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The following modules are offered to UCL undergraduate students taking BA History of Art or the History of Art, Materials and Technology route, affiliates registered in the UCL History of Art department, students in the School of European Languages and Cultures (SELCS) who are taking a combined honours degree which includes History of Art in the title, and combined honours students taking BA Philosophy and History of Art.
Year 1 Thematic Seminars are only available to first year students taking the BA History of Art or affiliates in the History of Art Department.
Year 2 Period Modules, Year 2 Methods Modules, and Year 3 Special Subjects are normally available to History of Art students only (single and combined honours). Please remind yourself of your programme diet before making your module choices. Students should check the prerequisites under each module description to see whether they are eligible to take the module.
BASc Arts & Sciences (Cultures pathway) students may only take Year 2 modules if they have completed the first-year survey modules HART0006 and/or HART0005. Details of elective modules open to both UCL degree students and affiliate students who are registered outside the History of Art department are listed on the Art/Architecture in London page.
Year 1
- HART0001 History of Art and its Objects - The Core Course - 30 credits
Module tutor: Rosemary Moore (T1), New Lecturer (T2) + Postgraduate Teaching Assistants.
Timetabled: Autumn and Spring Terms: Lecture 14:00 – 15:30, Fridays AND BA1 discussion group either 09:00 – 10:30 or 15:30 – 17:00, Fridays
Module description: This is an obligatory introductory module for all History of Art students and is not normally available to students from outside the department. The module is an introduction to a range of skills required to study the History of Art, including the first-hand study of works of art. It is designed to familiarise students with some current debates in the subject, and introduce them to a variety of theoretical positions of which they need to be aware in the course of their degree.
Student Contact Hours: 40, in 20 weekly 1-hour lectures and 20 1.5-hour seminars.
Duration of Module: 20 weeks, beginning in first week of Autumn term.
Prerequisites: Students should normally be in the first year of a Single or Combined Honours degree in History of Art.
First Year Suggested ReadingWhile many of our incoming students have previously studied History of Art at A-level or have other Art School training, we recommend the following books in preparation for our BA programme, which stresses the importance of both historical research and critical thought.
The key component of the First Year curriculum is the Foundation Course and Core Course. The following is a suggested reading list:
1) Survey Course
A familiarity with the overall history of art is essential. Students should consult any number of 'survey' textbooks to gain this knowledge. There is no specific handbook for such a task and students should read broadly and voraciously in all areas.
Above all, students should familiarise themselves with the rich collections available to them in London libraries and collections.
2) Core Course
Students will also be introduced to the different critical approaches or 'methodologies' used in the discipline. For this we recommend the following as primers:
R. Nelson and R. Shiff (eds.), Critical Terms for Art History, 1996
D. Preziosi (ed.), The Art of Art History, 2009 [students should look for the revised 2nd edition]
Other books of general interest that have been suggested include:
E. Fernie (ed.), Art History and Its Methodologies, 1995
P. Smith and C. Wilde (eds.), A Companion to Art Theory, 2002
S. Edwards (ed.), Art and its Histories, New Haven and London 1999
F. Borzello and A. Rees (eds.), The New Art History, 1986
J. Harris, The New Art History: A Critical Introduction, 2001
N. Mirzoeff (ed.), The Visual Culture Reader, 1998
C. Harrison, P.J. Wood, and J. Geiger (eds.), Art in Theory: 1648-1815, 1815-1900, 1900-2000
S. Hall, Representation, 1997
M. Baxandall, Patterns of Intention, 1987
G. Pollock, Vision and Difference, 1987
J. Woolf, The Social Production of Art, 1981
N. Hadjinicolau, Art History and Class Struggle, 1973
A. Hauser, The Social History of Art, 4 vols., 1951 and re-editions
J. Berger, Ways of Seeing, 1972
Term 1
- HART0006 First-year History of Art Survey (1): Premodernity - c.1600 - 15 credits
Module Tutor: Rose Marie San Juan
Timetabled: Autumn Term: 09:00 - 11:00, Wednesdays
Module Description: The First-Year History of Art Survey comprises two obligatory modules (HART0006 and HART0005) for all History of Art students. In ten lectures each term, students are introduced to key monuments and central issues in the discipline of art history and are encouraged to consider them critically. The main issues that will emerge throughout the modules are: representation and the image’s relation to the world; art history’s relation to history and context; the role of viewer(s); questions of canon formation and methodology. The Survey covers a wide range of art, architecture and visual culture from ancient times to the present day.
Duration of Module: 10 weeks, beginning in the first week of autumn term
Student Contact Hours: Lectures and question time: 20 hours
Prerequisites: Students should normally be in the first year of a Single or Combined Honours degree in History of Art, or History of Art, Materials and TechnologyFirst Year Summer reading list - see HART0001 reading list above
- HART0004 Thematic Seminar (autumn) - 15 credits
Module Tutor: Students will select a thematic seminar at the start of term taught by an academic member of staff. Rota to be confirmed at the start of the academic year, depending on research leave and other variations in the timetable.
Timetabled Autumn Term: 11:00 – 14:00, Thursdays (seminar will run for two hours either 11:00 – 13:00 or 12:00 – 14:00, to be confirmed by tutor at start of term)
Module Description: This module is designed specifically for students on the first-year Single Honours History of Art, or the History of Art, Materials and Technology route. It comprises a number of historical and topical seminar options, which are designed to provide students with smaller group teaching and direct engagement with art objects in museums, galleries and historical sites. Students take one out of the several options on offer during the academic year. The module is taught as a mixture of informal lectures, seminars and/or gallery visits, accompanied by weekly reading projects and group discussion of key issues.
Duration of Module: 10 weeks, beginning in the first week of Autumn term.
Student Contact Hours: 20+
Prerequisites: Students should normally be in the first year of a Single-Honours degree in History of Art or History of Art, Materials and Technology.
