Art History and Visual Studies Postgraduate Brochure 2013
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ART HISTORY AND VISUAL STUDIES POSTGRADUATE BROCHURE 2013 SCHOOL OF ARTS, LANGUAGES AND CULTURES ART HISTORY AND VISUAL STUDIES THE FACTS • Specialist discipline study resources, including our own subject library • On-campus art gallery and museum • Exciting fieldwork opportunities • Pioneering teaching informed by the latest research • £650 million investment in university facilities for research and study • 4 million books in one of the UK’s best-resourced university libraries • Nationally acclaimed University Careers Service with postgraduate support • Exciting and diverse environment in one of the best student cities in the world www.manchester.ac.uk/alc CONTENTS OUR UNIVERSITY 2 “The University of Manchester ART HISTORY AND VISUAL STUDIES AT MANCHESTER 4 provides an enjoyable, dynamic and exciting working environment, TAUGHT COURSES 6 full of enthusiastic people, and MULTIDISCIPLINARY RESEARCH CULTURE 10 with a positive attitude towards research and postgraduate study.” SPECIALIST RESEARCH AREAS 10 APPLYING 10 Annette Allen, postgraduate student 2012 STAFF RESEARCH INTERESTS 12 SCHOOL OF ARTS, LANGUAGES AND CULTURES 14 POSTGRADUATE SKILLS AND RESEARCH TRAINING 16 FUNDING 16 DEADLINES 16 SCHOOL CONTACT DETAILS 17 FIND OUT MORE ONLINE 18 1 ART HISTORY AND VISUAL STUDIES OUR UNIVERSITY Making things happen At Manchester, we are proud of both our academic excellence and a pervasive ‘can-do’ attitude of staff and students that turns enthusiasm into achievement and ground-breaking theory into cutting-edge practice. With research that is internationally renowned across a huge range of disciplines, we work with partners across the world to effect real change in commerce and society. 2 www.manchester.ac.uk/alc Our University has leapt 38 places in the influential This is particularly valuable for our postgraduates, Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU) whose specialist areas of study at the cutting edge survey in the past seven years, from 78th to 40th in of research often transcend traditional discipline the world, and sixth in Europe, confirming us as a boundaries, and who benefit considerably from our progressive and world-class teaching and research connections with external partners across the globe. centre. We are also ranked third in the UK for Find out more: ‘research power’, and research in more academic www.manchester.ac.uk/research areas than any other UK university. Learn more about us: www.manchester.ac.uk/aboutus Fuelling ambition At Manchester, you will study programmes packed with the latest research findings, meet leading global Unrivalled investment experts from academia and industry, use cutting-edge We’ve recently invested £650 million in facilities and equipment in modern facilities, and polish skills that resources for our academic community – with more postgraduate employers from all fields want. still to come. Our newest development is the Alan Gilbert Learning Commons, in which we invested Whether you’re a committed researcher wanting £24 million to create a multitude of innovative, to further the human quest for knowledge, a technology-rich facilities dedicated to student-led career-focused professional seeking a specialist learning across all disciplines. qualification, or a burning enthusiast for higher learning and understanding, a postgraduate Find out more: degree at The University of Manchester will help www.manchester.ac.uk/library/learningcommons you to realise your ambitions. Multidisciplinary collaboration Find out more As the biggest university in the UK, we are proud of Access online or order a copy of our 2013 prospectus: the advantages our size brings: a fantastic breadth www.manchester.ac.uk/pg/prospectus and depth of knowledge, the cross-pollination of skills and disciplines, and the buzz of a large, diverse academic community. We habitually collaborate and share knowledge, expertise and resources, both across the University and with our numerous external partners in industry, business, the arts and the public and not-for-profit sectors. 3 ART HISTORY AND VISUAL STUDIES ART HISTORY AND VISUAL STUDIES AT MANCHESTER Art History and Visual Studies (AHVS) is one of Manchester’s best-established disciplines. Our impressive range and diversity of expertise encompasses a variety of periods and methodological approaches to the subject. You’ll benefit from our rich and extensive ties to visual arts institutions, local, national and international. Our aim is to bring our research to the classroom in order to discover exciting new fields and issues with our postgraduates. 