History of Art and History (BA): 3-year, full-time

COURSE STRUCTURE

This BA programme is a modular degree involving a combination of compulsory and option modules. Each module is worth 30 credits and you take 12 modules over three years, to a total of 360 credits. You take modules in both history and history of art, which provide you with key study and research skills in those disciplines. Option modules allow you to select areas of specialism and to learn about certain topics and periods in depth. In your final year, you will submit a dissertation on a topic of your choosing.

In Year 1, you take two compulsory modules and choose one option in history at Level 4 and one at Level 5.

In Year 2, you take one compulsory module, choose one compulsory research skills for dissertations module (in either history or history of art, depending on which subject you wish your dissertation to predominantly focus on), and choose one option in history of art at Level 5 and one in history at Level 5.

In Year 3, you choose two options in history of art and one in history at Level 6, and write a history of art dissertation, or you choose two options in history of art and write a history dissertation.

YEAR 1 COMPULSORY MODULES

• Art History: A Survey
• Doing Art History

YEAR 2 COMPULSORY MODULE

• Debates in Art History

YEAR 2 COMPULSORY RESEARCH SKILLS MODULE

• Exploring the Past
• Research Portfolio

INDICATIVE LEVEL 4 HISTORY OPTION MODULES

• Discovering Archaeology: From Field to Finds Room
• The Ancient World
• The Archaeology of Greece and Rome
• The Contemporary World
• The Early Modern World, 1500-1800: Reformations and Revolutions
• The Medieval World: From Constantine to the Khans
• The Modern World

INDICATIVE LEVEL 5 HISTORY OPTION MODULES

• Beginnings: The Archaeology of Prehistory
• Between God and Rome: the Byzantine Empire 307-1453 (level 5)
• Contested Nation: Germany, 1871-1918 (level 5)
• From Ancient to Medieval Societies, Third to Eleventh Centuries
• Journeys to the Underworld in Classical Literature and Culture
• Popular Culture in American History, 1870 to the Present (level 5)
• The Ottoman Empire (level 5)
• Under the Volcano - the First and Last Days of Pompeii (level 5)
• Work and Play in Early Modern Britain (level 5)

INDICATIVE LEVEL 5 HISTORY OF ART OPTION MODULES

• Art and Society Between 1900 and the Present
• Art and Society in the Middle Ages and Renaissance
• Art and Society in the Nineteenth Century

INDICATIVE LEVEL 6 HISTORY OPTION MODULES

• Body Politics: Health, Illness and Death in Britain
• Crime, Poverty and Protest in England and Beyond, 1500-1800
• Gender, Sex and Society in Twentieth Century Britain
• Intimate Britain: Family, Society and Culture, 1832-1918
• Late Medieval and Early Modern London: Community, Politics and Religion
• Literature, Culture and Society 1914-1945
• Sexuality, Society and the State in Britain, 1914-2000
• Stories in Stuff: the medieval and early modern worlds in 20 texts and objects
• The Athenian Empire
• The Colonial Gaze: Western Perceptions of Asia, Africa and the Middle East, 1600-1960
• The Empire of Letters: Correspondence in the Roman World
• The Third Reich

INDICATIVE LEVEL 6 HISTORY OF ART OPTION MODULES

• Art and Patronage in Papal Rome c. 1534-1590
• Art and the Sacred in the Middle Ages
• Art as Critique: Caricature, Modernity and the Avant-Garde
• Art of the British Empire
• Concrete and Flesh: Modern Architecture and the Body
• Impressionist Paris: Modernity and Difference
• Modernism in Scandinavian Art and Design
• Photography Between Art and Document, 1839 to Now
• Seventeenth-Century Painting in the Netherlands
• Strategies of Display: Avant-Garde Exhibitions, The White Cube and Beyond
• The Aesthetics of Politics: Picturing the Victorian State

BA HISTORY OF ART WITH HISTORY DISSERTATION (CHOOSE ONE)

• Dissertation
• Writing the Past: Dissertation

You may also select options from another programme at Birkbeck, or taken on an intercollegiate basis at another College of the University of London. Programme director approval is required in order to take such modules.

Birkbeck makes all reasonable efforts to deliver educational services, modules and programmes of study as described on our website. In the event that there are material changes to our offering (for example, due to matters beyond our control), we will update applicant and student facing information as quickly as possible and offer alternatives to applicants, offer-holders and current students.