- HART0003 Introduction to Art and Science - 15 credits
Module Tutor: Tea Ghigo
Timetabled: Autumn Term: 14:00 - 16:00, Tuesdays
Module Description: This is an introductory module that covers basic organic and inorganic chemistry in a lab-based environment for first year History of Art, Materials and Technology students. During the course you will learn the scientific foundations needed to understand the relationship between the materials used to make artworks and the physical properties of these materials. The module will cover topics such as the periodic table, bonding, solubility, and pH values. Problem-led lab work will allow you to consolidate your learning and to apply your analytical skills to the study of the materials of art.
Duration of Module: 10 weeks, beginning in the first week of autumn term
Student Contact Hours: 20+ hours in 10 weekly 2-hour classes, plus supervised optional practical sessions
Prerequisites: Normally only offered to 1st-year MAT students. No previous experience of chemistry is required to undertake this module
Indicative Weekly Topics and Suggested ReadingThis introductory module covers basic organic and inorganic chemistry in a lab-based environment for first-year History of Art students. During the course, you will learn the scientific foundations needed to understand the relationship between the materials artworks are made of, their physical properties, and what can emerge from how they interact. The module will cover topics such as the periodic table, bonding, solubility, and pH. Problem-led lab work will allow you to consolidate your learning and apply your analytical skills to the study of the materials of art.
Weekly Topics:
Week 1: Introduction to the course. Heritage, science and the atom.
Week 2: Periodic Table.
Week 3: Atomic structure and Bonding.
Week 4: Molecule, reactions and pH.
Week 5: Electromagnetic spectrum and colour theory.
Week 6: Why are some varnishes hard to remove? (in MAT Lab)
Week 7: How do you synthetise a red dye? (in MAT Lab)
Week 8: What is fluorescence? (in MAT Lab)
Week 9: How do you use XRF to identify pigments? (in MAT Lab)
Week 10: Exam.
Summer reading:
Roy S. Berns, Color Science and the Visual Arts: A Guide for Conservators, Curators, and the Curious, The Getty Conservation Institute, Los Angeles, 2016.
Philip Ball, Bright Earth: Art and the Invention of Colour, University of Chicago Press, 2004.
Term 2
- HART0005 First-year History of Art Survey (1): c.1600 to the Contemporary - 15 credits
Module Tutor: Ben Pollitt
First Year Suggested Reading - see HART0001 reading list above
Timetabled: Spring Term: 09:00 – 11:00, Wednesdays
Module Description: The First-Year History of Art Survey comprises two obligatory modules (HART0006 and HART0005) for all History of Art students. In ten lectures each term, students are introduced to key monuments and central issues in the discipline of art history and are encouraged to consider them critically. The main issues that will emerge throughout the modules are: representation and the image’s relation to the world; art history’s relation to history and context; the role of viewer(s); questions of canon formation and methodology. The Survey covers a wide range of art, architecture and visual culture from ancient times to the present day.
Duration of Module: 10 weeks, beginning in the first week of Spring term.
Student Contact Hours: Lectures with discussion: 20 hours.
Student Workload: Attendance at all lectures, reading in support of lectures, exam.
Prerequisites: Students should normally be in the first year of a Single or Combined Honours degree in History of Art, or History of Art, Materials and Technology.- HART0144 Thematic Seminar - 15 credits
Module Tutor: Students will select a thematic seminar at the start of term taught by an academic member of staff. Rota to be confirmed at the start of the academic year, depending on research leave and other variations in the timetable.
Timetabled: Spring Term: 11:00 - 14:00, Thursdays (seminar will run for two hours either 11:00 - 13:00 or 12:00 - 14:00, to be confirmed by tutor at start of term)
Module Description: This module is designed specifically for students on the first-year Single Honours History of Art, or History of Art, Materials and Technology programmes. It comprises a number of historical and topical seminar options, which are designed to provide students with smaller group teaching and direct engagement with art objects in museums, galleries and historical sites. Students take one out of the several options on offer during the academic year. The module is taught as a mixture of informal lectures, seminars and/or gallery visits, accompanied by weekly reading projects and group discussion of key issues.
Duration of Module: 10 weeks.
Prerequisites: Appropriate background in history or art history- HART0148 Introduction to Media and Technologies - 15 credits
Module Tutor: Jacob Paskins
Timetabled: Spring Term: 14-16:00, Mondays
Module Description: This course offers an overview of technologies used to create artworks and cultural objects, from early modernity to the present. These might include but will not be limited to print technologies, still and moving image - photography, video, televised media - and mechanical and electronic projection devices. From paints, prints, daguerreotypes and celluloid strips through electromagnetic signals to bit steams, you will be introduced to the materiality of communication. Challenging the traditional genealogies of media, we will explore the media’s material histories, affordances, and the limits of their use. This class provides a foundation for a profound understanding of the methods and materials used by the makers, at different times and in a multitude of locations, and under consideration of social and technological contexts.
Duration of Module: 10 weeks, beginning in the first week of spring term.
Student Contact Hours: 20+ hours
Prerequisites: Normally only offered to 1st-year MAT students. No previous experience is required to undertake this moduleIndicative Weekly Topics and Suggested Reading
Indicative Weekly Topics
Week 1 (12 January). Introduction to media and technologies
Week 2 (19 January). Early media technologies
Week 3 (26 January). Fine art technologies: print and reproduction (Study visit - see details below)
Week 4 (2 February). Snapshot: introduction to photography
Week 5 (9 February). Moving image: the evolution of filmREADING WEEK (12-16 February)
Week 6 (23 February). The window to the world: video and television
Week 7 (1 March). Interactive and electronic art
Week 8 (8 March). Student presentations
Week 9 (15 March). Net art
Week 10 (22 March). Obsolescence and changeSuggested Reading
No summer reading is needed.
Year 2
All modules are 15 credits taught in one term. Note that the modules are arranged with the autumn term options followed by the spring term options.
