematography, mise-en-scene, editing, sound, performance and special effects. You will explore not simply how such techniques are accomplished (ie the creative choices available to filmmakers) but also the potential they have for generating meaning and pleasure when combined together to produce filmic texts. The module is based around a series of reading assignments, which will be discussed in seminars along with the week's set film and extracts from other films. In particular, Film Analysis 1 examines one of the most influential and most pervasive models of cinema: the classical narrative film produced during the era of the Hollywood studio system (from approximately 1915 to 1960). You will consider several films from this era, as well as films produced subsequently, in the light of influential propositions by David Bordwell and other film scholars regarding the systematic organisation of stylistic and narrative norms within classical Hollywood storytelling.

Issues in Film Studies 1B: European Film Cultures

15 credits
Autumn teaching, Year 1

This module is an introduction to the history and study of film and cinema. Through lectures, seminars and screenings, you will explore silent and sound cinema, the concept of mass culture, developing cinematic practices in different countries, and the aesthetic and institutional procedures of various film industries.

Issues in Film Studies 2: Global Film Cultures

30 credits
Spring teaching, Year 1

Building on Issues in Film Studies 2, this module continues to examine modes of film making and cinematic contexts from a range of national settings and historical moments. You will both expand your knowledge of different cinematic practices, and deepen your skills of textual and contextual analysis.

 

Methods and Approaches to Art History I

15 credits
Autumn teaching, Year 1

Visual culture embraces a wide range of issues and meanings. This module provides an introduction to the study of visual material and the different approaches that scholars have taken in undertaking research into visual culture. Centred on a common module document, the module includes study skills workshops providing instruction on how to use visual analysis effectively, how to read primary and secondary sources critically, and how to synthesise, summarise and reference accurately. The generic skills teaching will arise from the teaching of thematic topics and will consider a range of objects and spaces from a variety of periods and cultures. The module assumes a high level of IT literacy.

Stories of Art I

15 credits
Autumn teaching, Year 1

This module is a 10-week lecture-based module. It aims to introduce you to a wide range of works of visual art across time and across cultures, considering many different kinds of works of art – paintings, sculptures, architecture, prints, drawings, and the so-called decorative and applied arts – and acknowledging that such objects raise a wide range of questions that can be answered in many different ways. The module is based on the principle that there are stories of art, rather than one single story of art.

Stories of Art II

15 credits
Spring teaching, Year 1

Art and the City

15 credits
Spring teaching, Year 2

Sites of Art follows on from Stories of Art. The module is concerned with the physical and social contexts for the production and consumption of works of visual art and is built around two geographical case studies, the city of Rome and our local region of Brighton and Sussex.

Film Theory

30 credits
Autumn teaching, Year 2

This module examines a range of different approaches to film studies including semiotics, narratology,psychoanalysis, reception studies in debate with spectatorship theory, post-modern theory and postcolonial theory.

Methods and Approaches to Art History 2

15 credits
Autumn teaching, Year 2

The interrelationship between text and image is one of the critical issues in visual culture from classical antiquity to the present day. From Chinese calligraphy, which blurs the divide between painting and writing, and medieval manuscripts where pictures appear in margins of the text to contemporary advertisements that use graphics and photography, these connections have influenced our attitudes towards images and information. This module asks how objects as diverse as Chinese porcelain or a Dyson vacuum cleaner, a pair of jeans or a designer dress, acquire meaning and value, both in the past and in the present. It raises questions about materials and techniques: how things were made and what form affects how they look. This module takes one or a number of places and periods to explore the way text and image functioned in society and the different interdisciplinary approaches required to study the two together.

Locating Cinema: British Cinema A

30 credits
Spring teaching, Year 2

The module begins by examining critical approaches to a history of British cinema and the dominant ways in which this cinema and its characteristics have been understood. It then moves to an examination of British cinema from the 1920s to 1980, beginning with the factors which shaped it, in particular the debates about the social and cultural importance of a specifically British cinema against the background of the massive influence of Hollywood, and the representations of 'Britishness' that this produced. The later weeks of the module examine in more detail British cinema's attempts to deal with the various forms of 'otherness' that it has sought both to define and to contain in the changing cultural and political climate of the post-war years, and with the different 'British cinemas' that this produced.

