LICA101: Fundamentals: Contemporary Arts and Design

• Terms Taught:
  • Michaelmas Term Only
  • Full Year Only (you must also take the appropriate LICA102 module)
  NOTE: For the Full Year option, the student will need to specialise in either Film, Theatre or Art (Design is not available in this instance) 
• US Credits: 4 Semester Credits
• ECTS Credits: 8 ECTS Credits
• Pre-requisites:
  • No Pre-requisite
  • For the Full Year option, student will need to specialise in either Film, Theatre, or Art (Design is not available in this instance)

Course Description

This term introduces students to university-level study of the arts and design, and their contexts and interrelations. In this first block, during the first term, students on the Art, Design, Film and Theatre programmes will work together in mixed seminar groups to explore the different ways in which creative practitioners respond to the world around them, focusing on three significant themes. They will be introduced to the key critical concepts used by academics to write about the creative work produced by practitioners engaging with these themes.

This will be taught through a conventional combination of weekly lectures and seminars. Each lecture will be delivered by two colleagues from different programmes, to provide students with an indication of the variety of approaches that can be taken to each topic.

Educational Aims

• Understanding of how to identify and locate appropriate primary objects of study (for examples films, plays, designed objects or artworks)
• Understanding of how to identify and locate appropriate secondary critical material on art, drama, design and film
• Understanding of the importance of selecting appropriate research and analysis methods for the study of art, drama, design and film at undergraduate level
• Understanding of the medium-specific conventions through which meaning is made and conveyed in art, drama, design or film
• Knowledge and understanding of some key critical and theoretical debates regarding art, drama, design or film
• Understanding of the importance of presenting research findings in a clear and well-supported way, following academic presentational conventions

Outline Syllabus

• Week 1: Introduction: Research in the Arts

Block 1: Primary Sources and Argumentation.

• Week 2 “Lancaster University seen through Two Primary Sources.”
• Week 3 “The Idea of the University Through the Arts”
• Week 4 “What does an Argument do?”

Block 2: What is A Secondary Source?

• Week 5 “Criticism and The North”
• Week 6 “Critically Revisiting Visions of The UK”
• Week 7 “Writing An Essay About The West”

Block 3: What Does Creative Research Do Today?

• Week 8 “Creative Research: Using Art to Explore What People are Like Today.”
• Week 9 “Art as Research Environment”
• Week 10 “Artistic Research Doing Things in the World”

Assessment Proportions

• Journal 100%

LICA102A: Fundamentals: Art (part 1)

• Terms Taught:
  • Lent / Summer Terms Only
  • For the Full Year option, you will need to take LICA101 module.
  NOTE: 
  • For full year option, student will need to specialise in either Film, Theatre or Art (Design is not available in this instance).
  • You will not be able to take LICA102, if you have not studied LICA101 in Michaelmas Term.
• US Credits: 2 Semester Credits
• ECTS Credits: 4 ECTS Credits
• Pre-requisites:
  • No Pre-requisite
  • For full year option, student will need to specialise in either Film, Theatre or Art (Design is not available in this instance)
  • You will not be able to take LICA102, if you have not studied LICA101 in Michaelmas term
  • You will be required to take LICA102B 

Course Description

This module is designed to supplement and enhance the essential knowledge and skills covered in the main module in Art, LICA130, and develops the study skills to which students are introduced in LICA101. It will be taught through a combination of lectures and seminars.

