BA Third Arts
Our final-arts programme is challenging and rewarding. It is designed to bring your knowledge and skills in the subject to a higher level, building on the foundations laid in the first and second years of study. The two core courses focus on broad questions within the discipline: HA3015 examines major matters relating to method, theory, and approach in Art History, while HA3029 investigates art and gender from the Renaissance to the present. The special-subject options — HA3005, HA3020, HA3023, HA3027 and HA3028, as well as HI3122 — offer the freedom to shape your final-year programme to suit your individual interests and to investigate particular issues in the context of a skill-based, small-group learning environment. Lastly, the supervised research project, HA3013, will provide the opportunity to undertake a significant piece of writing under the supervision of an art historian from the teaching team.
For the four credit pathways on offer, see the College Calendar.
Dr Flavio Boggi, Third-Arts Convenor.
Modules - Third Arts
HA3005 Roma Caput Mundi: Artists and Patrons in Renaissance Rome
Coordinator: Dr
Flavio Boggi
Semester 1: Wednesday, 11:00-13:00
Location: Connolly Building C
This course offers a detailed investigation of the productive relationship between artist and patron in Rome during the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. Special attention is devoted to Popes Julius II and Leo X and their interactions with Bramante, Michelangelo and Raphael. Through a sequence of case studies, students will explore crucial debates concerning the transformation of Rome into a magnificent capital, as well as the unique political and social structures that influenced creative activity there.
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HA3013 Supervised Research Project
Coordinator: Dr
Flavio Boggi
Semesters 1 & 2: Directed Study (Individual Consultation with Supervisor and Workshops)
A short training course will start on Fri 23 Sept, 15:00-16:00, in West Wing 7
The module provides you with the opportunity to develop a particular line of research within the visual arts and to extend your skills of interpretation and analysis. A member of staff will supervise your 8,000-word project, the title of which must be agreed prior to a notified date in the first semester, and which should be submitted to the Art History office at the end of the second semester on a day prescribed by the Department.
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HA3015 Approaches to the History of Art
Coordinator: Dr
Sabine Kriebel
Semester 2: Thursday, 09:00-10:00 and 15:00-16:00
Location: C_ORB_202 (09:00-10:00) and C_GG_LT (15:00-16:00)
This module offers a critical introduction to some of the more recent approaches to perception in art history and visual studies. Moving between the object of analysis and the human subject who analyses, we will explore the context, applications, and interconnections of these interpretive strategies. Among the thinkers we will discuss are Michel de Certeau, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Roland Barthes, Louis Althusser, Kaja Silverman, Laura Mulvey, Judith Butler, and Brian Massumi. Although lectures will extrapolate upon a given theme, this is a text-based core module that requires active participation from students, including critical reading, class participation, and group discussion.
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HA3020 Themes in Roman Baroque Art
Coordinator: Dr
Flavio Boggi
Semester 2: Wednesday, 11:00-13:00
Location: Connolly Building J1
This course offers a detailed exploration of Italian seventeenth-century art in relation to style, theory and production, but also politics, culture and society. Through a sequence of case studies, students will evaluate crucial debates concerning such figures as Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, Annibale Carracci and Gianlorenzo Bernini. The module involves sustained visual analysis of the period's key works as well as a critical engagement with the larger terms within which the art of early modern Italy has been discussed in recent scholarship.
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HA3023 Themes in Modern Art
Coordinator: Dr
Sabine Kriebel
Semester 1: Thursday, 11:00-13:00
Location: Student Hub G12
The module examines the art of the Weimar Republic, beginning with Dada and Expressionism in the immediate postwar period and ending with the advent of National Socialism in 1933. We will consider a range of artistic practices and media in their localized historical contexts, including postwar Expressionist film, New Objectivity, the Bauhaus, left-wing photography and photomontage. Among the themes we will consider are capitalist consumer culture and aesthetics, the politics of technological mass reproduction, and representations of gender.
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HA3027 Special Studies Seminar (Impact: Or How Art Matters)
Coordinator: Dr
Sabine Kriebel
Semester 2: Friday, 15:00-17:00
Location: O'Rahilly Building 202
Through a series of modern and contemporary case studies, this seminar will investigate the various modes (material, political, affective, psychoanalytic) with which art seeks to intervene in the life of its beholders. Combining object-based and text-based study, we will interrogate how material form solicits attention and shifts knowledge in different historical contexts. The question is not if art matters, but
how.
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HA3028 Global Artistic Interventions: (RE)Making Identities After 1945
Coordinator:
Henry Martin
Semester 2: Thursday, 11:00-13:00
Location: Student Hub G12
This module explores global art history and theories from 1945 to the present. Via a series of specific case studies, we will investigate the concept of the ‘artistic intervention’ and its shifting agenda as it crosses time, cultures, traditions and geographical borders. Drawing on works of key theorists, we will explore discourses surrounding specific artists and scrutinise the social purpose of their works—considering important themes such as identity, human rights, self-agency, the body, space, nation, heritage and memory.
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HA3029 Art & Gender Identities
Coordinator:
Henry Martin
Semester 1: Monday, 11:00-12:00; Tuesday, 9:00-10:00
Location: Connolly Building B (Mon); West Wing 5 (Tues)
This module explores the various ways that artists—male, female, and genderqueer—have used their work to examine, question, and criticize the relationships between gender and society. The course involves sustained visual analysis, as well as a critical engagement with both primary and secondary texts.
HI3122 Ritual and Space in the Late Middle Ages
Coordinator: Dr
Malgorzata Krasnodebska-D'Aughton
Semester 1: Wednesday, 10:00-12:00
Location: Boole 5
The module looks at western late medieval material culture as a source in the study of history. By analysing artefacts (paintings, sculptures, books) and architecture, the module examines objects in the context of devotional practices of the period. Topics covered include public and private devotion, liminal and transitional spaces, death and commemoration, gender and sanctity, mendicant ideologies, symbolism and iconography.