4 www.manchester.ac.uk/alc Multidisciplinary expertise Welcoming community Manchester’s art historians come from a great variety Staff and postgraduates benefit greatly from the of disciplinary backgrounds, which is reflected in coherent, close-knit and friendly atmosphere of the rich mix of subjects that we teach and supervise our art historical community, as well as from the at postgraduate level. Here, you’ll find researchers interdisciplinary research culture within the larger concentrating not only on painting, sculpture and School, Faculty, and University. We share intellectual architecture, but also on urbanism and garden design; interests and connections with English and American the relationship between the arts, languages, and Studies, History, Drama, Music, Classics and Ancient literatures; material culture and the decorative arts; History, Archaeology, and Religions and Theology. We collecting and display; issues around the sacred and have particularly close connections with the Centre the supernatural; performance, installations and other for Museology and the Whitworth Art Gallery. We contemporary art practices; questions of gender and encourage our postgraduate studnets to help us identity; body and video art and critical theory. maintain this vibrant atmosphere of research and learning, and help to make it prosper in new ways. Access to cutting-edge research Our teaching is led by our research. We have an extremely active research culture in which our sizable cohort of postgraduate students (currently 20 in the MA and 30 in the PhD programme) play a key role. You are encouraged to attend the research seminars in AHVS, where members of staff and guest lecturers present papers. We also have a lively student-run Postgraduate Forum. 5 ART HISTORY AND VISUAL STUDIES TAUGHT COURSES Interdisciplinary MAs Issues in Art Historical Practice Dr Charlie Miller AHVS is a principal protagonist in the interdisciplinary MA in Victorian Times. Run by the History This course unit is taken by all art history MA department, this programme has its own distinctive students. The main part of the collective reading core course, but also offers you the exciting concentrates on influential authors, many of opportunity to engage intellectually with our School whom are outside the discipline of art history as of Art, Histories and Cultures’ many disciplines: AHVS, conventionally understood, yet who have challenging Archaeology, Classics and Ancient History, Drama, things to say about issues fundamental to the English and American Studies, History, Music, and discipline of art history – eg authorship, history, Religions and Theology. representation, visuality and space. For full details on the MA in Victorian Times, see our This focus aims to help you to understand the History postgraduate brochure. foundations that support much art historical writing of the past 30 years. It is part of our commitment to enabling you to encounter first-hand 20th-century AHVS course units for the MA writers whose work has recently transformed our discipline in a fundamental way. Please note that these course units are indicative of what might be taken – we cannot guarantee that all Disciplines are porous and what we do in art history is of these courses will be available in a given year. For shaped and nuanced by what happens in contiguous a full list of those available to you, please choose Art disciplines in human sciences and philosophy. History and Visual Studies from the list of subjects on Knowing the provenance as well as the modes of this web page: extrapolation and assimilation of these neighbouring www.manchester.ac.uk/arts/postgraduatestudy discourses into art history has therefore become an indispensable professional skill, both in terms of communicating with colleagues across our discipline Taught course units and of writing and producing new ideas. This is why Our discipline is naturally located at a disciplinary every single session elaborates on specific examples, crossroads, hence our long-standing collaborations which come from within our discipline and represent with Archaeology, Museology, and other subject this creative osmosis. areas across the Faculty and University. You may The special section of ‘Case Studies’ demonstrates take one course unit in a subject area outside of and assesses the value of those systems of discourse AHVS (comprising 30 credits of the MA degree’s final for art historical writing and interpretation on the 180 credits), making it easy for you to complement practical grounds of specific visual examples. your art historical research in a manner that suits your academic interests and goals. Other branches of history, religions and theology, social sciences, Prometheus Unbound: Art, Science, and languages and literatures, as well as other arts, like Technology in the Renaissance music and drama, provide grist to art history’s mill. Dr Anthony Gerbino Examples of course units are listed on the following Our