Term 1
- HART0035 Advanced Lecture in the History of Art: Making the Body from Late Medieval to Early Modern – 15 credits
Module tutor: Alison Wright
Timetabled: Autumn Term: 14:00 – 16:00, Mondays.
Module Description: This course focuses on conceptions of the body as they impact upon and are constructed by artistic making. We address how technologies of making, the senses, social and political practice and belief may be explored via materials and an expanded field of crafted works - from reliquaries to table ware, marble statuary to gilded effigies and dress (armour, vestments, courtly and serving bodies). By focussing on the period c. 1300-1550, European religious, social and technological continuities are put in play with radical developments such as the emergence of a notion of the ideal ‘nude’, and new kinds of self-fashioning that also depend on an encounter with difference.
Duration of Module: 10 weeks, beginning in the first week of Autumn term.
Student Contact Hours: 20+ hours.
Prerequisites: Students should have completed a first-year History of Art programme or have equivalent relevant experience.- HART0032 Methodologies of Art History - 15 credits
Module tutors: Amanda Ju and Ben Pollitt
Timetabled: Autumn Term: Lecture – 10:00 – 11:00, Seminar 12:00 – 13:00, Tuesdays.
Module Description: This text-based module introduces students to the diverse ways in which art historians engage with and write about visual art and culture. Students will be asked to analyse a range of art historical methods as well as varied approaches to critical writing, with the goals of becoming familiar with recent methodologies that pertain to the visual image and developing ways of bringing critical issues to their research and written work. Topics addressed normally include: formalism, iconography and iconology, the social history of art, psychoanalytic approaches, semiotics, poststructuralism, issues of gender, sexuality and race, postcolonialism.
Duration of Module: 10 weeks, beginning in the first week of Autumn term.
Student Contact Hours: 20 hours, a mixture of lectures and text-based discussion classes.
Prerequisites: Normally only offered to 2nd-year History of Art students. Other closely similar experience might be acceptable.
Indicative Weekly Topics and Suggested Reading TBC- HART0054 Theory and History of Conservation – 15 credits
Module Tutor: Helia Marcal
Timetabled: Autumn Term: 14:00 – 16:00, Thursdays
Module Description: When thinking about artworks and artefacts, conservation provides an extensively rich area of study of their modes of conception, creation, dissemination, display and perpetuation. This is due to the premise that in order to engage with an artwork, conservation first and foremost seeks to understand what the work is and how it functions within and beyond its historic moment. Outsiders often refer to conservation as a homogenous field of activity that aims at prolonging the cultural objects’ lives into the future. But there are, in fact, different conservations that operate with respect to diverse theories, types of artefacts, institutional settings, historic contexts, and the cultures that produce them. During this module, we will sketch a picture of conservation that always exists between a set of dichotomies of hands and minds, practice and theory, the tangible and the intangible, and the traditional and the new. By putting today’s conservation into an historical perspective, we will examine how more recent conservation became of necessity a reflective, critical practice. Whenever possible, visits to museums and sites of conservation will enrich classroom discussions.
Duration of Module: 10 weeks, beginning in the first week of Autumn term.
Student Contact Hours: 20+ hours.
Prerequisites: Students should have completed a first-year History of Art programme or have equivalent relevant experience. This module is a requirement for MAT students but History of Art students may also choose it as one of their ‘period’ options.Indicative Weekly Topics and Suggested Reading
Indicative Weekly Topics
Week 1: What is conservation? An introduction to the discipline
Week 2: Foundations I: History and Theory of Conservation – Objecthood and Principles
Week 3: Foundations II: History and Theory of Conservation – Ethics, Values and Authenticity
Week 4: Visit to conservation studio
Week 5: Foundations III: Contemporary Theories of Conservation
Week 6: Visit to conservation studio
Week 7: Intention and Authority
Week 8: Students’ presentations
Week 9: Public Art at UCL
Week 10: Experimental Conservation and Course ConclusionsSuggested Reading
Clavir, Miriam. Preserving What is Valued: Museums, Conservation and First Nations. Vancouver and Toronto: UBC Press, 2002.
Eggert, Paul. Securing the Past: Conservation in Art, Architecture and Literature. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009.
Hermens, Erma and Tina Fiske, eds. Art, Conservation and Authenticities: Material, Concept, Context. London: Archetype Publications, 2009.
Lowenthal, David. The Past is a Foreign Country. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003
Muñoz Viñas, Salvador. Contemporary Theory of Conservation. Oxford: Elsevier Butterworth-Heinemann, 2005.
- HART0175 Empires of Africa – 15 credits
Module Tutor: Jacopo Gnisci
Timetabled: Autumn Term: 14:00 – 16:00, Fridays.
Module Description: Africa is the cradle of humankind but also the cradle of art making. Archaeologists have discovered perforated shells in caves in South Africa and Morocco that date back at least 76,000 years ago and represent the oldest datable human body decorations. This module introduces students to the arts of pre-modern Africa though a series of case studies. We will focus on the rich material culture and extensive trade networks of several prominent African civilizations, starting with Ancient Egypt and ending with the Kilwa sultanate on the Swahili Coast, to counter negative images of the continent. The module serves as a foundation for those who wish to study African art and architecture further or to engage with global art histories. By the end of this module, students will be familiar with some key methods and issues of the field and will have gained knowledge of the artistic heritage and history of some of the most prominent African states before AD 1500.
Duration of Module: 10 weeks, beginning in the first week of Autumn term.
Student Contact Hours: 20+ hours.
Prerequisites: Students should have completed a first-year History of Art programme or have equivalent relevant experience.
Indicative Weekly Topics and Suggested Reading List TBC- HART0082 Short Undergraduate Course in History of Art – 15 credits
Module Tutor: New Lecturer
Timetabled: Autumn Term: 11:00 – 13:00, Fridays.
Module Description: This second-year period module will be taught by a new lecturer, who is being recruited in Spring 2025, specialising in British art and material culture in its global and colonial contexts, c. 1650-1900. A full module description will be published once the appointment has been made, and may cover issues such as migration, mobility and diasporas; imperial and colonial histories and legacies; cross-cultural and cross-regional interactions; materiality and making.