1. The Birth of the Avant Garde: The Salon des Refuses, 1863, and Manet and the Impressionists at the Grafton Gallery, 1910
2. Anti-art and the Readymade: The Society of Independent Artists, 1917, and DADA Berlin, 1920
3. Reactions against Modernism: Surrealism, 1936 and Degenerate Art, 1937
4. Pop Culture: This is Tomorrow, 1956, and International Exhibition of the New Realists, 1962
5. Conceptualism: Live in Your Head; When Attitude Becomes Form, 1969, and Conceptual Art and Conceptual Aspects, 1970

Educational Aims

This module aims to develop students’:

• Knowledge of a selection of historically important works, institutions and events within the field of art
• Understanding of the historically variable social significance of art
• Understanding of selected medium-specific conventions through which meaning is made and conveyed in art
• Knowledge and understanding of relevant critical and theoretical debates regarding art

Assessment Proportions

• 100% Coursework

LICA102B: Fundamentals: Art (part 2)

• Terms Taught:
  • Lent / Summer Terms Only
  • For the Full Year option, you will need to take LICA101 module
  NOTE:
  • For full year option, student will need to specialise in either Film, Theatre or Art (Design is not available in this instance).
  • You will not be able to take LICA102, if you have not studied LICA101 in Michaelmas Term.
  • For full year option, student will need to specialise in either Film, Theatre or Art (Design is not available in this instance).
• US Credits: 4 Semester Credits
• ECTS Credits: 8 ECTS Credits
• Pre-requisites:
  • No Pre-requisite
  • For full year option, student will need to specialise in either Film, Theatre or Art (Design is not available in this instance)
  • You will not be able to take LICA102, if you have not studied LICA101 in Michaelmas term
  • You will be required to take LICA102A

Course Description

Weeks 16-20 will be taught through a combination of lectures and seminars. Weeks 21-25 will consist of independent study with tutorial support.

• 16. Digital Culture: Cybernetic Serendipity, 1968, Software, 1970, and Information, 1970
• 17. New Materialism: Post-Partum Document/Prostitution, 1976, and Les Immateriaux, 1986
• 18. The Return of Painting: A New Spirit of in Painting, 1981, and Zeitgeist, 1982
• 19. Neoliberal Art: Freeze, 1982, and Sensation, 1992
• 20. Beyond the West: Les Magiciens de la Terre, 1989, and China/Avant-garde, 1989
• 21-25 Independent study

Educational Aims

This module aims to develop students’:

• Knowledge of a selection of historically important works, institutions and events within the field of art
• Understanding of the historically variable social significance of art
• Understanding of selected medium-specific conventions through which meaning is made and conveyed in art
• Knowledge and understanding of relevant critical and theoretical debates regarding art

Assessment Proportions

• 100% coursework

LICA102G: Fundamentals: Film (part 1)

• Terms Taught:
  • Lent / Summer Terms Only
  • For the Full Year option, you will need to take LICA101 module
• US Credits: 2 Semester Credits
• ECTS Credits: 4 ECTS Credits
• Pre-requisites:
  • No Pre-requisite
  • For full year option, student will need to specialise in either Film, Theatre or Art (Design is not available in this instance)
  • You will not be able to take LICA102, if you have not studied LICA101 in Michaelmas Term
  • You will be required to take LICA102H

Course Description

This module is designed to supplement and enhance the essential knowledge and skills covered in the main module in Film, LICA150, and develops the study skills to which students are introduced in LICA101. It will be taught through lectures, seminars and weekly screenings of case study films.

British Cinema

1. Alfred Hitchcock and silent British cinema - Blackmail (Hitchcock, 1929)

2. Melodrama and war - Brief Encounter (Lean, 1945).

3. Fantasy and artifice - The Red Shoes (Powell and Pressburger, 1948)

4. Film comedy and Ealing studios - The Ladykillers (Mackendrick, 1955)

5. Social commentary and repression - Victim (Dearden, 1961)

Educational Aims

This module aims to develop students’:

• Knowledge of a selection of historically important works, institutions and events within the field of film
• Understanding of the historically variable social significance of film
• Understanding of selected medium-specific conventions through which meaning is made and conveyed in film
• Knowledge and understanding of relevant critical and theoretical debates regarding film

Assessment Proportions

• 100% coursework

LICA102H: Fundamentals: Film (part 2)

• Terms Taught:
  • Lent / Summer Terms Only
  • For the Full Year option, you will need to take LICA101 module. 
• US Credits: 4 Semester Credits
• ECTS Credits: 8 ECTS Credits
• Pre-requisites:
  • No Pre-requisite
  • For full year option, student will need to specialise in either Film, Theatre or Art (Design is not available in this instance)
  • You will not be able to take LICA102, if you have not studied LICA101 in Michaelmas Term
  • You will be required to take LICA102G

Course Description

Weeks 16-20 will be taught through a combination of lectures and seminars. Weeks 21-25 will consist of independent study with tutorial support.

