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PhD Research Projects
ShareWe encourage PhD applications across a wide range of disciplines and areas relating to the representation and ethico-aesthetical conceptualisation of the social and familial bond. Inter-disciplinary projects are strongly supported. Initial inquiries can be made by contacting the Research Centre directors, or directly by contacting individual academics within BRAKC.
MA in Aesthetics of Kinship and Community
ShareIntroduction
BRAKC's
MA in Aesthetics of Kinship and Community is of
interest both to those already based in the arts and humanities, who
have an interest in the question of kinship/community representation
and want to develop theoretical tools and a broader basis of
understanding to strengthen and enrich this interest, and to people
studying or working in the social sciences, community areas or
psychology, who want to extend their understanding to the arts, and how
they deal with the same issues in an non-empirical manner.
Ideal for students wishing to foster or maintain an interdisciplinarity which many Master's degrees do not allow for, and also for people currently outside academia, working in the field of community or family-orientated issues, who wish to gain a fresh perspective. [More details]
Why study this course at Birkbeck?
What will I be studying?
Ideal for students wishing to foster or maintain an interdisciplinarity which many Master's degrees do not allow for, and also for people currently outside academia, working in the field of community or family-orientated issues, who wish to gain a fresh perspective. [More details]
Why study this course at Birkbeck?
- Unique opportunity to study the question of social and familial formation from a specifically arts and humanities perspective.
- The only Master's programme of its kind in the country.
What will I be studying?
You
take a core course:
You also take three options from the list below (some modules do not run every year):
You also take a module in Research Skills.
How will I be assessed?
Coursework essays (two of 3000 words for the core course; one of 5000 words per option module; and a 15,000-word dissertation).
How do I apply?
More details on the MA Aesthetics of Kinship and Community:
The MA Aesthetics of Kinship and Community will provide you with an understanding of the ways in which two dominant paradigms of the inter-subjective bond have been conceptualised and represented from antiquity to the present day, by artists, writers, film makers, critical thinkers and philosophers. The core course will concentrate on presenting you with case studies based on works of art, and theoretical or philosophical texts, to give you an overall grasp of what it means to define human beings as belonging to a family, a community, a tribe, a society, how these categories are sometimes understood to be mere visionary constructs, and how the forms and shapes of these constructs have varied over time and across space.
You will also be given the chance to choose between a number of optional modules which will feed into the concerns of the core course, and some which are less arts-and-humanities oriented, should you wish to see how other fields may deal with the concepts of kinship and community on a more pragmatic, less aestheticized, plane. Options on offer could include, for instance, ‘Representations of the Friend from Aristotle to Facebook’, ‘Post-Structuralist Thought and the Question of Kinship & Community’, ‘Fantastical Kinship and Community in Postmodern Literature and Film’, ‘Reinventing the Family in Contemporary French Cinema’, ‘Film Melodrama and the Family’, ‘Queer Histories, Queer Cultures’, ‘Mapping Utopias: From Early Modern to Postmodern’, ‘Comparative Decolonizations: The End of the European Colonial Empires’, ‘Algeria: Colony to Post-colony’, ‘Narrating the Nation: The Modern Novel in Japan’, ‘Men and Masculinities in East Asia’, ‘Childhood Cultures in Modern Spain’.
The MA Aesthetics of Kinship and Community can benefit you in various ways. If you are an Arts student wishing to move on to a PhD relating to the themes of kinship and/or community in literature, art, or cinema, for instance (e.g. “Motherhood in Ancient Greek Drama”, “Motherhood in the work of Marie NDiaye”, “The Father in the Cinema of François Ozon”, “Female Friendship and Mysticism in Post-1968 French Film”), you will acquire a solid theoretical and aesthetic grounding on which to develop your own ideas. And if you are a professional involved in community-based work, whether it be social work or artistic work with the community, you will find this MA stimulating in itself, as it will present you with alternative ideas and perspectives on the ways people have conceptualised and represented human relations before us, as well as on how these are being reinvented now.
You will be taught by Birkbeck academics who are experts on the aesthetic representation of kinship and community, all of whom are attached as researchers to Birkbeck Research Centre in Aesthetics of Kinship and Community (BRAKC). This means that as well as the research-led teaching provided by the programme, you will benefit from the optional advantage of regular seminars, lectures, reading group meetings, film screenings, poetry readings, contacts with London artists, conferences, and the research culture of the Centre.
