ARTS4001: Creative Attention
- Terms Taught: Michaelmas
- US Credits: 5
- ECTS Credits: 10
- Pre-requisites: Must have studied art practice at A level equivalent, and submit a portfolio of 20 images of their own practical artworks to be admitted.
The following modules are available to incoming Study Abroad students interested in Art.
Alternatively you may return to the complete list of Study Abroad Subject Areas.
This module aims to…
Upon successful completion of this module students will be able to…
What are the arts and how do they connect with identity? This module will bring together the discrete disciplines that constitute the School of Arts to address this and other related questions. Is the concept of ‘the arts’ elitist and does it perpetuate colonial ideas? By contrast, why are artists so often associated with forms of dissent and challenges to convention? Students will encounter different examples of individual art forms (including, for example, painting, theatre, fiction, design and film) to explore the ways in which art can be used to both include and exclude, to liberate and to limit. The textual focus will emphasise twentieth and twenty-first century works of art in relation to key concepts associated with identity and belonging, giving focus to the development of an understanding of voice as integral to the arts Concepts might include memory, decolonisation, intersectional identities and voice. Two examples might be as follows: a week focusing on Christopher Nolan’s Memento (2000) would consider the relationship between memory, narration and identity; on another week students might be asked to consider questions of decolonisation via extracts from Akala’s hybrid memoir-political critique, Natives: Race and Class in the Ruins of Empire (2019). The module will encourage students both to develop their own voices and to collaborate with their peers (via assessed projects).
The module will be taught via weekly lectures which will introduce key concepts. These lectures will be followed by two-hour workshops in which students will discuss these concepts and texts through group exercises. These teaching sessions will guide students through a range of perspectives, enabling them to develop their own ideas and voice.
The module will include two assessments. The first is a critical reflection on one of the core concepts or core texts. This assessment involves reflection on different art forms and ideologies and helps students to articulate the difference between their own perspective and that of others. It will encourage students to reflect on their own voice. This piece of critical writing must use academic sources, citations and bibliography. Formative feedback on this assessment can be applied to the second assessment.
The second assessment is a collaborative piece that discusses one of the other core texts. This assessment aims to develop students’ skills including teamwork, presentation, project development and creativity. Students will work in teams to produce one of the following pieces:
Students will work in teams of 3-4 which will be determined early in the module. These autonomous learning groups will work together throughout the module (for example, in preparing non-assessed tasks or exercises for each workshop). The exact format must be agreed with the workshop leader.
Formative feedback is provided through peer review, workshop tasks, and tutor input. Rubrics are introduced early to promote clarity and facilitate achievement. The module lays the foundation for academic progression and helps students develop their own voice within wider discussions.
This module aims to…
Upon successful completion of this module students will be able to…
This module introduces students to wide-ranging, global approaches to understandings of queerness and to non-normative bodies, sexualities, genders, and identities around the world. The module explores and critically engages with contemporary queer theories and cultural texts (including literature, film and television, visual art, performance, and many other genres), exploring how cultures, movements, and communities across the world have challenged bodily ‘norms’, countered violences and inequalities, given expression to their experiences and lives, and imagined alternative futures.
Indicative topics explored on the module might include:
The module does not present ‘queer futures’ as a conclusion or fixed site of knowledge but as an open space that students will explore and co-create throughout the module. The module thus asks: how do diverse cultures from around the world resist, challenge, or re-imagine hegemonic conceptions of gender, sexuality, embodiment and identity? How do understandings of queerness or of non-normative lives from across the world allow for the imagining of alternative modes of being in the future?
This module invites students to work both individually and in teams. In this way, the module encourages students to develop their own individual research directions whilst also sharing their discoveries with others and fostering collaborative and interdisciplinary skills and working. Students will experiment and work with a variety of literatures, media, and practices.
The module first asks students to develop a ‘pitch’ in which they articulate their own research interests and ambitions. This ‘pitch’ will be the vehicle through which students collect themselves into interdisciplinary groups based on shared aims and ambitions for the group project.
The module will taught via weekly 2-hour workshops. In addition to this, there will be a fortnightly 1-hour online session. This session will be used students to share ideas across seminar groups and will also be used for group formations for the final project.
This module will comprise of a reflective portfolio that includes two modes of interlinked assessments
1. Pitch Package (individual)
2. Final Project (interdisciplinary group)
This module aims to
Upon successful completion of this module students will be able to...
This module explores a series of works of art drawn from different periods and continents which fuse radically different forms of art and thinking. We will explore works of art where, for example, film meets poetry, history meets philosophy, song meets narrative, fine art meets sociology, religion meets novel, theatre meets politics.
Indicative works:
We will be asking: what happens when radically different forms of art meet? In particular, we will be asking: What happens to form? What happens to an audience? What happens to thought? What happens politically? And what happens to our understanding of our place in the world?
This module will be taught via 2-hour weekly workshops. Each workshop will, typically, focus on one work of art. It will provide historical, cultural and critical contexts to the work in question, explore key related concepts and issues, and cue up key questions that will be then explored through guided discussion and/or workshop activity.
Students will be encouraged to articulate their own responses to the work of art under investigation, to draw on their ‘home’ discipline, engage with perspectives from other disciplines, and to respond constructively to their peers.
In terms of assessment, students will be required to engage with two or more of the works of art being studied and will be free to do so critically, creatively, visually, philosophically, performatively, historically, sociologically, theologically, or politically.
Assessment will take the form of a Reflective Portfolio, incorporating two parts, one formative and one summative. The formative piece will take the form of a proposal or pitch for the summative work. This formative piece will provide an opportunity for formative feedback.
All assessment on this module will be individual. Students will, however, be required to work with each other, and learn from each other, through seminar discussion and/or workshop activity.