Duration of Module: 10 weeks, beginning in the first week of Autumn term.
Student Contact Hours: 20+ hours.
Prerequisites: Students should have completed a first-year History of Art programme or have equivalent relevant experience.Indicative Weekly Topics and Suggested Reading - TBC
- HART0074 Questions of Feminism in Modern and Contemporary Art – 15 credits
Module Tutor: Mignon Nixon
Timetabled: Autumn Term: 11:00 – 13:00, Wednesdays.
Module Description: Feminism of the 1960s and 1970s galvanized profound changes in art and art history. Those changes form the focus of this module. We learn about art informed by feminism and about feminist perspectives on art. Considering influential texts in the fields of art history, cinema studies, psychoanalysis, politics, and gender studies, among others, we examine the pivotal role of art in stimulating and shaping feminist thought. We also consider how feminism challenged the intellectual and institutional traditions of art and art history. Finally, we reflect upon the historical, methodological, and political ramifications of these debates over time.
Duration of Module: 10 weeks, beginning in the first week of Autumn term.
Student Contact Hours: 20+ hours.
Prerequisites: Students should have completed a first-year History of Art programme or have equivalent relevant experience.
Indicative Weekly Topics and Suggested Reading TBC
- HART0160 Action Re-Action – 15 credits
Module Tutor: Cadence Kinsey
Timetabled: Autumn Term: 11:00 – 13:00, Thursdays
Module Description: In this module we will explore the histories of live art in Europe, the U.S. and beyond, from the turn of the twentieth century to contemporary practice, and with a strong emphasis on technologically mediated performance. Structured around the notions of the ‘emancipated spectator’ and the ‘event’, we will consider works of art that sit at the boundary of art and non-art in order to challenge traditional structures of making, exhibiting and looking at art. Through close study of a range of artistic movements including Fluxus, Situationist International, Relational Aesthetics, and Re-Enactment, we will explore some of the major debates within histories of performance and live art, and think about key concepts such as the body, the spectator, participation, and ephemerality.
Duration of Module: 10 weeks, beginning in the first week of Autumn term.
Student Contact Hours: 20+ hours.
Prerequisites: Students should have completed a first-year History of Art programme or have equivalent relevant experience.Indicative Weekly Topics and Suggested Reading TBC
Term 2
- Taste and Perception
- The Sublime
- Art and Ideology: Marxism and Cultural History
- The Frankfurt School: Benjamin and Adorno
- Suggested Reading:
- Shiner, Larry, The Invention of Art: A Cultural History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001).
Guichard, Charlotte, ‘Taste communities. The rise of the amateur in eighteenth-century Paris’, Eighteenth century studies, 45, No. 4 (2012), 519-547.
- HART0036 Advanced Lecture in the History of Art: Advanced Lecture in the History of Art: Art and Mass Culture in Contemporary East Asia – 15 credits
Module tutor: Amanda Ju
Timetabled: Spring Term: 14:00 – 16:00, Mondays.
Module Description: This lecture examines art and mass culture in contemporary East Asia. Delving into an extensive historical context, it aims to account for the intricate legacies of colonialism, socialism, and neoliberalism that influence the rich cultural practices within this region. We will explore developments in architecture, photography, painting, film, and performance across East Asia from the mid-19th century to the present. In addition to examining specific objects and movements, we will study critical discourses on heritage, influence, historical transition, theories of subjectivity and affect (in relation to gender, sexuality, and race), as well as discussions of migration and diaspora. These theorizing tools will help us contextualize a diverse set of media practices including, colonial representations of East Asia in photography and world expositions, the “high” and “low” forms of socialist mass art, performance and painting in post-war Japan, as well as collaboration and trans-medial practice in Beijing’s East Village. Other topics include temporality, dislocation, and state terror in Taiwan New Cinema, labour, intimacy, and queer diaspora in Hong Kong film, as well as representations of race in Singaporean artist Ming Wong’s work. Even though class sessions are thematically and chronologically organized, artworks produced closer to our time will be examined alongside historical developments.
Duration of Module: 10 weeks
Student Contact Hours: 20+ hours.
Student Workload: Prescribed and back-up reading, one essay, and exam.
Prerequisites: Students should have completed a first-year Art History programme or have equivalent relevant experience.Indicative Weekly Topics and Suggested Reading
Indicative Weekly Topics
The “Forms” of Empire: Colonial Representations of East Asia
Icons of Femininity: Making Japanese National Painting
What is the “Avant-Garde” in the Chinese Context?
Socialist Realism
Taiwan New Cinema
Labour, Kinship, and Queer Diaspora in Hong Kong Film
Information Fantasies: Transmission and CorporealitySuggested Reading
Namiko Kuminoto, The Stakes of Exposure: Anxious Bodies in Postwar Japanese Art (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2017).
Christine I. Ho, Drawing From Life: Sketching and Socialist Realism in the People’s Republic of China (Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 2020).
Joan Kee, The Geometries of Afro Asia: Art Beyond Solidarity (Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 2023).- HART0031 History of the Category ‘Art’ – 15 credits
Module tutor: Jenny Nachtigall & Briony Fer
Timetabled: Spring Term: Lecture 09:00 – 10:00, Seminar 11:00 – 12:00, Tuesdays.
This module aims to familiarise students with the ways in which the concept of art has evolved in Europe. It examines the emergence of Aesthetics as a distinct branch of philosophy in eighteenth-century in Britain, France and Germany, and will consider subsequent nineteenth-century developments especially in relation to the role of the category Art in Modernism, and the ways in which it has informed more recent philosophies and histories of art. It is based on the study of texts in Seminars.
Duration of module: 10 weeks, beginning in the first week of Spring term.
Student Contact Hours: 20 hours, a mixture of lectures and text-based discussion classes.
