2024/25 Taught Postgraduate Programme Catalogue

MA Critical and Cultural Theory

Total credits: 180

Entry requirements:

Entry Requirements are available on the Course Search entry

School/Unit responsible for the parenting of students and programme:

School of Fine Art, History of Art & Cultural Studies

Examination board through which the programme will be considered:

Programme specification:

This programme offers an introduction to some of the major paradigms in cultural theory and analysis, such as semiology, psychoanalysis, feminism, deconstruction, postcolonial theory, and Frankfurt School approaches to the aesthetic, the media and technology. The degree is necessarily interdisciplinary and equips students with several critical ‘tool kits’ for analysing cultural artefacts and practices. At the same time, it stresses the long history of cultural criticism and theories of culture that have emerged since the Enlightenment.

You will develop your skills in close analysis: your ability to identify and unpack the key elements of a critical work or cultural artefact. This attention to textuality, broadly defined, constitutes a crucial link between theory and practice, such that the line between critical and creative cultural work is no longer determinative.

Cultural studies emerged as a discipline in the mid-20th century as a critical, scholarly response to the social movements of the time – anti-colonial struggles, the civil rights movement and feminism – and as a rigorous study of the relations between culture and class. This course began in 1987, when an interdisciplinary MA in Cultural Studies was founded at Leeds. From the outset, the degree emphasised the theoretical, philosophical and historical aspects of cultural studies. The name was changed to better reflect this approach, and it continues to draw students from across the arts and humanities who are interested in a broad range of objects and genres including literature, film, visual arts, performance, music and philosophy.

The School of Fine Art, History of Art and Cultural Studies has an ambitious interdisciplinary ethos, an active fine art community, a critically and politically engaged social history of art degree and a dynamic museum studies course. While this rich context is one of its defining characteristics, the MA in Critical and Cultural Theory is not limited to a consideration of art and aesthetics. Our approach is also informed by other cultural forms, such as text, music and popular culture and critical traditions – from literary criticism and semiology to new thinking on technology, gender, race and the posthuman.

The School houses parallax, published by Taylor & Francis, an international journal of cultural theory and analysis.

Year1 - View timetable

[Learning Outcomes, Transferable (Key) Skills, Assessment]

Compulsory modules:

Candidates will be required to study the following compulsory modules

Optional modules:

Candidates will be required to study 30 credits from the following optional modules in Basket 1:

Candidates will be required to study 30 credits from the following optional modules in Basket 2:

Last updated: 29/04/2024 11:02:32

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