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This course looks to further equip professionals with necessary skills for the visual arts industries, as well as providing academic support for those professionals who are upgrading their professional degree status through postgraduate study. As such, the course will aim to share knowledge on basic application writing as well as writing funding proposals/residency and portfolio requirements for the arts sector in particular. As many students who are part of this course are already professionals, peer knowledge sharing is considered an invaluable resource during these classes. The course will also look at the particularities of different types of art writing, including art reviewing, art historical and art criticism, visiting exhibitions to develop critical dialogue around notions of ‘aesthetics’. The course will also actively offer support to students for their Critical Theories and Visual Culture course as well as their Research Paper throughout the year.

Honours Research Paper (FINA4022A)

The Critical Theories and Visual Culture Seminar Course aims to prepare you for the independent research project. As part of the Critical Theories and Visual Culture course, it is important that you begin to identify areas of interest for your research paper and then develop a focused research question out of these. The course provides a theoretical framework via a survey of the ideas that informs art critical writing, however it is up to you to pursue further independent research and reading using our discussions and readings as a starting point.

The research paper (6000-7000 words) that forms the main outcome of the Critical Theories and Visual Cultures course is an Honours-level submission. You are required to present an original argument which attempts to answer the main research question and sub-questions you have identified and to substantiate and justify this position in relation to other research and writing in the field on which you have chosen to write.

The course requires you to locate an area of art practice or visual culture that you would research within a particular theoretical framework and orientation. You are required to research this practice or cultural form with a particular question in mind, i.e. to formulate a position or thesis that you want to prove or disprove with regards to the practice (the more focused the question, the better). If you are addressing questions around the production of a mode of visual culture, make sure you have concrete instances and examples to analyse and discuss, and that you are able to contextualise these.

Alongside your discussion of practice, the paper requires you to select an appropriate set of theoretical ideas and concepts for the analysis of this practice. You are required to demonstrate a sound understanding and depth of reading in the relevant theory and to apply this to the practice you have chosen to discuss. Theories covered in our coursework serve as a starting point for this, but further reading and research is required on those ideas and thinkers. Think carefully through the methodology of presentation of the research paper –does it fit your mode of analysis (e.g. if your work is dealing with oral histories, could you research paper perhaps be presented with audio or as a video documentary component or as a video documentary or sound archive?). Before engaging any human participants, Honours students need to apply for ethics clearance – please see the relevant section in this Handbook.

The research paper is evaluated on various levels, but mainly on your ability to focus on a specific question in relationship to a field of art or cultural practice; to demonstrate a depth of reading in the relevant theory and writing; to formulate your own argument and to situate this discussion within the contemporary, postcolonial context. The paper also requires you to engage with the form of the work that you engage with – what is the materiality, medium, affect of the work. It must be noted that the paper is an independent research project and it is very important to take ownership of this aspect of the project, to do drafts and develop your research and argument, which requires time and consistent work over the year. This is not a project you can rush at the end. You will each have an individual supervisor who works with you on your prac, and the same kind of sustained engagement with your prac supervision must be maintained in your research paper.