Art History Degree
Art History degree - (V350) - 3 years
The Art History degree combines the study of Art History with Visual Culture and is designed both for students who, prior to their first year, have had little or no background in these disciplines, as well as those who have had much more experience. First year modules of the Art History degree examine some of the significant issues relating to art history from a variety of methodological, critical, and theoretical presuppositions, and engaging many different teaching, learning, and assessment methods. In the second and third years of the Art History degree, students construct their own curriculum from a broad portfolio of core and optional modules including: art and society, contemporary art, history of graphic art, history of photography, nineteenth century art, Mannerism and Baroque, and Renaissance.
Degree Structure
Art History degree - Year 1
In Year 1, Art History degree students get to grips with current issues and special topics in Art History and Visual Culture in four core modules which deal with the issues of period and style categorisation in art history, illustrated by representation of some major of the major themes in art of all periods: the Artist, the Body, Landscape and Environment, the Art of the `Other', and so on. In the Special Topics modules, these major thematic areas are further broken down, as Art History degree students research and present for each other reflection on more specific areas like Art and Gender or Abstraction and Representation.
Art History degree - Years 2 and 3
In Years 2 and 3 of your Art History degree, you move on specifically to consider the professional practice of the Art Historian, in modules which develop your fundamental skills of visual appreciation and analysis of visual artefacts. This is combined with analysis also of the cultural contexts in which artefacts are produced and displayed, and the different purposes which they may play in different cultures and sub-cultures, whether geographically, ethnically or otherwise defined.
Dissertation
Everything learned during the first two years of your Art History degree builds towards your final year dissertation, which is the culmination of the Art History degree, offering you the opportunity to focus on a topic of your own choosing and to analyse it in your own way, bringing to bear the broad knowledge and technical skills which you have gathered throughout your Art History degree.
Art History degree - careers
Art History is itself a growing career area, as there is an increasing public appetite for informed reflection both on the art of the past and on the visual culture of the present, that is why an Art History degree would be valuable to anyone who wants to pursue a career in the arts area. But the disciplines of the Art Historian have much wider application than these specific areas. As an Art History degree graduate from Aberystwyth, you will have learned skills of observation, analysis, research, reflection and reporting which are in demand in many fields of work and from many kinds of employer. The Aberystwyth School of Art enjoys an excellent employment record from its graduates. Students have gone on to obtain careers in all areas of teaching and lecturing, in museums, art galleries, libraries and in arts administration, and as designers, researchers, conservation officers, and art therapists in addition to practicing as professional artists, photographers and printmakers.
Art History degree is also available with:
BA
English Literature (QV33)
Fine Art (WV13)
French (RVC3)
Irish (QV5H)
Irish (QVM3)*
Welsh History (VVF3)
Welsh/Cymraeg (QV53)*
* = Welsh Medium Courses