Locating Cinema: Cuban Cinema A

30 credits
Spring teaching, Year 2

This module offers a historical, critical, and theoretical survey of Cuban cinema. You will look at the specific political, social, economic, technological, and aesthetic factors that have influenced the shape and character of imaging practices in Cuba since the arrival of cinematography on the island in 1897. Key topics may include: pre-classical (1897-1919) and classical eras (1920-1960) in Cuba, whose imaging practices are often ignored or overshadowed by the cinema of the Cuban Revolution; pre-revolutionary and revolutionary cinema, ; the 'other' island films, created by exiled Cubans; and films articulating the experience of the Cuban diaspora, particularly in terms of Cuban-North American culture. The module also addresses contemporary issues and practices in the shadow of profound technological, economic and political changes, including the co-productions of globalisation/digitalisation.

Locating Cinema: French Cinema A

30 credits
Spring teaching, Year 2

This module will examine a range of films produced in France from World War I to the present day. It will move between popular cinema and the art film and review a number of national styles and genres, such as the moment of the Nouvelle Vague (the New Wave) including Francois Truffaut, Jacques Rivette and Jean-Luc Godard; the lyrical social documentary of Jean Vigo; policier detective dramas such as Pepe le Moko, the musical, including Jacque Demy’s Les Parapluies de Cherbourg, and the horror film Les Diaboliques. A series of directors will be studied, including Claude Chabrol, Rene Clair, Alain Resnais, Roger Vadim, Luis Bunuel, Francois Truffaut, Jacques Rivette and Jean Luc Godard. There will be close readings of specified films, as well as an examination of them in terms of their larger social and cultural meanings.

Period in Art History: Art and Society: Art after 1945

15 credits
Spring teaching, Year 2

This module examines developments in western art from 1945 to the present, placing them in a variety of social and cultural contexts. It begins with Pop Art and its relation to 1950s consumerism, before charting the rise of conceptual art practices in the context of 1960s counter-culture. It goes on to explore the emergence of post-modernism, and the challenge presented to a predominantly white, male, Eurocentric art establishment by identity politics and feminism in the 1980s. The module concludes by looking at `relational' art practices in the 1990s and 2000s, along with the rise of the art biennial.

Period in Art History: Dutch Art of the 17th Century

15 credits
Autumn teaching, Year 2

This module examines how the particular characteristics of the northern European schools of 17th-century art have been defined and argued about. The critical tradition has taken sides on a number of issues, namely how far an apparent attention to realism disguises complex meanings, whether religious painting was still important in a post-Reformation society, on the role of optical illusion, and on portraiture and landscape as evocations of the nation-state. All these issues are constantly referred back to a standard of quality and rules for debate set down elsewhere, in Renaissance Italy. The main body of material will be taken from 17th century Dutch painting, but with constant reference to the art of the Spanish Netherlands in order to examine how far the region to the south provided a conduit to the art and criticism of Italy and whether it makes sense to see the two countries as a cultural whole.

Period in Art History: From Picasso to Bacon: Painting and Sculpture 1920-1970

15 credits
Autumn teaching, Year 2

Period in Art History: Selling yourself: 18th Century Art and Society

15 credits
Spring teaching, Year 2

This module considers the production of visual culture in the 18th century within its social contexts. Rather than simply looking at a list of artists, you will consider the visual arts against the backdrop of contemporary social and ideological issues: commerce and luxury, urbanization and the rise of industry, the impact of empire and colonialism.

The approach will be a thematic one, looking at topics such as the representation of labour, the image of the family, the cult of individualism, the representation of war, as well as the more conventional genres of portraiture, landscape or history painting. You will also relate the visual arts to 18th century literary culture: the rise of the novel, georgic and pastoral poetry, and developments in social philosophy.

