History of Art: Histories and Interpretations

MA in History of Art: Histories and Interpretations

Mode: part-time

It will examine a variety of investigative traditions including, for example, feminisms, philosophical aesthetics, psychoanalysis, semiotics and the social history of art, to analyse their value as explanations of the meanings of art.

The programme will allow you to concentrate on particular areas of interest to you, practising the skills of criticism and interpretation on artworks within a specific historical environment.

All members of staff in the History of Art Department are involved in teaching the MA, bringing varied expertise in areas of art history ranging from the medieval to the postmodern. Art historians and art theorists based in other departments will also provide units in the degree.

Programme Structure

Compulsory Units

• Histories, Theories and Interpretations of Art

This will introduce the core methodologies and will equally examine areas of interest to all art historians: concepts of the artist, ideas about taste and beauty and theories about the relationship between art and the wider historical context.

Optional Units
Typical units are given in the list below:

• Art, Politics and Religion in the Italian City-Republic
• The Art Critic
• The Art Historian
• The Artist
• A Conversation? Artists and Writers in Britain and America c.1730 - present
• English Avant-Garde? Pre-Raphaelites, Aesthetes and Impressionists
• The Impressionist Group Exhibitions
• Modern Art and Visual Culture in Germany 1871-1937
• The Modernity of Ancient Sculpture
• The Tudor Portrait: a theoretical and practical investigation
• Ut pictura poesis: Text, Image and the Classical Tradition in Renaissance Art and Theory
• Visual Culture in the Soviet and Post-Soviet Eras 1945-2000

Dissertation
15,000-word dissertation researched and written on a topic chosen in consultation with members of the teaching team.