British Cinema

• 16. James Bond and the blockbuster franchise - You Only Live Twice (Gilbert, 1967)
• 17. British crime films - Get Carter (Hodges, 1971)
• 18. Horror and the occult - The Wicker Man (Hardy, 1973)
• 19. Art and politics - Jubilee (Jarman, 1978)
• 20. Asian British cinema - Bhaji on the Beach (Chadha, 1994)
• Weeks 21-25: Independent study

Educational Aims

This module aims to develop students’:

• Knowledge of a selection of historically important works, institutions and events within the field of film
• Understanding of the historically variable social significance of film
• Understanding of selected medium-specific conventions through which meaning is made and conveyed in film
• Knowledge and understanding of relevant critical and theoretical debates regarding film

Assessment Proportions

• 100% coursework

LICA200: Critical Reflections in Creative Arts

• Terms Taught:
  • Full Year Course
  • Michaelmas Term Only
  NOTE: If you are studying with us for a Full Academic Year and you select a course that has full year and part year variants, you will not be allowed to take only part of the course.
• US Credits:
  • Full Year Course - 8 Semester Credits
  • Michaelmas Term Only - 4 Semester Credits
• ECTS Credits:
  • Full Year Course - 15 ECTS Credits
  • Michaelmas Term Only - 7.5 ECTS Credits
• Pre-requisites: Familiarity with twentieth century art history with a good understanding of the major movements and their aims. 

Course Description

LICA 200 will explore a number of key interdisciplinary philosophical and cultural concepts which will enable you to analyse, engage with, and reflect upon artworks in your own discipline, and to thus establish a common set of concepts which can be shared by students from all of the different subject disciplines in LICA. These interdisciplinary concepts will be referred to in Part II modules particular to LICA’s different subject domains, but also within the suite of new half-unit modules which can be taken by students from across of all LICA disciplines.

Educational Aims

This module aims to:

• Develop analytical and critical skills in the study of contemporary art and creative works (design objects, buildings, installations, paintings, sculptures; documentaries and films; sound works, scores and musical performances; and dance works, plays and theatre performances) relevant to each students specific subject discipline (Art, Film, Design,Theatre)
• Make students aware of analytical and critical skills specific to other subject disciplines
• Develop appreciation, knowledge and understanding of key theoretical concepts common to the analysis of all contemporary artworks from all artistic disciplines and forms.

Outline Syllabus

This course provides an introduction to critical theory in the arts and its application to aesthetics and art. The structure of the course is six three-week blocks, following an introductory lecture:

