COURSE CURRICULUM

The Art History program at Sussex offers a comprehensive and interdisciplinary approach, enabling students to explore the ways in which art shapes culture, society, and individual experience. In the first year, core modules such as Doing Art History, Stories of Art: Shaping Art, Objects, Curation and Display, and Sights and Sites provide a solid grounding in the discipline, equipping students with analytical and interpretive skills. In the second year, students continue to build on this foundation with modules like Art History at Work, Reading in Detail: Critical Texts, and an international study trip focused on Art and the City, alongside options including Material Culture in the Pre-Modern World, Pop Life: After Modern Art, Sound Culture and Society, Transatlantic Modernisms: Picasso to Kahlo, and Word and Image. These experiences encourage critical engagement with both historical and contemporary art forms. In the final year, students complete a Final Exhibition Project and choose from a wide range of options such as Art and Place: Sites, Spaces and Identities, Commemorative Art: Images, Monuments and Memory, From Decorative Arts to Material Culture, Art and Politics in Britain 2008-Now, Mediterranean Fantasies: Revivals and Utopias 1919-1939, Posthuman/Premodern, and Sex and the City: The Origins of Modernism in Britain 1870-1910. The course combines practical, theoretical, and research-led learning, preparing graduates for careers in the cultural, creative, and heritage sectors.