COURSE CURRICULUM

The first year of the Social History of Art MA combines core and optional modules to provide a comprehensive grounding in the social, political, and cultural dimensions of art. The compulsory modules include the MA Dissertation, which allows students to undertake an independent research project, developing advanced research, analytical, and writing skills, and the Social History of Art Core Course, which introduces central themes, methods, and debates within the discipline. Optional modules provide opportunities to tailor the course to specific interests, with options ranging across diverse topics such as Derrida and Deconstruction, Reading Sexual Difference, Jewish Museums and the Display of Cultural Difference, and Unfinished Business: Trauma, Cultural Memory and the Holocaust. Other modules include Aesthetics and Politics, Art, Ecology and Empire, Postcolonial Feminisms, Intersecting Practices in Contemporary Art and Heritage, Prehuman to Post-Anthropocene, and Anthropology, Art and Representation, offering interdisciplinary perspectives. Students may also explore Humanity, Animality and Globality, Unmaking Things in the European Renaissance, Collecting and Curating Popular Culture, After Authoritarianism, and Medieval Manuscripts in the Digital Age, among others. Through these modules, students gain critical insight into the ways art shapes and reflects society, develop practical and theoretical expertise, and are equipped for careers in research, curatorial work, cultural heritage, and related fields, while engaging with contemporary and historical artistic practices globally.