• Block 1. Aesthetics and Formalism: The lectures and workshops in this block will look at how we describe and analyse works of art, especially in relation to different art forms, and how different disciplines can learn from each other. Students are also introduced to the main developments in aesthetics, from Plato to Kant and onto various kinds of formalism and contemporary means of analysing artworks.
• Block 2. Phenomenology: The lectures and workshops in this block celebrate and consider the lived experience that artists and audiences have of an artwork, and in particular places bodily experience at the heart of the ways in which artworks attempt to understand the world. The sessions ask: what is the relationship between the viewer or listener who experiences an artwork and the artwork itself? What is the relation between intuition and concept? Is it possible to reflect on the pre-reflective sensations that a listener or viewer has of an artwork as it unfolds through time in the gallery, performance space or concert hall? The sessions test methods by which it is possible to describe how an artwork might distil the essential qualities of its source material, how it is possible to describe the viewers or listeners consciousness of that artwork, and the hidden meanings which are disclosed through both processes of description.
• Block 3. Semiotics, Structuralism and Deconstruction: The lectures and workshops in this block look at the idea of the artwork as a system of signification, using the principles of semiology (i.e. the science of signs). Originally applied to linguistics and anthropology, semiology offers a powerful set of tools with which to understand and engage with works of art in every discipline from the visual arts to music to dance and performance. More recently it has also come to inform the work of practitioners in all fields. No attempt to understand the debates and issues in contemporary arts can take place without a basic grasp of this area.
• Block 4. Class and Society: No attempt to understand contemporary culture and the arts can take place without engaging with the work and influence of Karl Marx. Though originally concerned mainly with questions of economics and politics, Marx's ideas have been employed in powerful ways as means of understanding the relation between art and broader social structures and relations. The lectures and workshops in this block introduce the most relevant concepts of Marxism and looks at some of the ways in which they have been used in relation to the arts in the work of authors such as Louis Althusser and David Harvey.
• Block 5. Feminism, Queer Theory and Gender: Among the more pressing questions asked by theorists in relation to art is how our experience of artworks, whether as producer or consumer, is inflected by gender and sexuality. Some of the most powerful analyses of art have been motivated by such questions. The lectures and workshops in this block will introduce students to the basic concepts underlying those analyses as well as some of the ways they have been mobilised in relation to art and culture.
• Block 6. On Difference: Questions of race and ethnicity, like those of gender and sexuality, have also become a means by which some of the presumptions underlying the arts have been questioned and deconstructed, especially as a reaction to the dominance of white, western cultural ideals. The lectures and workshops in this block engage with some of the principle debates and ideas in this area, especially as they relate to difference, race, and post-colonialism in art and culture.

Assessment Proportions

• Coursework: 50%
• Exam: 50%

LICA230: Studio Practice

• Terms Taught:
  • Full Year Course
  • Michaelmas Term Only
  NOTE: If you are studying with us for a Full Academic Year and you select a course that has full year and part year variants, you will only be allowed to take the Full Year variant.
• US Credits:
  • Full Year - 15 Semester Credits
  • Michaelmas Term Only - 5 Semester Credits
• ECTS Credits:
  • Full Year - 30 ECTS Credits
  • Michaelmas Term Only - 10 ECTS Credits
• Pre-requisites:
  • This is a studio course suitable for Fine Arts Majors who are ready to work with a degree of independence and self-direction.
  • NOTE: Submission of an electronic portfolio of recent Fine Artwork (at least 15 artwork pieces) is a prerequisite for all overseas students. Portfolios should be sent to the Fine Art Study Abroad Coordinator Pip Dickens by the end of June.

Course Description

This course provides Fine Art students with a structured syllabus, a studio space 24/7 and regular tutorials with artist/teachers. LICA 230 is a demanding but enjoyable course. It requires high levels of student independence and commitment and is suited for Fine Art majors only.

The difference between the credit weighting of the LICA230 and LICA231 has a bearing on assessment criteria used by examiners. A student doing LICA230 will be expected to have substantially more work available for assessment than a student doing LICA231, and it will be expected to demonstrate greater depth of enquiry.

Educational Aims

The key aims are to nurture:

• An appropriate level of expertise within or across the fine art disciplines of sculpture and Installation, drawing, digital art, painting.
• Students to become informed practitioners.
• A personally-directed combination of visual, conceptual and technical expertise in a students chosen studio practice.
• An engagement with a practice in progressively more depth, focus and independence within, or across, chosen discipline areas during the three levels of the degree scheme.
• A knowledge and understanding of aspects of twentieth and twenty first century Western fine art and approaches to it, so that students have a critical, historical and conceptual understanding of their own practice, whether that practice is cutting edge or traditional. This is what Art means by the term informed practitioner.
• A range of transferable skills such as analysing visual or textual material, carrying out research, exhibition planning and organisation, making a presentation on the students own work, participating in group discussions, reviewing peer progress,and communicating effectively.

