3. Course Structure 3.1 Bachelor of Arts Honours in the field of Fine Art
Critical Theories and Visual Cultures (FINA 4019A)
The Bachelor of Arts Honours in the field of Fine Art is a one year fulltime or two years part-time degree.
The course engages with visual arts, film, curatorial practice, ethnography, the book, narrative forms and popular culture through a range of theories drawn from aesthetics, Marxism, psychoanalysis, post-structuralism, post-colonialism, performance studies, feminism and intersectional studies of race and gender. These will serve as a basis to refine your critical thinking applied to both your written research and studio practice. You will gain a solid understanding of different trajectories and histories of critical theory through an emphasis on the close reading of primary and original texts. In a similar way, students will be introduced to contemporary practices and cultural forms that traverse disciplinary boundaries and media allowing them to become familiar with ways of articulating positions in both theory and practice.
Programme Code: AHA00 / Plan Code: AFAFIN40 NQF Level exit: 8 / NQF Credits: 122 The BA Hons in the field of Fine Art is made up of the following courses: • • • • •
Professional Practice in Fine Arts (FINA 4018A) (first semester) Critical Theories and Visual Cultures (FINA4019A) (first semester) Fine Arts IVA (FINA 4020A) (first semester) Fine Arts IVB (FINA 4021A) (second semester) Research Project (FINA4022A) (second semester)
With the permission of Senate, students may choose a cognate Honours level course offered by another discipline as an alternative to the Professional Practice in Fine Arts. The BA Hons in the Field of Fine Art programme also includes a Research Project (FINA 4022A) in the second semester.
The course will strengthen your capacity to conceptualise and formulate your own research projects and to apply this as a methodology in the studio. Ideas and practices are engaged with from the perspective of the postcolonial South African and African contexts and a Global South positioning. We ground our approach to contemporary questions and problems of representation from a point of view embedded in our own context, and also critically engage the very categories of West, NonWest and Global South and Global North. The course focuses not only on visual art, but on an expanded field of visual, aural, and spatial practices that respond to current social, political and cultural issues.
Students coming into the BA Hons in the field of Fine Art degree degree will have completed a three-year Fine Arts or equivalent programme at another institution or will have the necessary professional experience to be considered for admission through the Recognition of Prior Learning (RPL). 12
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