Course summary

The information provided on this page was correct at the time of publication (November 2023). For complete and up-to-date information about this course, please visit the relevant University of Oxford course page via www.graduate.ox.ac.uk/ucas. This nine-month programme offers a unique combination of methodological depth and access to excellent primary sources for students who wish to develop and extend their understanding of how visual styles at different times and in different places can be understood in relation to the aesthetic, intellectual and social facets of various cultures. This course draws on the established strengths of the discipline of art history in formal, iconographic and contextual analysis in the Faculty of History's History of Art Department and links them to a rigorous approach to questions of theory and method. The course will expose you to the ways in which the subjects of visual history are being redefined on a broad base to include a much wider range of artefacts and visual media, including images and objects produced in contexts ranging from the scientific to the popular. Teaching comprises: a compulsory methodology paper, Issues in Art History, which is taught in a seminar series during Michaelmas and Hilary terms. There is also an associated lecture series, workshops on professional practice and object-handling sessions in Oxford collections. one option paper, normally taught in small classes during Michaelmas and Hilary terms. Full details of core and optional papers are available on the course webpage on the department's website (see the Further information and enquiries section for further details). You will also write a dissertation of up to 15,000 words, which will be submitted in Trinity term (see the Assessment section below for further details). It is expected that about 25% of a student’s time will be spent as self-directed research and study. Example option papers Some of the option papers will not be available every year, and new ones may be added. Prospective students should check on the availability of specific courses during the application process by visiting the course webpage on the department's website (see the Further information and enquiries section for further details). As an example, the options papers for students enrolled in the 2021-22 academic year were:

• The Politics of Modernism: Art in France, 1880-1914

• Gothic to Renaissance? Reframing Architecture in Europe and Beyond

• Histories of Photography

• Global Perspectives on American Art: Latinx Art and Activism