Prerequisites: Normally only offered to 2nd-year History of Art students. Other closely similar experience might be acceptable.Indicative Weekly Topics and Suggested Reading
Indicative Weekly Topics
Taste and Perception
The Sublime
Art and Ideology: Marxism and Cultural History
The Frankfurt School: Benjamin and Adorno
Suggested Reading:
Shiner, Larry, The Invention of Art: A Cultural History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001).
Guichard, Charlotte, ‘Taste communities. The rise of the amateur in eighteenth-century Paris’, Eighteenth century studies, 45, No. 4 (2012), 519-547.
- HART0034 Methodologies of Making – 15 credits
Module tutor: Helia Marcal
Timetabled: Spring Term: 14:00 – 16:00, Thursdays.
Module Description: This module focuses on the experimental system of art making, remaking, collecting, mediating, and conserving. It encompasses readings and discussions centred around theories related to the materiality and the immaterial, makers and their tools, the workings of institutions and collections, alongside the notions of time and archive. For the most part, classes will begin with a lecture followed by a discussion. In the first part of the class, students will be introduced to theories of making exemplified by artworks and artefacts related to one of the main topics of the module. In the second part of the class, students might be asked to bring and discuss an example of an artwork or an artefact, to develop a statement drawing on the readings, or to engage in structured debates on the topic of the class. How is theory performed? How is it entangled with practice? How can we theorise practice or develop a practical aesthetics?
Duration of Module: 10 weeks, beginning in the first week of Spring term.
Student Contact Hours: 20+ hours in 10 weekly 2-hour classes.
Prerequisites: Normally offered to 2nd-year History of Art students, but also relevant for other disciplines that engage in theoretical discourses on forms of making.Indicative Weekly Topics and Suggested Reading
Indicative Weekly Topics
Week 1: Introduction to theories on materiality
Week 2: Artwork
Week 3: Artist
Week 4: Collaboration
Week 5: Decolonising methodologies
Week 6: Technique
Week 7: Conservation, Preservation, Restoration
Week 8: Remaking
Week 9: Archive
Week 10: Institution
Suggested Reading
Bennett, Jill. Practical Aesthetics. Events, Affects and Art After 9/11 - Radical Aesthetics, Radical Art. London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2012.
Ingold, Tim. “Materials against Materiality.” Archaeological Dialogues, Vol. 14/01 (June 2007): 1-16.
Goodman, Nelson. Languages of Art: An Approach to a Theory of Symbols. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Co, 1976.
Barker, Emma, ed. Contemporary Cultures of Display. New Heaven: Yale University Press, 1997, 105-126.
Smith, Linda Tuhiwai. Decolonizing Methodologies: research and indigenous people. London: Zed Books, 1999. Read Chapters 1 and 2.
Kubler, George. The Shape of Time: Remarks on the History of Things. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2008 (1962).
- HART0162 Imagining Jerusalem in the Middle Ages – 15 credits
Module tutor: Bob Mills
Timetabled: Spring Term: 11:00 – 13:00, Thursdays.
Module Description: This module will explore the diverse artistic and religious cultures that enriched and enlivened medieval Jerusalem, with a particular emphasis on works created or recreated between the eleventh and fourteenth centuries. As well as investigating key sites in Jerusalem itself, including the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and the Haram al-Sharif/Temple Mount complex, students will explore the ways in which Jerusalem was understood and imagined beyond its physical borders, through such phenomena as mappae mundi, relics, architectural replicas and apocalyptic imagery. Taking a geographically decentred approach to the study of medieval art, the module will introduce students to the aesthetic and intellectual networks running between Europe, the Mediterranean and the Middle East. It will open a window onto relations between different religious and ethnic groups in the region. Finally, it will reflect on the modern legacies of medieval efforts to represent Jerusalem.
Duration of module: 10 weeks, beginning in the first week of Spring term.
Student Contact Hours: 20 hours, a mixture of lectures and text-based discussion classes.
Prerequisites: Students should have completed a first-year History of Art programme or have equivalent relevant experienceIndicative Weekly Topics and Suggested Reading TBC
- HART0073 Histories of Photography – 15 credits
Module Tutor: New Associate Lecturer (Teaching)
Timetabled: Spring Term: 11:00 – 13:00, Wednesdays.
Module Description: This module surveys the history of photography from its invention in the 1830s to its postmodern iterations in the 1970s. More specifically, it considers several key episodes in photography’s history through discussions of the contentious and public debates about the ways in which photography has been historicized. Is photography an art? Is it—was it—a threat to art? Is photography something closer to a tool or technology? Is it media? Throughout the module we will consider the myriad ways in which these questions have been posed and pondered by poets, critics, scientists, photographers and art historians.
Student Contact Hours: 20+ hours.
Prerequisites: Students should have completed a first-year History of Art programme or have equivalent relevant experience.Indicative Weekly Topics and Suggested Reading TBC
- HART0202 Scientific Analysis of Artists’ Materials – 15 credits (MAT priority)
Module tutor: Tea Ghigo
Timetabled: Spring Term: 11:00 – 13:00, Fridays.
Module Description: Most cultural institutions around the world are now equipped with scientific laboratories whose technology is constantly evolving, as is their role within the institution. This module centres around the analytical techniques most employed to analyse museum collections, with particular emphasis on paintings, illuminated manuscripts and other works of art on paper. After learning the chemistry behind painting and writing supports, pigments and dyes, students will become familiar with the most common invasive and non-invasive techniques to characterise them. How do x-ray or electron-based techniques work? What information can each technique provide, and how can this be contextualised historically? Furthermore, how can different techniques complement each other in addressing historical questions? Likewise, the course will address broader ethical and methodological questions involved in the material analysis of museum collections: how should an analytical method be chosen? What purposes can scientific analyses have beyond conservation and attribution?
Duration of module: 10 weeks, beginning in the first week of Spring term.
Student Contact Hours: 20 hours, a mixture of lectures and text-based discussion classes.
