Uncatalogued (George Washington Wilson & Co., Aberdeen Library Special Collections)
The Film and Visual Culture Department at the University of Aberdeen offers students a rigorous training in the history and theory of the moving image, as well as the shifting terrain of twenty-first century visual culture. We take a set of foundational questions—What is film? What is cinema? What is visual culture?—as sites of ongoing critical exploration and technological change. In research and teaching at both the undergraduate and post-graduate levels, Film and Visual Culture combines the close analysis of visual objects and artefacts—analogue and digital, moving and still, underground and mainstream—with theories of visual representation, production, and circulation.
Our curriculum emphasizes comparative thinking and theoretical reflection, as well as an integrated approach to creative practice. We introduce students to the canon and its counter-parts, traditions of thought and new movements in the discipline. Our aim is to train students to become active participants in their own visual culture, as careful scholars and creative practitioners. Film and Visual Culture students learn to think within the movements of cinema and to pursue questions beyond the film frame. At the undergraduate level, we offer Single and Joint Honours degrees. At the post-graduate level, we offer a taught Master’s degree in Visual Culture and a Ph.D. in Film and Visual Culture.
The Department is based in the School of Language and Literature and we maintain close ties with The Centre for Modern Thought. These disciplinary connections invite cross-disciplinary thought, conversation, and research. The University of Aberdeen is an ancient institution of higher education, founded in 1495 on the shores of Northeast Scotland. Here, students have access to world-class research facilities and a visual culture of mountains and sea.
We invite you to learn more about our Department. If this site does not answer the questions you have, please consider attending one of our Open Days, or making an appointment to visit our campus at another time and speak with one of our members of staff.