Film and Visual Culture

Credit Points

20

Course Coordinator

Dr Kriss Ravetto

Pre-requisites

Available only to registered postgraduate students

Overview

This will introduce students to the study of key theoretical texts in contemporary visual art, drawing on the work of prominent figures in the field such as Alpers, Amerika, Bann, Barthes, Baxendal, Bois, Burgen, Bryson, Casetti, Kenneth Clark, T.J. Clark, Crary, Danto, Deleuze, Foster, Fried, Grau, Greenberg, Krauss, Lyotard, Metz, Phelan, Pollack, Nochlin, Ranciere,, Sekula, Vidler, and Weibel. The course will relate these theoretical positions to works of contemporary visual art, and physical and virtual exhibitions, drawing on fieldwork undertaken in galleries and museums.

Structure

1 two-hour seminar per week

Assessment

Three x 2,000 – 2,500 word essays.

Credit Points

20

Course Coordinator

Dr Janet Stewart

Pre-requisites

Available only to registered postgraduate students

Overview

This course explores current debates and controversies in the Visual Arts through the study of key articles in leading journals. The course will examine contemporary writing in a range of fields, such as Art Theory, Anthropology, Fine Art, Design, Architecture, Museum Studies, Film Studies, the New Media and Music. It will also include instruction in the key professional skills of presenting work in written form to a specialist academic audience, in accessing library and other relevant resources and in using digital images.

Structure

One two-hour seminar per week

Assessment

Two x 3,000 word essays.

Credit Points

20

Course Coordinator

Dr Janet Stewart

Pre-requisites

Available only to registered postgraduate students or by permission of the Head of School

Overview

This course will provide a practical training in gathering information and presenting research in visual culture, focusing on the possibilities offered bynew technology. It will cover the use of software such as Adope Photoshop, Microsoft Powerpoint and Macromedia Dreamweaver, and intriduce students to important issues regarding the digitisation of visual source material. By the end of the course, students will have constructed their own vitual exhibition.

Structure

1 two-hour seminar per week.

Assessment

One 20 minute presentation; one virtual exhiition (to e submitted on CD-Rom).

Credit Points

20

Course Coordinator

Dr Alan Marcus

Pre-requisites

Available only to registered postgraduate students

Overview

This course will allow students to engage in documentary and visual art production, putting into practice mthodologies they have studied through a series of screenings, workshops, seminar discussions, and pratical work. Students will research a topic, film it on digital video, complete the project through post-production and analyse the process applied.

Structure

1 two-hour seminar per week

Assessment

two practical pieces (50%); and a reflective logbook (50%)

Credit Points

20

Course Coordinator

Dr Nikolaj Lubecker

Pre-requisites

Available only to registered postgraduate students or by permission of Head of School

Co-requisites

Normally an upper-second class undergraduate Honours degree, or equivalent in a relevant discipline

Overview

Students will be introduced to a wide variety of works from the artisitic avant-garde of the 20th century, as well as to a range of theoretical approaches to this tradition. Like the avat-garde itself, the course will be decidedly multi-medial (we will study literature, film, art...) and international. The course will be structured around two axes: one concrned with 'avant-garde formalism(s)', another concerned with 'avant-garde ideologies'; consequently, the main focus will e the relation between formalism and ideology.

Structure

1 two-hour seminar per week

Assessment

One written assignment (essay, 3,500 words) (100%)

Credit Points

20

Course Coordinator

Dr Nerea Arruti

Pre-requisites

Available only to registered postgraduate students.

Co-requisites

Compulsory modules in the Mlitt in Visual Culture

Notes

Overview

The course will map out the development of photography in the Hispanic world form the beginning of the XX century to contemporary times. The main themes explored by the courses will be: the tensions between tradition and modernisation as explored by contemporary Spanish photography, the relationship between the Old and New World in photography (particularly in landscapes and portraits), the relationship between memory and photography (case study Argentine) and the impact of social changes in photography (case study Mexico).

Structure

Assessment

One 6,000-word essay

Credit Points

20

Course Coordinator

Dr K Ravetto

Pre-requisites

Available only to registered postgraduate students

Overview

This course focuses on the relationship between the material and immaterial roles of technology, its effects on perception, imaging, haptic experience, memory, and inscriptions of power, as well as its impact on notions of authenticity, essence and causality. The course will centre on the work of key theorists including Benjamin, Heidegger, Bergson, Deleuze and Guattari, asking questions such as how the visual media participate in the changing ‘architectonics’ of vision, space and the body.

Structure

One two-hour seminar per week

Assessment

Two x 3,500 word essays (50% each)

Credit Points

20

Course Coordinator

Dr Alan Marcus

Pre-requisites

Available only to registered postgraduate students

Overview

This course explores the central role of documenting filmic practices in visual culture and the use of documentary aesthetics in dramatic film through a series of case studies and close contextual readings of key works by leading practitioners and theorists.

Structure

One two-hour seminar per week

Assessment

Continuous Assessment: 2 x 3,500 word essays (50% each)

Credit Points

20

Course Coordinator

Dr Alan Marcus

Pre-requisites

Availale only to postgraduate students or y permission of the Head of School

Co-requisites

FS5008 Documentary and Visual Practice 1

Overview

Building on the knowledge and skills acquired through 'Documentary and Visual Practice 1', while requiring a greater degree of practical and conceptual sophistication, this course will allow students to engage in documentary and visual art production, putting into pratice a methodology they have studied through a series of screenings, seminar dicusssions and practical work. Students will research a topic, film it on digital video, complete the project through post-production and analyse the process applied.

Structure

1 two-hour seminar per week

Assessment

One practical piece (50%) and reflective logbook (50%)

Credit Points

10

Course Coordinator

Dr J Stewwart

Pre-requisites

Available only to registered postgraduate students

Overview

Direction and advice in investigating the area of the student's research

Structure

4-6 hours of individual advising

Assessment

30% trial bibliography, 70% full bibliography

Credit Points

60

Course Coordinator

Dr J Stewart

Pre-requisites

Acceptance for entry to the MLitt in Visual Culture by permission of the Head of the School of Language and Literature and successful completion of the 120 credits constituting the diploma.

Overview

Each candidate will be required to research and write a 12,000 word dissertation on a subject and in an area approved by the Programme Co-ordinator.

Structure

There will be no teaching, but a supervisory meeting will be held at fortnightly intervals (allowing for holidays etc.) at a mutually convenient time.

Assessment

Dissertation