Cultural and Critical Theory MA (PGCert PGDip)

International equivalencies

We can help you meet our English language or academic entry requirements.

Why study with us?

• Opportunity to specialise in aesthetics and cultural theory, political and cultural globalisation, or philosophy and critical theory

• Successful international conferences – for example 'Slavery, Race and Reparative History', 'Globalisation and its Discontents' and 'Complicity', all with visiting scholars from across the globe

• The Philosophy, Politics and Aesthetics seminar series that invites debate from across the College, and hosts visiting scholars to deliver seminar papers twice a month

• A research methods module that improves your skills in independent study, and prepares you for doctoral work as well as for your MA project

• Staff with diverse research interests that span art practices, ethics, aesthetics, Marxisms, Freudianisms, Liberalisms, the political philosophy of international relations and global change, philosophy and filmmaking, literature and visual art, political activism and forms of democracy, and more

Areas of study

Delivered during the autumn and spring terms, the core course consists of a common lecture line and two modules in aesthetics and cultural theory, philosophy and critical theory, or political and cultural globalisation, depending on your chosen specialist area.

You also take a research methods module, which prepares you for the research project by considering the various approaches taken by relevant disciplines, interrogating the requirements of MA-level research and addressing how your intended research topic might best be refined.

The project itself normally consists of 18-20,000 word dissertation (or 12,000 words alongside a video, an installation or studio-based work) in which you apply your knowledge of cultural or critical theory to an issue or text of your choosing. Your work towards this submission is supported by one-to-one project supervision.

The elective modules can take one of three forms:

• a module from another MA course in the humanities programme, or from elsewhere in the College of Arts and Humanities
• a Higher Education Teaching and Learning Course in which you shadow a tutor in the delivery of a module on the undergraduate programme
• a 10,000-word extended essay with regular one-to-one tutorial supervision.

Pathway 1

Aesthetics and Cultural Theory

The core course in Aesthetics and Cultural Theory is designed to accommodate the needs both of those who have touched on its material before (with, for example, degrees in cultural studies, visual culture or art history) and those from other disciplinary backgrounds whose previous academic experience has provoked an interest in such issues without addressing them directly. Taught sessions consist of an intellectual contextualisation of the material and a close reading of primary texts.

Aesthetics and Philosophy

Enlightenment Aesthetics • The Sublime and the Beautiful • Modernism and Aesthetics • Aesthetics and Politics: Adorno, Lukács, Brecht • Danto and The End of Art • Brit-Art, Anti-Art? • Anti-Aesthetics

Designed to provoke critical reflection on the relationships between social context, artistic style and philosophical reflection, the first module serves both to provide a grounding in the history of aesthetics for the less familiar, and a sophisticated, close and critical reading of pivotal texts from that history. The term’s work will trace the founding moments of modern aesthetics from Kant, through Schiller, Hegel and Schelling, to Nietzsche. It will then consider the conceptual insecurities and anxieties of high modernism from psychoanalysis through the Frankfurt School to Phenomenology. It will conclude with an examination of the connections and dissociations between structuralism, post-structuralism and postmodernism.

Cultural Theory

Culture, Hegemony and Power • The Frankfurt School and the Culture Industry • Structuralism and Semiotic Theory • Foucault’s Theory of Discourse • ‘Race’, Identity and Politics • Queer Theory and the Politics of Sexuality • Postmodern Feminisms

The second module considers the developments in cultural theory from the last half of the twentieth century to the present day, dealing with the key theoretical developments in cultural studies. It traces a route from the Marx-inspired Frankfurt School to the profound conceptual shifts wrought by structuralism, post-structuralism and the theorisation of identity politics. In this context, the course considers the ways in which the issues of gender, sexuality and ‘race’ have contributed to the development of cultural politics. The module concludes by looking at the role of cultural theory in conceptualising the nature and impact of postmodernism.

Pathway 2

Globalisation, Politics and Culture

The Political Economy of Globalisation

Global Interdependence in Historical Perspective • Global Production Patterns, Capital Mobility and the Nation State in the Twenty-first Century • Deterritorialisation of Politics • International Relations Theory • Centralisation and Concentration of Capital • Migration and Asylum in the Twenty-first Century • Environmental Globalisation

The Political Economy of Globalisation addresses the central approaches to understanding the development of the world system from within the discipline of international relations. It will consider the key contemporary arguments concerning some of the institutional, economic and political transformations of the last two decades: the role of the World Trade Organisation, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Services, the development of regional blocs, and the changing status and role of the United Nations. It will also address the issues of the relationships between globalisation, biotechnology, militarism and the nation state.

