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Module Content

You will study in this module the main touchstones of material and visual culture theory. Through the year, you will progress from introductions to the field, through key debates, and develop critical approaches to culture and society. The theoretical learning will happen in parallel with practical sessions in which you undertake small exercises and projects in different areas of material and visual culture (eg. heritage, art, digital, design, built environment, consumption). Key theoretical paradigms will include areas such as phenomenology, post- marxism, post-structuralism, praxeology, and comparable ways of thinking about materiality. Topics will expand on three ways in which academics think, interpret, and write about culture: through contrasting debates, through a history of ideas, and through empirical case studies.

Indicative Topics

• Subjects and Objects
• Image
• Space and Place
• Modernity and Exchange
• Heritage and Temporality

Learning Outcomes

By the end of the module, you will:

• Know the key theoretical debates in the field of material and visual culture.
• Be familiar with how, by researching the material world, social science can build alternative, critical arguments about culture and society.
• Be able to connect cultural interpretation to examples of actual research.
• Be able to connect hands-on ways of working with material and visual artefacts, to ways of theorising, thinking and critiquing.
• Have a broad knowledge of different key paradigms of material culture in human experience (eg. consumption, art, heritage, photography, built environment, landscape, design)

Teaching Delivery

Each week you will have a two-hour workshop on theoretical issues. A range of lecturers will cover these, according to their expertise, so you will be exposed to a range of perspectives and ways of teaching. Most lecturers will comprise in a lecture and discussion of key readings. Topics will be taught across two weeks, so the second week will look in more depth into examples of the theory, and your own understanding and contribution in the discussion should develop and grow in the second week of each topic. Every second week, there will also be a two-hour practical session in which you will present a relevant exercise (for example, an analysis of public art, a museum visit, a study of an object’s life, a study of techniques).Ìý