British Art and Culture after 1945 - MA Seminar 3

Master's seminars

The seminar, during which students discuss themes related to British art and culture after 1945 to the present, is divided into two parts – the theoretical and the practical one. The theoretical part is devoted to the discussion of social transformations in Britain after 1945; the practical component constitutes an introduction to visual semiotics and the critical discourse analysis as the potential tools of the cultural studies researcher.

In the second year of the seminar, students acquire in-depth knowledge of the themes related to their individual MA projects on British culture after 1945. The meetings in the third and fourth semesters are devoted to the discussion of the major cultural and social developments in contemporary British society. On the basis of selected secondary sources, students prepare their own critical analyses of diverse texts of culture (films, the press, the visual arts) in relation to the main themes of British public debates. They further improve their critical reading skills by working with academic publications on the topics that correspond to their own research interests. In the course of the third and fourth semesters of the MA seminar students also prepare and deliver presentations on the results of their research work. They further develop the skills of critically analysing materials and write the final sections of their MA theses. Also in the last two semesters of the MA seminar, students prepare abstracts of their MA theses, and format their manuscripts.

Abbot, Mary. Family Affairs. A history of the family in the 20th England. London: Routledge, 2003.

Bailey, David A., Ian Baucom and Sonia Boyce. Shades of Black. Assembling Black Arts in 1980s Britain. Durham: Duke University Press, 2005.

Baker, Houston A., Jr.,Manthia Diawara and Ruth H. Lindeborg, eds. Black British Cultural Studies. A Reader. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996.

Bortolaia Silva, Elizabeth, ed. Good Enough Mothering? Feminist perspectives on lone motherhood. London: Routledge, 1996.

Clark, David. Marriage, Domestic Life and Social Change, London: Routledge, 1991.

Fairclough, Norman. Analysing Discourse: Textual Analysis for Social Research. London: Routledge, 2003.

Fairclough, Norman. Discourse and Social Change. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2007.

Fairclough, Norman. New Labour? New Language? London: Routledge, 2000.

Foster, Alicia. Tate Women Artists. London: Tate Publishing, 2004.

Fowler, Rodger. Language in the News: Discourse and Ideology in the Press. London: Routledge, 1991.

Gilroy, Paul. There Ain't No Black in the Union Jack. London: Routledge, 2002.

Harrison, Charles, Paul Wood, eds. Art in Theory 1900-2000. An Anthology of Changing Ideas. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2008.

Hill, John. Ken Loach. The Politics of Film and Television. London: British Film Institute, 2011.

Knauer, Krzysztof and Simon Murray, eds. Britishness and Cultural Studies, Continuity and Change in Narrating the Nation. Katowice: Humanistyka i Poznanie, 2000.

Lewis, Jane. Women in Britain since 1945, Oxford: Blackwell, 1994.

Mirzoeff, Nicholas, ed. The Visual Culture Reader. New York: Routledge, 2005.

Monaco, James, ed. How to Read a Film. Movies Media and Beyond. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009.

Morley, David, and Kevin Robins. British Cultural Studies, Geography, Nationality and Identity. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001.

Murphy, Robert, ed. British Cinema of the 90s. London: British Film Institute, 2011.

O'Sullivan, Sean. Mike Leigh. Chicago: University of Illinois, 2011.

Paul, Kathleen. Whitewashing Britain. Race and Citizenship in the Postwar Era. New York: Cornell University Press, 1997.

Paxman, Jeremy. The English. A Portrait of a People. London: Penguin Books, 1999.

Peppiatt, Michael, Francis Bacon. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008.

Reid, Ivan. Class in Britain, Polity Press, London, 1998.

Roberts, Ken. Class in Modern Britain, Palgrave, London, 2001

Sandbrook, Dominic. White Heat. London: Abacus, 2006.

Spalding, Frances. British Art since 1900. London: Thames & Hudson Ltd, 2002.

The Turner Prize and British Art. London: Tate Publishing, 2007.

Turner, Graeme. British Cultural Studies. London: Routledge, 1996.

Knowledge

Students know and understand:

K_W04 in-depth principles of designing cultural studies, in particular the use of methods and tools in formulating research problems in the field of British visual arts and culture p 1945;

K_W05 at an advanced level of grammar, syntax, phonology, phonetics, morphology, pragmatics of the English language;

K_W06 economic, legal and ethical and other conditions for various types of professional activity related to the field of study.

Skills

Students can:

K_U01 use the terminology and conceptual apparatus in the field of cultural studies, in particular the history and theory of fashion;

K_U02 to use the methodology of cultural studies on British visual culture within the English philology, respecting the standards of scientific ethics and copyright law;

K_U03 to use the acquired knowledge to describe and solve the problem and to carry out a research project on topics in the field of science about culture and religion, in particular in the field of British art and visual culture after 1945;

K_U04 use the acquired knowledge to describe and solve problems and perform tasks related to the discipline of culture and religion sciences;

K_U06 independently search for information in various sources and evaluate their suitability for research work on the subject of the master's seminar related to British visual art and culture after 1945;

K_U07 use modern technologies in the process of acquiring knowledge and communicate (e.g. with lecturers, tutors, mentors, etc. and with participants in classes and projects) using various communication channels and techniques;

K_U11 design your own development path.

Social competence

Students are ready to:

K_K02 lifelong learning and personal development, using the skills to select subjects and projects corresponding to the interests of a given person

Language education at the B2 + level.

1. Submitting the main part of the MA thesis (without an introduction and conclusion (85 % of the grade)

2. Presentation and participation (15 % of the grade)