- Modern Kinships and Communities: Theories and Representations
You also take three options from the list below (some modules do not run every year):
- Representations of the Friend from Aristotle to Facebook
- Reinventing the Family in Contemporary French Cinema
- Anticapitalism in Contemporary Literary and Visual Cultures*
- Fantastical Kinship and Community in Postmodern Literature and Film
- Film Melodrama and the Family
- Sex and Sexualities in French Literature and Cinema
- Death, Disease and the Early Modern City
- Mapping Utopias: From Early Modern to Postmodern
- Algeria: Colony to Post-colony
- Comparative Decolonizations: The End of the European Colonial Empires
- Gender and Sexuality in Contemporary Japanese Fiction
- Of Japanese Descent
- Men and Masculinities in East Asia
- Narrating the Nation: The Modern Novel in Japan
- Exhibiting the Pain of Others:
Museums, Violence and Memory
- Museums, Memory and National Identity
- Urban Spaces in Modern Cultures
- Queer Histories, Queer Cultures
- Childhood Cultures in Modern Spain
- Representations of ‘Race’ and Racism in French and Francophone Culture
- Negotiating Gender
- Ideology and Innovation in Post-war German Cinema
- Nostalgia in the Museum Landscape
- Children’s Literature: Breakthrough Texts and their Legacies
- Crisis in Portuguese Cinema
You also take a module in Research Skills.
How will I be assessed?
Coursework essays (two of 3000 words for the core course; one of 5000 words per option module; and a 15,000-word dissertation).
How do I apply?
You can apply online from the link below.
- MA Aesthetics of Kinship and Community (Part-time)
- MA Aesthetics of Kinship and Community (Full-time)
More details on the MA Aesthetics of Kinship and Community:
The MA Aesthetics of Kinship and Community will provide you with an understanding of the ways in which two dominant paradigms of the inter-subjective bond have been conceptualised and represented from antiquity to the present day, by artists, writers, film makers, critical thinkers and philosophers. The core course will concentrate on presenting you with case studies based on works of art, and theoretical or philosophical texts, to give you an overall grasp of what it means to define human beings as belonging to a family, a community, a tribe, a society, how these categories are sometimes understood to be mere visionary constructs, and how the forms and shapes of these constructs have varied over time and across space.
You will also be given the chance to choose between a number of optional modules which will feed into the concerns of the core course, and some which are less arts-and-humanities oriented, should you wish to see how other fields may deal with the concepts of kinship and community on a more pragmatic, less aestheticized, plane. Options on offer could include, for instance, ‘Representations of the Friend from Aristotle to Facebook’, ‘Post-Structuralist Thought and the Question of Kinship & Community’, ‘Fantastical Kinship and Community in Postmodern Literature and Film’, ‘Reinventing the Family in Contemporary French Cinema’, ‘Film Melodrama and the Family’, ‘Queer Histories, Queer Cultures’, ‘Mapping Utopias: From Early Modern to Postmodern’, ‘Comparative Decolonizations: The End of the European Colonial Empires’, ‘Algeria: Colony to Post-colony’, ‘Narrating the Nation: The Modern Novel in Japan’, ‘Men and Masculinities in East Asia’, ‘Childhood Cultures in Modern Spain’.
The MA Aesthetics of Kinship and Community can benefit you in various ways. If you are an Arts student wishing to move on to a PhD relating to the themes of kinship and/or community in literature, art, or cinema, for instance (e.g. “Motherhood in Ancient Greek Drama”, “Motherhood in the work of Marie NDiaye”, “The Father in the Cinema of François Ozon”, “Female Friendship and Mysticism in Post-1968 French Film”), you will acquire a solid theoretical and aesthetic grounding on which to develop your own ideas. And if you are a professional involved in community-based work, whether it be social work or artistic work with the community, you will find this MA stimulating in itself, as it will present you with alternative ideas and perspectives on the ways people have conceptualised and represented human relations before us, as well as on how these are being reinvented now.
You will be taught by Birkbeck academics who are experts on the aesthetic representation of kinship and community, all of whom are attached as researchers to Birkbeck Research Centre in Aesthetics of Kinship and Community (BRAKC). This means that as well as the research-led teaching provided by the programme, you will benefit from the optional advantage of regular seminars, lectures, reading group meetings, film screenings, poetry readings, contacts with London artists, conferences, and the research culture of the Centre.