Outline Syllabus

LICA230 is a student-centred course; it requires students to direct their own research and to develop, through negotiation, a self-reliant and independent approach to studio practice. Students are also expected to take increasing responsibility for the creative and conceptual direction of their work. To support the creative development of the individual student, the appropriate teaching and learning mechanisms are:

• One-to-one tutorials
• Group tutorials
• Technical workshops
• Peer-feedback

Assessment Proportions

• Coursework: 100%

LICA231: Studio Practice

• Terms Taught:
  • Full Year Course
  • Michaelmas Term Only
  NOTE: If you are studying with us for a Full Academic Year and you select a course that has full year and part year variants, you will only be allowed to take the Full Year variant.
• US Credits:
  • Full Year Course - 12 Semester Credits
  • Michaelmas Term Only - 4 Semester Credits
• ECTS Credits:
  • Full Year - 22.5 ECTS Credits
  • Michaelmas Term Only - 7.5 ECTS Credits
• Pre-requisites:
  • This is a studio course suitable for Fine Arts Majors who are ready to work with a degree of independence and self-direction.
  • NOTE: Submission of an electronic portfolio of recent Fine Artwork (at least 15 artwork pieces) is a prerequisite for all overseas students. Portfolios should be sent to the Fine Art Study Abroad Coordinator Pip Dickens by the end of June.

Course Description

This course provides Fine Art students with a structured syllabus, a studio space 24/7 and regular tutorials with artist/teachers. LICA 231 is a demanding but enjoyable course. It requires high levels of student independence and commitment and is suited for Fine Art majors only.

The difference between the credit weighting of the LICA230 and LICA231 has a bearing on assessment criteria used by examiners. A student doing LICA230 will be expected to have substantially more work available for assessment than a student doing LICA231, and it will be expected to demonstrate greater depth of enquiry.

Educational Aims

The key aims are to nurture:

• an appropriate level of expertise within or across the fine art disciplines of sculpture and Installation, drawing, digital art, painting.
• students to become “informed practitioners”.
• a personally-directed combination of visual, conceptual and technical expertise in a student’s chosen studio practice.
• an engagement with a practice in progressively more depth, focus and independence within, or across, chosen discipline areas during the three levels of the degree scheme.
• a knowledge and understanding of aspects of twentieth and twenty first century Western fine art and approaches to it, so that students have a critical, historical and conceptual understanding of their own practice, whether that practice is “cutting edge” or traditional. This is what Art means by the term “informed practitioner”.
• a range of transferable skills such as analysing visual or textual material, carrying out research, exhibition planning and organisation, making a presentation on the student’s own work, participating in group discussions, reviewing peer progress, and communicating effectively.

Outline Syllabus

LICA231 is a student-centred course; it requires students to direct their own research and to develop, through negotiation, a self-reliant and independent approach to studio practice. Students are also expected to take increasing responsibility for the creative and conceptual direction of their work. To support the creative development of the individual student, the appropriate teaching and learning mechanisms are:

• one-to-one tutorials
• group tutorials
• technical workshops
• peer-feedback

Assessment Proportions

• Coursework: 100%

LICA237: Art, Site & Interaction

• Terms Taught: Michaelmas Term Only
• US Credits: 4 Semester Credits
• ECTS Credits: 7.5 ECTS Credits
• Pre-requisites: Open to Fine Art Majors or students with experience in Fine Art practice.