Period in Art History:Palaces, Churches, Piazzas: Art and Society in Renaissance Italy

15 credits
Autumn teaching, Year 2

This module examines Italian art of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, focusing particularly on its role in constructing and maintaining social relationships. It encompasses a range of Italian urban and courtly centres, exploring how distinctive regional contexts influenced the design, content and location of works of art. Investigating the networks of people involved in commissioning and creating art objects, it explores how viewers engaged with them in civic, sacred and domestic settings. The module considers the traditionally privileged 'art' of the Renaissance - painting and sculpture - in relation to luxury 'arts' - ceramics, glass, metalwork and textiles - to investigate the changing visual and material culture of Italy in this period. Finally, it addresses the term 'Renaissance', examining how this concept has been historically constructed and reinforced.

Adaptation: Filming Fiction

30 credits
Spring teaching, Year 3

This module examines film adaptations of fiction from the silent period to the present day. A diverse range of film texts will be considered, along with critical and theoretical perspectives on adaptation, authorship and intertextuality. The module focuses on film adaptations of nineteenth-century and twentieth-century novels, short stories and picture books, including works by Lewis Carroll, Edgar Allen Poe, Charlotte Bronte, Thomas Mann, Raymond Carver and Maurice Sendak. We will consider the significance of the idea of fidelity for the reception and theorisation of film adaptation. The module will approach adaptation as both an industrial mode of commercial production and a creative mode of critical interpretation. Cinematic strategies deployed to reproduce literary devices will be analysed in order to think about adaptation's value for theories of medium specificity. The module will also examine the politics of cross-cultural adaptation by looking at Indian and African films based on European source texts. Directors studied during the course include: Roger Corman, David Lean, Max Ophuls, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Claire Denis and Spike Jonze.

Alternative Cinemas

30 credits
Spring teaching, Year 3

Art in Context: Art and Politics in Britain 1979-the present

30 credits
Autumn teaching, Year 3

This module examines the place of politics in recent British art. Starting with Thatcher's Britain, we will look at a number of critical art practices in the 1980s, including those associated with the New Colour Photography and Black Art movements. We will go on to address the self-professed entrepreneurialism of 'young British art' against the backdrop of Thatcherism and the recession of the early 1990s. We will explore the co-option of the young British artists (yBas) as part of New Labour mythology, and the impact of globalisation upon the perceived `Britishness' of British art. The module concludes with the re-emergence of political art in the past ten years, made in response to the Iraq War and to the current government's cuts to public spending.

Art in Context: A Great and Golden Age:Byzantium 843-1204

30 credits
Autumn teaching, Year 3

This module deals with art of the Byzantine Empire between 843 and 1204 AD, from the end of iconoclasm to the sack of Constantinople by the Fourth Crusade. You will examine the role of images in Byzantium after iconoclasm and considers their use in both religious and secular contexts and in a variety of media. You will also be introduced to a range of Byzantine writings about art and explore Byzantine attitudes to their own artworks.

Art in Context: Inhuman Bondage: the Image of Slavery 1750-1850

30 credits
Autumn teaching, Year 3

This module will focus on the impact of slavery and the slave trade on western visual culture, until recently a subject little considered in art-historical scholarship. You will consider not only the iconography of slavery and the representation of enslaved Africans and slave plantations, but also how the ideologies of slavery infused the commercial society that was the context for artistic production, asking to what extent  art and aesthetics directly or indirectly were implicated in the slave trade. Of central concern will be the role of visual imagery in the campaign for the abolition of the slave trade in the late 18th century.

You will look at a wide variety of visual culture, not just works of 'fine' art, but also prints, textiles, applied and decorative arts, and furniture, to assess the significance of this conventionally overlooked, but important and problematic subject.

