Postgraduate Art History 2022-2023

The course offers an introduction to the intersections of art and Christianity, from the earliest days of the institution to the present. Through detailed examination of art and architecture, students will engage with some the church’s earliest debates and conversations, defining the spaces in which Christians worshipped and central identity of Christianity as it existed both in experience and in the imagination of people throughout its 2000-year history. Whereas Judaism and Islam restrict the making of images, Christianity was one of the greatest patrons of the arts, recognising visual culture’s intrinsic power in shaping the minds of the faithful and potential converts. The strategies the Church employed were innovative and successful, but always remined debated and significantly contributing the urge towards Reformation in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.

This core course focuses on methodological enquiry into art and Christianity through team-taught sessions by Divinity and Art History staff through organised research seminars. The course provides training and support for a small independent research project attached to this course but also the dissertation that concludes the programme.

This core course focuses on Christian art displayed in various sites and institutions in Aberdeen and further afield in Scotland, supported by class-based sessions. Students will meet with curators and custodians to engage with issues of collecting, display and care of devotional objects as part of their daily usage and/or afterlives.

This core course considers the aesthetic tradition within biblical and systematic theology. Traditions of iconography will be discussed as will ideas of participation and semiotic theory. It offers an overview of the figures and movements in theological aesthetics beginning in Hebrew and bronze age concepts of the representation of the deity running to figures such as Augustine, Aquinas, Eastern traditions, The Reformers, Counter Reformers, Barth, von Balthasar featuring along the way.

Preparation for 18,000-word dissertation written on a topic related to the student's taught Master's programme and agreed to by the supervisor and the programme co-ordinator.

A dissertation written on a topic related to the student's taught Master's programme and agreed to by the supervisor and the programme co-ordinator.