Frameworks: Histories and Theories of Art, Architecture, Photography

• Credit value: 30 credits at Level 7
• Convenor: Professor Mark Crinson
  
• Tutors: Professor Steve Edwards, Professor Lynda Nead, Professor Annie E. Coombes, Professor Patrizia Di Bello, Professor Leslie Topp, Zoe Opacic, Dorigen Caldwell, Robert Maniura, Laura Jacobus
• Assessment: a 1500-word essay (30%) and a 3500-word essay (70%)

This module introduces you to current theoretical and historiographic issues in the study of art history, including the specialist disciplines of history of architecture and history of photography. It consists of four integrated elements, which lay the foundation for your progress through the programme. Lectures explore key issues for the history of art, architecture and photography now, including institutions, space, materiality, the global, power, reception, identity and collectivity. Work in Focus seminars analyse individual artworks, photographs or buildings through discussion. Historiography seminars map the formation of history of art, architecture and photography and grapple with some of its key texts. And research skills classes provide guidance on research, the framing of questions, the construction of arguments, and academic writing techniques.

Indicative module syllabus

• Art and its Institutions
• Description
• Space and Materiality
• Time and the Document
• The Local and the Global
• Power and Representation
• Agency and Reception
• Identity and Collectivity

By the end of this module, you will have:

• begun to develop acuity in analysing artworks, buildings and architecture
• acquired an enhanced understanding of art (including architecture and photography) within the social and cultural context of its production
• acquired knowledge of methodologies concerned with the discipline
• engaged constructively in current debates concerning the discipline and its changing nature.