Art in Context: Michelangelo and Raphael: Art of the Papal Court in the 15th and 16th centuries

30 credits
Autumn teaching, Year 3

In Rome at the beginning of the 16th century Popes Julius II and Leo X, their courtiers and followers commissioned buildings, paintings and sculpture that politically argued the power of the Papacy and artistically sought to rival the achievements of the ancients.  You will examine some of the major projects of the time, looking at the intellectual rationale for these works and their relationship to the contemporary discoveries of the fabric of the ancient city.

Art in Context: Paris the Crucible of Modernism 1900-20

30 credits
Autumn teaching, Year 3

This module concentrates on a single decade in one centre of art production: Paris during the forging of Modernism. You will track the careers of particular artists, critics, composers and writers in detail and examine appropriate critical and analytical frames of references for them in relation to the social and cultural history of the period.

Among those figures who to be examined are Henri Matisse, Claude Debussy, George Braque, Guillaume Apollinaire, Pablo Picasso, Constantin Brancusi, Andre Derain and Giorgio de Chirico.

Hollywood Comedian Comedy

30 credits
Spring teaching, Year 3

Comedian-comedy has been one of the most persistent genres of popular Hollywood cinema since the silent era, but until recently it has received little serious critical attention. This module will consider a range of individual performers and the diverse historical, cinematic and extra-cinematic contexts in which they worked. Drawing upon a range of critical and theoretical paradigms, the module will examine the key fictional and extra-fictional features of the genre; the relations between performance, gags and narrative; the shifting relationships between comedy in film and other media (such as vaudeville and television); and the representation of class, gender, ethnicity and race. Films studied may include comedies featuring such performers as Charles Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Laurel and Hardy, Mae West, the Marx Brothers, Jerry Lewis, Jim Carrey and Eddie Murphy.

Hollywood Industry and Imaginary

30 credits
Autumn teaching, Year 3

Race and Ethnicity in Popular Cinema 1

30 credits
Autumn teaching, Year 3

Sexualities and the Cinema

30 credits
Spring teaching, Year 3

This module centres on the critical study of sexualities and how they are represented in a range of film texts. Through screenings, seminars and self directed study, you will consider in detail and depth, the ways in which sexualities have been both theorised and represented in film. Debates considered in the module may include: the politics of sexual identification; the idea of sexual 'perversity'; sexual stereotyping (especially of lesbians and gays); and the critical concept of 'queer' in theory, identity politics and cinematic genre (queer cinema).

The Musical

30 credits
Autumn teaching, Year 3

This module will examine the musical, tracing the hegemonic Hollywood genre to its roots in European vaudeville, cabaret culture, stage musicals and operas. It will also explore musicals that may seek to defy or respond to Hollywoodcentric, Eurocentric and heterosexist conceptions of genre. The module is divided into two sections. The first section will analyse the Hollywood musical of the studio era, by examining both the stylistic features and historical context of some of its different sub-genres; the show/backstage musical, the fairy tale musical and the folk musical. It may also explore the diverse ways in which the studio era musical as entertainment may work ideologically in relation to issues of race, ethnicity and sexuality.

The second section of the module will focus on the musical as it has developed beyond Hollywood (and beyond the conceptual framework of Hollywood). Topics may include; the subcultural musical, the animated musical (arguably, the most common form of the contemporary musical in both its mainstream (Disney) and counter mainstream forms (South Park)) and may conclude with a consideration of the future of the musical in terms of gender, age and physicality.

Topic in Art History: Architecture and Interiors

30 credits
Spring teaching, Year 3

This module examines the relationship between changes in architectural style and practice, and the concept of the interior in the European and American world from the 15th century to the present. How are the concepts of outside and inside related through architecture and how does architecture organise the interior in particular ways? The module takes a historical and social path, but you will be encouraged to build on this through dissertation and presentation.