Course Description

This is a studio course which would suit Fine Arts Majors with a special interest and aptitude for site-specific practice, installation, performance, networked practice. The syllabus is designed to support training and live application of an expanded art practice engaging with a variety of sites and development of a final Personal Project. The first aspect of the syllabus consists of site-specific experiments made by students. Each session will introduce a site with different challenges that a number of students will respond to with temporary works. Example sites include: station, network, laboratory, journey, food, tower, publication. These experiments use a process of learning through making, followed by a discussion to encounter the potentials and problems with working in different sites. There is a reading each week. The second aspect of the course is experimenting with documentation of other students experimental works. The student will submit a portfolio of three different forms of documentation in their portfolio in week 10. The third aspect of the course is a personal site-specific project, which is presented as a proposal in week 9, the full project submitted in week 11, and documentation submitted in week 12. Any study abroad student who is only attending in Michaelmas term will submit all aspects of the final submission in week 10.

Educational Aims

The module aims to:

• Encourage students to think carefully about how time, space, and location can become materials for creating artwork
• Introduce students to a variety of practices and strategies, (such as technologies, performance and dialogical practice) for developing fine art practices in interaction with people and places.
• Enable students to build a range of practical skills and knowledge of appropriate technologies.
• Introduce both the historical development and the work of contemporary fine artists engaging with interactive and situated art practices

Outline Syllabus

Throughout the 20^th and 21^st centuries artists have expanded their practice outside the studio through interactions with people, places, and technologies. Current fine art practitioners employ a wide range of strategies for such interaction including technologies, performance and dialogical approaches.

This practical fine art focussed module will introduce the skills and sensitivities needed to work in this way through practical projects and critical reflection. The course will begin with an art historical grounding for this area of practice. Students will then experiment and test out new ways of working in a variety of locations and situations such as: in the rural or urban landscape, in the virtual online world, or in a social space such as a cafe. We will explore a range of processes such as conversation, performance, video, movement and digital interaction and students will consider the potential of these approached in relation to their individual studio practices.

Students will propose and produce creative works in response to themes such as: Proximity & Distance, Intimacy, Walking/Travelling/Journeys, Landscape, Site-specific Art, The City, Networks, Documentary Interactions, Participation, Art as Social Practice, Performative Interactions, Feminist Interactions.

Throughout the module students will build a range of skills and knowledge of technologies, for example: practical considerations in working ‘off-site’ (responding to and researching a place, collaborating with the public, gaining permission to work in specific sites); digital tools for working with networks (working with video, video streaming, live media, web authoring); and strategies and sensitivities for working with people (ethics, interviews, collaborations etc).

Assessment Proportions

• Portfolio: 30%
• Project: 70%

LICA340: Advanced Design Interactions

• Terms Taught: Michaelmas Term Only
• US Credits: 4 Semester Credits
• ECTS Credits: 7.5 ECTS Credits
• Pre-requisites: Equivalent to LICA240: Design Interactions

Course Description

This course provides advanced theoretical perspectives for design interactions. It builds upon the general framework for designing interactive products and systems introduced in the second year Design Interactions module. It extends the knowledge and understanding of the theory and practice of design interactions in specialised design areas such as Urban, Sustainable, Games, Futures, Service, Collaborative Tools, Virtual Environments, Facilitation, Citizen-led Design.

Educational Aims

This module aims to:

• Extend students' specialist knowledge and understanding of the key issues regarding design interactions.
• Develop students' knowledge and understanding in the theory and practice of design interactions for specific contexts.
• Further develop students' evaluation of methodologies of digital/physical design in relation to the generation and representation of design ideas.
• Develop students' skills in team working and collaborative working.
• Enhance students’ problem solving skills in specific context.
• Extend students' critical and theoretical analysis, reflection and synthesis competencies to a given body of knowledge.
• Develop students' capacities to express their ideas using combined audio and visual media.

Outline Syllabus

The syllabus will consider the design of interaction by examining it in relation to more specialised areas of design such as: Urban, Sustainable, Emotive, Games, Futures, Service, Collaborative Tools, Virtual Environments, Facilitation, Citizen-led Design. It is envisaged that the module syllabus will incorporate five of these themes each year which will allow both the most up-to-date research to be in the module content.