Prerequisites: Normally, this course is for MAT students who have completed HART0003 Introduction to Art and Science. HoA students who have equivalent relevant experience may request to attend subject to availability.Indicative Weekly Topics and Suggested Reading TBC
- HART0180 Rome: Urban Space and Early Modern Visual Culture – 15 credits
Module tutor: Rose Marie San Juan
Timetabled: Spring Term: 14:00 – 16:00, Tuesdays.
Module Description: Visual culture in many diverse forms was crucial to the modernization of the city of Rome in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The module will focus on new forms of painting, sculpture, printing, architecture, urban planning, and street performances and rituals through which a new kind of city and urban life was forged. It will take into account the existing city, with its charged historical legacies that physically marked the city and was constantly re-appropriated or suppressed. We will consider attempts to centralize political and cultural authority but also to open up visual forms to exchanges within increasingly wider and contested communities. The emergence of papal power with its grandiose architectural and fresco decoration will be considered but also shown to be in conflict not only with civic and private uses of visual arts but also with the larger forces of the new technology of printing, the emergence of the art market and the formation of public pace. The module will work between the visual image and urban space, and will be attentive to the ways our thinking of the past is itself constructed through these contested visual histories.
Duration of module: 10 weeks, beginning in the first week of Spring term.
Student Contact Hours: 20 hours, a mixture of lectures and text-based discussion classes.
Prerequisites: Students should have completed a first-year History of Art programme or have equivalent relevant experienceIndicative Weekly Topics and Suggested Reading TBC
Year 3
The essay options are set out first. All Special Subject modules are of 30 credits and are taught over both terms.
Final Year Essay Options
- HART0118 BA Dissertation in History of Art - 30 credits
Module tutor: All Staff
A 10,000 word essay dissertation to be handed in at the beginning of Term 3. Students define a research project with the help and approval of the Department and receive guidance while undertaking the research and writing the dissertation.- HART0119 Independent Study Essay in History of Art - 15 credits
Module tutor: All Staff
A 4500-5,000 word essay to be handed in normally at the beginning of Term 2. This 15-credit module is designed to enable students to present an essay for assessment in connection with their own private studies. Students define the topic with the help of a member of staff in the Department and receive guidance while undertaking the research and writing the essay.- HART0120 BA Dissertation in History of Art, Materials and Technology Project Paper - 30 credits
Module tutor: All Staff
A 10,000 word dissertation to be handed in at the beginning of the Summer term. Students define a History of Art, Materials and Technology research project with the help and approval of the Department and receive guidance while undertaking the research and writing the essay.- HART0108 (MAT only) Art/Work/Space - 15 credits
Module tutor: Tea Ghigo
This is a work placement module that entails work experience in a museum, heritage institution, collection, gallery, conservation studio or in the art trade. Students will produce a written portfolio to showcase their work and reflect on the experience of their placement. This module is available only to History of Art students on the MAT route.
Duration of Module: 10 + weeks in autumn term
Student Contact Hours: 20+ hours
Student Workload: Students carry out a work placement and write regular short texts related to their placement to form a portfolio
Means of Assessment: Portfolio (up to 3000 words)
Prerequisites: Completion of 2nd-year MAT module
Final Year Special Subject Modules
Architecture as Mass Media
Architectural Manifestoes I
Architectural Manifestoes II
The Architecture Book
Modernist Histories of Architecture
Exhibiting Architecture I
Exhibiting Architecture II
Architectural Magazines I
Architectural Magazines II
Architectural Photography I
Architectural Photography II
Architecture on the Radio
Architectural Guidebooks Architecture and Cities on Film I
Architecture and Cities on Film II
Architecture and Cities on Film III
Architecture on Television Comics
Architecture Digital Architectural Media
Suggested Reading
Colomina, Beatriz. Privacy and Publicity: Modern Architecture as Mass Media. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1994. Forty, Adrian. Words and Buildings: A Vocabulary of Modern Architecture. London: Thames and Hudson, 2000.
Zimmerman, Claire. Photographic Architecture in the Twentieth Century. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2014. Bruno, Giuliana. Atlas of Emotion: Journeys in Art, Architecture, and Film. New York: Verso, 2002.
- HART0196 On Property: Photography, Land and Labour in America - 30 credits
Module Tutor: Stephanie Schwartz
Timetabled: Autumn and Spring Terms: 14:00 – 16:00, Thursdays.
Module Description: This module takes as its subject the concept of property. More specifically, it seeks to examine how property became a critical framework through which to account for the emergence of the modern liberal subject as someone who owns their land and labour. Our focus will be on the role photography played and continues to play in this process as well as the process by which someone or something (land, labour, housing, etc.) comes to be owned. We will also consider photography as a form of property, attending to foundational debates about reparation and authorship.
The course is organised chronologically, offering a survey of key photographic practices through which the ownership of land and labour were fought over and reinvented. However, it will eschew a concern with the development of photography as a medium or an artistic practice for a more synchronic account of the social spaces through which that which is counted as property was—and still is—contested, including the battlefield, the prison, the factory, and the home. Course readings will mix histories of photography with geography and political economy in order to ask students to consider the multiple technologies making these spaces public and private. Likewise, it will consider how subjects are made to belong—or not—to a public, be it a nation or a neighbourhood, or even a class. Accordingly, weekly readings will also contend with critical studies of race, gender, and class as they frame current studies of photography and property. Influential films will also serve as points or sites of critical intervention, allowing students to take stock of the wider visual landscape through which the subject as property or as an owner of property was invented.
Duration of Module: 20 weeks.
Student Contact Hours: 40+ hours
Prerequisites: Completion of 2nd-year History of Art module or equivalent relevant experience.Indicative Weekly Topics and Suggested Reading TBC
- HART0165 South African Photography: From Colonialism to the Contemporary – 30 credits
Module Tutor: Tamar Garb
Timetabled: Autumn and spring Terms: 11:00 – 13:00, Thursdays.