Globalisation and Culture

Globalisation or Cultural Imperialism • Colonialism, Postcolonialism, Globalisation • Reaction or Resistance: Fundamentalism and Anti-globalisation • Politics of Global Identity: Theoretical Perspectives • Diaspora and Belonging • Gender, Nationalism and Culture • Travelling Theory

The second module focuses on the role of culture in the process of globalisation. Through a variety of primary texts and secondary theoretical material, it will consider the relationship between globalisation and cultural imperialism, recent developments in postcolonial theory and issues of global and local identity formation. It will also address the various complementary and contradictory forms of reaction and resistance to globalisation. Central to the module will be the interrogation of conceptualisations of cultural identity, nationhood, space-time compression, national and international mobility, and ideas of home and belonging. You will gain a critical understanding of the primary conceptual and theoretical frameworks that locate the role of culture within a global context.

Pathway 3

Philosophy and Critical Theory

Critical Foundations: The Philosophical Foundations of Critical Theory

Smith, Locke, Hobbes and Individualism • Kant, Critique and History • Hegel and Philosophy of History • Marx, Materialism and Historical Progress • Woman Question: Wollstonecraft, Mill, Engels • Nietzsche and History for and against Life • Husserl, Consciousness and Experience • Freud, Sexuality and the Unconscious

The Philosophical Foundations of Critical Theory begins with a consideration of the contemporary state of theory after the impact of post-structuralism and postmodernism in five areas of enquiry: historiography, aesthetics, the philosophy of natural science, the philosophy of social science, and literary theory. It is designed to provide an introduction to the conflicts over the status of knowledge that reverberate in most, if not all, disciplines today, and therefore help to give you a coherent position on such disputes in your own specialised field.

The module then surveys the foundations of modern cultural and critical theory. Commencing with the liberal tradition in its British variant – as inaugurated by Smith, Locke, Hobbes and Hume – it moves to its Continental counterpart in the work of Kant and Hegel, and considers the subversion of those Enlightenment ambitions in Marx's critique. Other topics include the differing interpretation of the 'woman question' in the writings of Wollstonecraft, Mill and Engels, Nietzsche's reactions to Enlightenment conceit, and the contribution of Freud to our understanding of the human condition.

Critical Traditions: Phenomenology to Postmodernism

Phenomenology • Western Marxism • Humanism • Structuralism • Post-structuralism • Contemporary Feminisms • Contemporary Liberalisms and Postmodernism

Phenomenology to Postmodernism maps the development of the various critical and analytical traditions that have emerged from the philosophical foundations of critical theory. It considers the development of liberal and illiberal individualism in the works of Rawls and of Nozick; the Western Marxist tradition in the works of Lukács, Gramsci, Adorno, Benjamin and Habermas; the phenomenologies developed by Heidigger, Sartre and de Beauvoir; the humanist tradition offered by Thompson and Williams; the structuralism inaugurated by Saussure and further developed by Barthes and Althusser; the post-structuralism signally found in the work of Lacan, Foucault, Derrida and Kristeva; the modern feminisms in the works of Firestone and Segal; and the postmodernisms of Lyotard and Rorty, and their feminist inflections in the works of Cixous and Irigaray.

Staff profile

Tom Hickey

Tom Hickey is course leader for the Cultural and Critical Theory MA and deputy course leader for the Humanities BA(Hons). His research focuses on political and artistic representation, historiographical theory and the scientific method, the theorisation of the contemporary world order, and new developments in critical theory.

Tom was the co-editor of Democracy: The Long Revolution (Continuum, 2007), a collection of historical essays on the struggle for democracy in England. He also helped to curate Fragile Identities: Politics, Remembrance and Representation, an international festival on the work of the South African artist William Kentridge.

Every two years, Tom jointly organises the international conference Globalisation and Resistance to challenge the political paradigms of capitalist globalisation and neoliberalism.

Other teaching staff include Mark Devenney, Nicola Clewer, Jonathan Gilhooly, Cathy Bergin, Clare Woodford, Gillian Scott, Victoria Margree, Anita Rupprecht, Paul Hopper and Anthony Leaker

Location

Campus where this course is taught

Accommodation

Maps

Accommodation

University building

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