Topic in Art History: Art and Empire

30 credits
Spring teaching, Year 3

This module consists of an in-depth consideration of the visual arts in relation to imperialism. It will thus pick up on Edward Said's important intervention in proposing a critical relation between 'culture and imperialism'. This module will look at the ways in which the visual arts were influenced and informed by the material processes and ideologies of empire – from imperial/colonial war to architectural settlement. It will consider not just how artists reacted, referred to and exploited empire in their work (by, for example, taking the opportunity to cultivate new markets in newly colonised territories), but how empire was represented to domestic audiences and informed visual and aesthetic dismodule.

Topic in Art History: Art and its Literary Context

30 credits
Spring teaching, Year 3

This module takes an interdisciplinary perspective on the links between visual and literary imaginations. Depending on the tutor, the module may look at any one of a variety of periods from the medieval to the 21st century. A typical module may focus on the late 19th century and the first half of the 20th century, in one of the great capitals of Modernist experimentation - London. The presence of international artists and writers such as Henry James, John Singer Sargent, Ezra Pound and Henri Gaudier-Brzeska will be examined, as well as the distinctive developments in painting and writing around the Bloomsbury Group, the Vorticists, the Camden Town Group and the London Surrealists.

Topic in Art History: Commemorative Art

30 credits
Spring teaching, Year 3

This module considers the visual culture of the death ritual and, in particular, examines how monumental art seeks to represent and sustain the memory of the deceased. The module moves freely between different cultures and periods, working towards the final dissertation and the assessed presentation, responding both to your individual interest and to the availability of primary and secondary material. In particular, you will be encouraged to consider the many and varied (but little-studied) resources in those subject areas which are available in local and national collections. The module starts with a consideration of a number of relevant theories: genres and hierarchies within art-historical discourse; the roles of mourning and commemoration within the contexts of theology and sociology; and, varied anthropological accounts. Case studies will include: war memorials and other public memorials; the church monument; the engraved headstone and other tomb-markers; monuments to princes and other rulers; mourning costume; the organising, representation and recording of funeral; coffins and their furniture; and cenotaphs and other empty tombs.

Topic in Art History: From Decorative Arts to Material Culture

30 credits
Spring teaching, Year 3

This module considers the traditional categorisations of the arts into 'fine' and 'decorative' and how this distinction has characterised scholarly approaches to them. Art history's recent engagement with methodologies from the field of material culture has revived interest in objects that had been relegated to the ranks of 'applied art', revealing original contexts and functions that had previously been overlooked. You will explore how the relationship between different art forms was conceived in the past, investigate the range of methods used by art historians to study art objects, and consider how these categories have informed their display in museums.

Topic in Art History: Photography in Context

30 credits
Spring teaching, Year 3

The module provides an interdisciplinary perspective on the place of photography in American and Western European culture from the medium's invention in the 1830s to the present. It pays particular attention to the relationship between photography as art and its applications within mass culture. We consider the different contexts in which photographs are encountered and how these affect issues of status and meaning, along with the impact of technological changes upon the production and dissemination of photographic images. We also examine how historic photographic traditions have been extended and disrupted by more recent practices.

Topic in Art History: Representing Women

30 credits
Spring teaching, Year 3

This module looks at attitudes to women as represented in art within an extended time period. It considers how concepts of gender and gender roles remain constant or change over time, and at how art and texts come together to form a composite picture of women's cultural status. It will also explore how feminist methodologies may or may not be of value in examining images.

Viewing Women

30 credits
Autumn teaching, Year 3

Early work on the relation of women to film considered woman's 'to-be-looked-at-ness', examining representations of women as objects of the male gaze, constructions 'cut to the measure of [male] desire' (Laura Mulvey). You will consider the female spectator, positioned by particular film and television genres (melodrama, the 'woman's film', and soap opera). More recently, attention has shifted to women as social audiences and producers of meanings, differing from one another and constructing from texts their own meanings and pleasures. This module traces these developing and interacting strands of research, considering questions around the location of meaning, the relationship between text and context, and the usefulness of different strands of feminist research in enabling us to understand film texts and their representations and positioning of women. It considers a range of popular and feminist film texts and their viewers.