Module Description: Photography has been practiced in Southern Africa since the middle of the nineteenth century and was widely used to survey populations, classify peoples and organise knowledge. Hierarchical assumptions about race, gender and sexuality inform the way photographic figuration developed from early on. We will explore how the residue of the slave trade, Imperial plunder and Enlightenment ‘science’ produced a dehumanizing photographic iconography of the ‘African’. But alongside the classificatory and coercive, new forms of picturing emerged, from honorific portraits to family records, studio performances to parodies, providing sites through which multiple subjectivities and alternative African-based modernities were imagined. The colonial archive constitutes a resource for contemporary South African artists. Crucial too is the centrality of documentary photography and a particular version of this realist project emerged in the middle of the twentieth century that was harnessed to the anti-apartheid struggle. Documents of social life and resistance to the apartheid-era racial order emerged. After the advent of democracy in 1994, photographers and artists looked to reinvent the medium by mobilising photographic history at the same time as exploring its capacity to invent new subjectivities and identities. Contemporary South African lens-based practices (analogue, digital, video, animation) navigate this complex photographic archive from typological imagery to the family album, from photojournalism to the snap-shot. The course will look at the critical debates and historical developments that this rich trajectory reveals, focussing on the way that human figures are mediated and framed through technology, genre and medium within the specific context of modern South Africa.
Duration of Module: 20 weeks.
Student Contact Hours: 40+ hours
Prerequisites: Completion of 2nd-year History of Art module or equivalent relevant experience.Indicative Weekly Topics and Suggested Reading TBC
- HART0215 Reimagining Museum Narratives: Storytelling through Materials and Making – 30 credits (MAT priority)
Module Tutor: Tea Ghigo
Timetabled: Autumn Term: 14.00 – 16:00, Fridays and Spring Term: 14:00 – 16:00, Tuesdays.
Module Description: This module provides students with the tools and methodologies to critically engage with museum objects through the lens of material analysis, encouraging them to reimagine museum narratives by more prominently integrating material aspects into object interpretation. In other words, it highlights materiality as an essential component of museum interpretation and trains students to use material analysis—whether through visual examination or scientific techniques—to gain deeper insights into the social and cultural contexts that produced specific objects. The module is divided into three key units. In the first unit, students critically assess existing museum narratives, exploring how they present objects to the public. The second unit trains students in conducting detailed visual examinations to reconstruct the material biographies of artefacts. Finally, the third unit introduces students to a variety of scientific techniques applied to heritage objects through live demonstrations in the Material Studies Lab and museum laboratories across London.
Duration of Module: 20 weeks.
Student Contact Hours: 40+ hours
Prerequisites: Completion of 2nd-year History of Art module or equivalent relevant experience.Indicative Weekly Topics and Suggested Reading TBC
- HART0078 Advanced Undergraduate Course in the History of Art – 30 credits
Module Tutor: New Lecturer
Timetabled: Autumn and Spring Terms: 14:00 – 16:00, Mondays.
Module Description: This final-year special subject will be taught by a new lecturer, who is being recruited in Spring 2025, specialising in British art and material culture in its global and colonial contexts, c. 1650-1900. A full module description will be published once the appointment has been made, and may cover issues such as migration, mobility and diasporas; imperial and colonial histories and legacies; cross-cultural and cross-regional interactions; materiality and making.
Duration of Module: 20 weeks.
Student Contact Hours: 40+ hours
Prerequisites: Completion of 2nd-year History of Art module or equivalent relevant experience.Indicative Weekly Topics and Suggested Reading TBC
- HART0207 Cut/Switch/Swipe: Technologies in Modern & Contemporary Art - 30 credits
Module Tutor: Cadence Kinsey
Timetabled: Autumn and Spring Terms: 11:00 – 13:00, Wednesdays.
Module Description: In this module we look at the history of technology in modern and contemporary art, beginning with the development of photography, moving through film and video, to the emergence of digital media and internet art. We will consider core issues related to technology in art including: theories of production and re-production and the pressure this puts on the category ‘art’; artist film and haptic vision; the rise of the amateur and home-video in the 1970s; the intersections between performance and technology; questions of visual epistemology (the ‘real’ and the ‘virtual’); the crossover between art and medicine in the 1990s; formations of the ‘post-human’; and ‘post-internet’ art and the self-image. Throughout the module there will be a strong thematic focus on ‘the Body’ and, following from pioneering scholarship within feminist science & technology studies, we will be working from the assumption that technology and subjectivity are always involved in processes of mutual co-constitution. As such, our discussions will attend to the ways in vectors of identification, such as race, class, and gender, have informed both artistic engagements with technology and theoretical interpretations of them.
Duration of Module: 20 weeks.
Student Contact Hours: 40+ hours
Prerequisites: Completion of 2nd-year History of Art module or equivalent relevant experience.Indicative Weekly Topics and Suggested Reading TBC
- HART0199 Sex and Gender in Medieval Art – 30 credits
Module Tutor: Bob Mills
Timetabled: Autumn and Spring Terms: 16:00 – 18:00, Mondays.
Module Description: This module focuses on three interrelated categories—gender, sex and selfhood—as they pertain to the art and architecture of the Middle Ages in Europe and the Mediterranean world. Students will consider how ideas of sex and gender shape the production and reception of medieval art; explore the ways in which particular genres (e.g. self-portraiture), spaces (e.g. monastic architecture) and media (e.g. textiles) construct ideas of identity and selfhood; and seek to understand the interrelationship between artistic production and religious or courtly conceptions of desire and subjectivity. We will focus on images of women and femininity, works of art commissioned by or made for women, and women as artists. Crucially this material will be placed alongside artworks made by, for or about men, as well as imagery that cuts across binary categories of identity and desire. Students will develop a firm grounding in feminist art criticism, as well as having opportunities to evaluate the applicability of other relevant approaches such as those developed in queer and transgender studies, film studies, literary theory and critical race theory. These contemporary critical approaches to sex, gender and selfhood will enhance the exploration of specific works, makers and patrons in the period c.1000–1500, as well as introducing concepts and methodologies applicable to other areas of art history.
