Introductory description

This module explores the ways in which art, artistic expressions, material culture, and the built environment prompt, influence, or resist moments of crisis and change. Using problem-based learning, students explore rich case studies that cut across a range of historical, cultural, and conceptual boundaries. The case studies are organized around central themes that require students to connect theoretical frameworks and methodologies to specific actions, conceptual and material objects, texts, datasets, and academic fields in order to tackle complex problems. While the specific content of the case studies are dynamic, changing year on year in response to specific cohort interests, they retain their thematic structures to help students build knowledge transfer and critical thinking skills. Students will work individually and in groups with a wide range of diverse materials; these student-led activities require that students interrogate existing professional, academic, and cultural paradigms through the lenses including race, gender, colonialism, and cultural theory.

Module web page

Module aims

Outline syllabus

This is an indicative module outline only to give an indication of the sort of topics that may be covered. Actual sessions held may differ.

Case studies included in this module change from year-to-year. Therefore, only an indicative syllabus can be offered.

In this variant of the module, the complex and changing nature of land ownership and control in the United Kingdom (and specifically England) and the very different kind of social, political, and cultural revolutions that prompted these forms the basis for three case studies (Units 2, 3, and 4). Each of the case studies examines a key kind of revolution that has impacted on land ownership, usage, and development from broadly the late middle ages to the present day. This is not a history module, however, with key issues of ecology, politics, and social justice set against a background of land-inspired artistic and creative expression.

Unit 1 -- Revolutions and ways of seeing.

Unit 2 -- Feeding bellies to capture minds? Revolutions in agriculture and the subtlety of power and control.

Unit 3 -- Ha-ha! Revolutions in landscape and the ideas of authenticity.

Unit 4 -- Selling England by the Pound: Revolutions in land ownership and development.

Unit 5 -- Pasts, present, and futures of land, art, and revolution.

Learning outcomes

By the end of the module, students should be able to:

• Understand the ways in which artistic expression has positioned itself in relation to revolutionary events.
• Examine in-depth the historical contexts of each revolution and relate them to specific broadly-defined artistic productions.
• Explore the political and social contexts of each revolution and understand how they impacted on various forms of artistic production.
• Critically analyse specific types of artistic productions by deploying an appropriate theoretical framework.
• Compare artistic productions from various eras and in different locations, and attempt to theorise their contributions.
• Compare dominant revolutionary narratives and scholarship with marginalized ones in relation to scholarly theory and practice.
• Demonstrate foundational research and professional communication skills.

Indicative reading list

To be added.

View reading list on Talis Aspire

Research element

Students undertake individual and group-based research for each class, which is summarized and co-presented as part of the student-led nature of the module. Students also work on a range of research projects related to their assessments. Students from this module have gone on to publish or present elements of their research in a range of professional research contexts.

Interdisciplinary

This module is structured around wicked problems relating to revolutions. As a result, students with a wide range of skills and interests are able to select particular tools, methodologies, or goals throughout. Students also work as part of mixed-expertise teams to learn how to identify problems and create meaningful interventions.

International

This module takes a global perspective: revolutionary case studies have ranged chronologically from c1400 to the present day; geopolitically we have covered revolutions in China, Haiti, France, Russia, Australia, England, Iran, and the Arabic Middle East. Regardless of the specific case studies used in any one year, students are able to choose points of comparison in any area that interests them and apply that content using the theoretical frameworks we explore in class. As a result, students have covered a wide range of topics in class and in assessments, from Soviet infrastructure to political protest in Hong Kong, from landscape development to early modern European iconoclasm.

Subject specific skills

Use of appropriate theoretical frameworks to analyse a range of artistic production.

Deployment of physical and digital archival research skills.

Academic writing and communication.

Interdisciplinary research skills.

Transferable skills

Critical analysis/reflection skills.

Project management/team management.

Interdisciplinary teamwork.

Presentation/communication skills.

Theoretical frameworks for assessing revolutionary change.