2021/22 Taught Postgraduate Module Catalogue

ARTF5111M Art of the Silk Roads

30 creditsClass Size: 20

Module manager: Catherine Karkov
Email: c.e.karkov@leeds.ac.uk

Taught: Semester 2 (Jan to Jun) View Timetable

Year running 2021/22

This module is mutually exclusive with

ARTF3111

Art of the Silk Roads

This module is not approved as an Elective

Module summary

The ‘Silk Roads’ were a complex of networks that connected China, Japan, the Indian Subcontinent, the Middle East, East Africa, and the Mediterranean world from antiquity through to the fifteenth century. This module introduces students to some of the key centres and routes along these networks, exploring questions of cultural connectivity, collaboration, and innovation. It will interrogate ideas about and definitions of borders, cultural and religious identity, confrontation, collaboration, and appropriation by considering the role and agency of artworks within a series of interconnected mercantile, religious and social networks. It also explores the ways in which art (and sometimes artistic techniques) were created, exchanged, looted, censored, destroyed, and repurposed through time and across geographies. Along the way we will critique key concepts such as “global”. “world-system”, “postcolonial”, and “entanglement”. It is concerned, in other words, with what we can learn from artworks in motion and the impact they have had on an art history beyond Europe.

Objectives

The objectives of this module are to provide students with an interdisciplinary perspective on the art and cultures of the Silk Roads and to enable them to think critically about modern definitions of networks, borders and the “global”, as well as disciplinary and theoretical paradigms. As a complex of hubs and connective roadways the Silk Roads helped to facilitate not only artistic exchange but also generated fluid and evolving cultures that encouraged artistic and technological innovation across multiple political, religious, and social formations.

Learning outcomes
Students will be able to demonstrate:

1.Knowledge of the similarities and differences that distinguish the art produced by the different cultures and religions that were part of the Silk Roads, and an understanding of how art forms and cultural practices interacted with each other.

2. An understanding of and critical approach to the underlying methodologies and theoretical frameworks that have informed the study of the art of the Silk Roads, and an understanding of how different disciplinary paradigms have shaped scholarship on the subject.

3. The ability to analyse and compare material regionally, inter-regionally, and across disciplinary boundaries from a variety of theoretical perspectives and/or methodological approaches.

4.The ability to formulate and support a scholarly argument and to articulate the methodological tools or theoretical frameworks used in it.

5. The ability to undertake independent research and to critically assess both the primary and secondary sources consulted.

Skills outcomes
The module develops students’ skills in interdisciplinary and cross-cultural thinking and analysis. It asks them to locate their visual analysis and interpretation of images in the context of differing belief systems, political structures and regimes, and social practices. It asks them to think critically about art and heritage within the context of the literary texts and social institutions and systems of the period within which the art was produced and within the context of contemporary critical theory (for example, network theory, border theory, entanglement theory) and heritage practices.

Syllabus

Part I: Introduction to the Roads and their cultures

Part 2: Networks of exchange will look at, for example, the art of trading centres, oases, gift exchange, and artistic workshops.

Part 3: Networks of devotion will focus on the arts of the different religions that flourished amongst the silk road cultures and the ways in which they interacted with each other.

Part 4: Networks of Entertainment focuses on, for example, books and storytelling, music and dancing, feasting, celebrations, gardens and landscapes.

Part 5: Networks of display and heritage considers the way in which the past was displayed along the silk roads both in the Middle Ages and today.

Teaching methods

Delivery type	Number	Length hours	Student hours
Seminar	10	2.00	20.00
Tutorial	10	1.00	10.00
Private study hours			270.00
Total Contact hours			30.00
Total hours (100hr per 10 credits)			300.00

Private study

Weekly readings (70 hours); research for essay 1 (80 hours); research for essay 2 (120 hours)

Opportunities for Formative Feedback

Formative feedback will be offered on both essays with feedback on the first essay feeding into preparation for the second essay.

Methods of assessment

Coursework

Assessment type	Notes	% of formal assessment
Essay	2500 word essay	40.00
Essay	4000 word essay	60.00
Total percentage (Assessment Coursework)		100.00

Normally resits will be assessed by the same methodology as the first attempt, unless otherwise stated

Reading list

The reading list is available from the Library website

Last updated: 30/06/2021 16:04:50

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