Duration of Module: 20 weeks.
Student Contact Hours: 40+ hours
Prerequisites: Completion of 2nd-year History of Art module or equivalent relevant experience.Indicative Weekly Topics and Suggested Reading TBC
- HART0106 Architecture and the Modern City – 30 credits
Module Tutor: Jacob Paskins
Timetabled: Autumn and Spring Terms: 11:00 – 13:00, Tuesdays.
Module Description: Architecture is inhabitable, multi-dimensional space. But film, photography, drawings and texts provide much of our understanding of architecture and the modern city. This module asks what different forms of architectural dissemination can tell us about the design and meaning of buildings and urban space. How does cinema, television and radio represent architecture to a mass public? How has architecture become a touchstone in the art of comics? How do written texts including guidebooks and magazines communicate architectural knowledge to diverse audiences? How do manifestos and the architecture book transmit new ideas about architectural design? Asking these questions, we will explore how historians have used these different modes of architectural representation to write the history of architecture in the twentieth century. Finally, we will consider how these varied artefacts continue to inspire architecture and urban design.
Duration of Module: 20 weeks
Student Contact Hours: 40+ hours
Prerequisites: Completion of 2nd-year History of Art module or equivalent relevant experience.Indicative Weekly Topics and Suggested Reading
Architecture as Mass Media
Architectural Manifestoes I
Architectural Manifestoes II
The Architecture Book
Modernist Histories of Architecture
Exhibiting Architecture I
Exhibiting Architecture II
Architectural Magazines I
Architectural Magazines II
Architectural Photography I
Architectural Photography II
Architecture on the Radio
Architectural Guidebooks
Architecture and Cities on Film I
Architecture and Cities on Film II
Architecture and Cities on Film III
Architecture on Television
Comics and Architecture
Digital Architectural MediaSuggested Reading
Colomina, Beatriz. Privacy and Publicity: Modern Architecture as Mass Media. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1994. Forty, Adrian. Words and Buildings: A Vocabulary of Modern Architecture. London: Thames and Hudson, 2000.
Zimmerman, Claire. Photographic Architecture in the Twentieth Century. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2014. Bruno, Giuliana. Atlas of Emotion: Journeys in Art, Architecture, and Film. New York: Verso, 2002.
- HART0205 Colonial/Modern: Indigenous Art Past and Present – 30 credits
Module Tutor: Ben Pollitt
Timetabled: Autumn and spring Terms: 11:00 – 13:00, Mondays.
Module Description: Beginning from decolonial theorist Anibal Quijano’s contention that modernity and coloniality are inextricably linked, this course considers the way the category of Indigenous art and Indigenous artists have been shaped by colonial systems of power. Beginning in 1492 and the arrival of Europeans to what would come to be understood as America, we will explore how Indigenous peoples reacted to and resisted colonial authority and how European ideologies have inflected historical understandings of Indigenous artistic production. We will then proceed to consider such topics as Enlightenment theories of race, nineteenth-century colonial and independence movements, and modern and contemporary Indigenous artists’ reclaiming and reframing of past narratives. Other themes this course might address include tourism, pop culture, activism, and the digital, with room for flexibility in response to current events and student interests.
Duration of Module: 20 weeks
Student Contact Hours: 40+ hours
Prerequisites: Completion of 2nd-year History of Art module or equivalent relevant experienceIndicative Weekly Topics
Week 1: Before Columbus: Indigenous Art before Europeans
Week 2: Resistance and Survival in the Colonial Americas
Week 3: Representing the Other: European Imaginaries
Week 4: Mutual Misunderstanding: Indigenous Representations of Europeans
Week 5: Theorizing Hybridity and Loss
Week 6: The Anthropological Eye: Nineteenth-Century Explorers and Race Science
Week 7: Collecting the “Pre-Columbian”: the Idea of the “Indian” in European and U.S. Museums
Week 8: Photographing the Nation: Martín Chambí and Indigenous Peru
Week 9: Indigenismo and Peruvian Modernism
Week 10: Indigenous Andean Artists Today: Reclaiming Folk Art, Challenging Modernist Aesthetics
Week 11: Nationalism and Indigeneity: Mexico’s National Museums and National Institute of Culture
Week 12: Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera, and Indigenous Mexico
Week 13: Aztecs and the Maya at the Movies: Apocalypto, Indiana Jones, and Black Panther
Week 14: Cannibalism Part 1: The Colonial Period
Week 15: Cannibalism Part 2: Brazilian Film
Week 16: Cannibalism Part 3: Brazilian Modernism and Contemporary Artists
Week 17: Playing Indian: U.S. Nationalism and Whiteness
Week 18: Land Sovereignty and Protest
Week 19: Repatriation, Museums, and Memory
Week 20: Global Indigeneity
- HART0211 What is Asian Feminist Art? - 30 credits
Module Tutor: Amanda Ju
Timetabled: Autumn and Spring Terms: 11:00 – 13:00, Fridays.
Module Description: This course examines the changing subjects of feminisms and the changing forms of feminist art that are shaped by the geopolitical imaginaries of Asia and the West in the 20th and 21st century. We will look at strategies of feminist critique based on mimicry, masquerade, opacity, and code-switching, and examine them in relation to the specific histories of colonialism, socialism and neoliberalism in East and Southeast Asia. We will also consider the political subject of “Asia America” and the enfiguring of the “Asian/American Woman.” Readings of this course excavate feminist knowledge and cultivate a sensitivity to difference articulated across continents, through corporealized and spectral bodies, within and beyond the histories of socialism and capitalism. The artworks we look at turn to strategies of the avant-garde and socialist visual culture to imagine new modalities of survival, resistance, and to cultivate more ethical ways of living.
Duration of Module: 20 weeks
Student Contact Hours: 40+ hours
Prerequisites: Completion of 2nd-year History of Art module or equivalent relevant experience