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First year programme - Flexible Combined Honours

Chanel handbagLearn how to interpret visual culture in our world of:

  • societies, present and past
  • gender and art
  • the body
  • ethnicity
  • religion and belief
  • and many more ...

Study it through:

  • art history
  • anthropology
  • cinema
  • media - new and traditional
  • performance
  • archaeology
  • literature
  • history
  • language studies
  • business
  • and many more ...

Your studies can also include contemporary visual media such as installation, video art, digital media and virtual and mixed reality.

Visual cultureDuring your first year, you develop your understanding of the ways in which painting, sculpture and architecture can be analysed in relation to their cultural and historical context.

Your first year also develops your analytical skills for use in subsequent years to analyse visual works and develop your understanding of visual culture and its implications for understanding cultural activity more broadly.

During your second and third years you follow your interests through a wide range of optional modules, e.g.:

  • art and material culture in ancient societies
  • art historical themes and periods
  • arts management
  • curatorial practice and museum culture

Two compulsory Visual Culture modules are taken during the first year:

  • Introducing Visual Cultures - VCU1001 (30 credits)
    • Elements of visual literacy from antiquity to the present. The module is structured around themes or topics which may include the body, the archive, gender and art, ethnicity, religion and belief, exhibition and museum culture.
  • Contemporary Visual Practices - VCU1002 (30 credits)
    • Current issues in visual culture and the links between past and contemporary works, and critical perspectives. Aspects of heritage culture, museum and gallery practices, site specific and site sympathetic art, and digital cultures. Critical tools to analyse current issues in visual culture and interrogate them by looking at their historical development.

to make a total of 60 credits in this half of the overall Flexible Combined Honours degree programme.

Alex Crowe-Evans - FCH student, graduates 2012.More than 60 credits of Visual Culture can be taken each year if sufficient relevant modules are available, so that this could become the main element of your degree title. The additional Visual Culture-related level 1 modules are chosen from those available within any subject area of the University, e.g.:

  • Introduction to Social Anthropology Part 1 - ANT1001 (15 credits)
  • Introduction to Social Anthropology Part 2 - ANT1002 (15 credits)
  • Imagining Social Worlds: Part 1 - SOC1032 (15 credits)
  • Discovering Prehistory - ARC1002a (15 credits)
  • Artefacts 1 - ARC1004a (15 credits)
  • Geographies of Place, Identity and Culture - GEO1105 (15 credits)
  • History and Society in the Middle East - ARA1009 (15 credits)

Visual Culture - main subject web pages.