Indicative examples:

• Game Design might consider core concepts such as: defining games and play, play and culture, the magic circle, meaningful play.
• Design Futures may explore the conceptualisation of the design interactions over extended time horizons through the application of user scenarios, design fictions, personas.

Assessment Proportions

• Essay(s): 75%
• Presentation (Assessed): 25%

LICA341: Design Consultancy

• Terms Taught: Full Year Course
• US Credits: 8 Semester Credits
• ECTS Credits: 15 ECTS Credits  
• Pre-requisites: Equivalent to LICA241: Design Thinking or  LICA241b: Design Thinking  

Course Description

The course will provide an understanding of the strategic role of design research in real world contexts. Students will develop skills in the application of design research to address contemporary challenges faced by organisations and society. An understanding of the value of design research will be developed through a group based project with a client.

Educational Aims

This module aims to enables students:

♦ To demonstrate abilities on problem definition:

• Understanding the context and company’s needs.
• Researching issues related with the problem through data collection techniques.
• Analysing the problem using design methods.

♦ To communicate the realities and complexities of design research problems and the research necessary for their solution:

• Arguing with evidences through oral presentation and report writing skills.

♦ To demonstrate proactivity and creativity in their approach:

• Working independently in small groups on their own initiative.
• Discovering gaps for intervention and the creation of value.
• Articulating the value of design research to local and/or non profit making organisations.
• To demonstrate well developed interpersonal skills.
• To display analytical, evaluative and reflective competencies.

Outline Syllabus

Indicative content will include:

Students working in teams to undertake a design research consultancy project that addresses a real world need of an organisation with a UK base. The exact nature of the project is to be determined in consultation with your supervisor but there needs to be sufficient depth and breadth to the project to justify the scale of the project.

Examples of projects may include (provided for illustration only):

• Design Audits
• New Product Development Strategy
• Development of Design Guidelines
• Brand (Re)Positioning Strategy

The module learning mechanisms are:

• Group tutorials
• Lectures
• Workshops

Assessment Proportions

• Essays 25%
• Groupwork 25%
• Presentation 20%
• Report 25%
• Proposal 5%

PPR.301: Philosophy of Art

• Terms Taught: Michaelmas Term Only
• US Credits: 4 Semester Credits
• ECTS Credits: 7.5 ECTS
• Pre-requisites: You must have undertaken relevant previous studies in Philosophy.

Course Description

This module introduces central issues, problems and theories in philosophical aesthetics by critically examining specific topics in the philosophy of art (and nature) and by examining the theories of major figures who have contributed to the tradition of philosophical aesthetics. The course uses concrete examples from most arts including painting, literature, film, and music to illuminate theoretical debates and issues.

Educational Aims

The aim of this module is to provide students with:

• A solid, critical understanding of some major problems in aesthetics, some major aesthetic theorists, and how these problems and the ideas of these theorists relate to each other.
• The ability to articulate these issues through philosophical argument and analysis and through careful interpretation of primary texts.
• Enhanced awareness of the nature of art and aesthetic experience and the wider place of art in society.

Outline Syllabus

Topics and major aesthetic theorists to be covered may include the following (note this list is indicative and not all topics and theorists will be covered each year):

• Aesthetics in the analytic and continental traditions of philosophy
• The aesthetic theories of Plato, Hume, Kant, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, the Frankfurt School
• Definitions of art: Can art be defined?
• What is tragedy and what is its aesthetic significance?
• Beauty and its definition
• The relation between art, religion and philosophy
• The connections between art and morality: Can or should ethical evaluations affect aesthetic evaluations?
• Emotional responses to art
• The changing historical context and circumstances of art, including in the ancient world and in modernity
• The rise of the culture industry and its impact upon our understanding of and responses to art
• The normative status of aesthetic judgements: Can they ever be objective? If so, how?
• The concept of disinterestedness
• The relation between aesthetics and politics: Should art be politically committed? If so, in what ways?

Assessment Proportions

• Coursework: 40%
• Exam: 60%