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IP103 Art and Revolution

Module leader: Dr William Rupp

  • Core module | 30 CATS
  • Terms 1-3 | 22 weeks
  • 44 contact hours: 1 x 2 hour workshop per week
  • Extension opportunities, including film screenings
  • Not available to students outside the School for Cross-faculty Studies

Moodle Platform

This module explores the ways in which art and artistic expressions ("the things we make") prompt, influence, or resist moments of crisis and change. Using Problem-Based Learning, students explore four rich case studies that cut across a range of historical, cultural, and conceptual boundaries. The case studies are organized around four 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, the four case studies 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 of race, gender, colonialism, and cultural theory.

In 2020-21, we will explore the Franco-Haitian Revolution, the Russian Revolution, the Cultural Revolution in China, and Aboriginal Australian revolutionary movements. While this module draws on a diverse range of case studies, students are expected to take a leading role in bringing their own interests, goals, and lived experiences into the classroom.


"This module was one of my favourites"

"During this (module) we learnt about a variety of revolutions such as the Haitian, Iranian etc. But, rather than being restricted to just learning the 2D facts such as dates and places, we looked at the larger context of the revolutions by looking at the art being produced at that time and what it said about the conditions of the time. This module was one of my favourites last year because it really challenged me to turn my back on the way I’d been learning in past."

Olamide

Liberal Arts Graduate

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  Please note: Module availability and staffing may change year on year depending on availability and other operational factors. The School for Cross-faculty Studies makes no guarantee that any modules will be offered in a particular year, or that they will necessarily be taught by the staff listed on these pages.