BA History of Art | Final Honour School - Course Handbook

The BA Degree in History of Art aims to enable its students to:

• develop an historical understanding of the origins and functions of artefacts within specific world cultures;
• provide skills in the critical analysis of images and objects through the cultivation of “visual literacy”;
• develop skills in research, analysis and writing;
• engage and enhance their critical skills, imagination and creativity as an intrinsic part of an intense learning experience;
• promote skills of relevance to the continued professional development of art historical activity including visual and verbal skills, which are transferrable to a wide range of employment contexts and life experiences.

The intended learning outcomes of the Degree are as listed below.

The related teaching/learning methods and strategies, and assessment methods of the above are detailed within this handbook.

The Subject Benchmark Statement (which sets out expectations about standards of degrees in a range of subject areas) for the History of art, architecture and design 2019 can be found here; https://www.qaa.ac.uk/docs/qaa/subject-benchmark-statements/subject-benchmark-statement-history-of-art-architecture-and-design.pdf?sfvrsn=53e2cb81_5

The University awards framework describing the different qualifications that the University awards and how they relate to the national standards agreed for higher education qualifications can be found at https://academic.admin.ox.ac.uk/files/universityawardsframework1aug17pdf

This section of the Handbook provides an introduction to the aims and content of the course in the Second and Third Years, to the skills needed to pursue it successfully, and to the methods by which it is taught and examined. A regularly updated edition of this handbook can be access on Canvas.  As it will include the most up-to-date information, students should consult it regularly. 

Pattern of study

The Final Honour School (FHS) course is overseen by the FHS Coordinator, who in 2025-25 is Professor JP Park. The course of study in the Second and Third Years (which comprise the ‘Final Honour School’ for History of Art students) has a number of specific aims. It will engage you in the study of the role of images and material objects in the transmission of culture in the past and in the present. You will be introduced to the variety of art history’s subject matter, and to the many specialist forms of art historical and related scholarship that have developed in order to explore and appreciate that variety. You will gain a strong grounding in the development of the History of Art as a subject, the changing role of images as evidence of past and present cultures, and the intellectual foundations of the discipline. The course will also ask you critically to assess art historians’ and other scholars’ use of evidence in their scholarly writing, enabling you to participate in, rather than simply summarise their debates. You will consider how primary evidence can be employed in art-historical argument and, through the reading of set texts, you will have opportunities to reflect on the methods of art historians and on the literary forms of art historical and related writing, both now and in the past. In your coursework, you will develop an understanding of what constitutes an art-historical problem, be able to identify the appropriate methodological approach(es), find relevant secondary literature, identify primary sources (visual as well as textual), collect information, process it appropriately, set out an argument and evidence coherently, and present it within the available time in a clearly organised format.

The basic elements of the syllabus are set out in the Examination Regulations. In the case of the Core Course, the Further and Special Subjects, and the Undergraduate thesis, additional detailed specifications (e.g., regarding set texts or images, format for essays and theses, etc.) are provided in the Handbook.

The syllabus is made up of the core course on ‘Approaches to the History of Art’ and more specialised papers from which you will be able to choose particular options. When considering your FHS course choices, please note that some courses are offered by other departments and faculties, which may have quite different patterns of teaching and even assessment than is the case for Department of History of Art courses. There is also the requirement to write a thesis, a substantial piece of work on a subject of your choice, based on a combination of primary source material (textual as well as visual) and in-depth readings related to the broader art historical context. The FHS syllabus also continues to require you to study art produced in different time periods and made by and for societies across a wide geographical range. Increasingly as the course progresses, this engagement will be through the intensive study of primary texts and visual material. It offers both a greater range of choices than was available to students studying for the First Year Preliminary Examination, and also expects students to engage with art historical questions at a higher level of sophistication.

Approaches to the History of Art is the History of Art FHS core course and will usually involve lectures and classes, with tutorials arranged in one or more terms. It is designed to provide students with a set of methodological tools and an explicit historiographical apparatus to analyse the texts, images and objects encountered in the other FHS courses and in the writing of the thesis. Further information about the course is found in Section 3.

Further Subjects engage with themes in cultural history, drawing upon a range of visual and textual sources. Teaching of Further Subjects takes place in the Hilary Term of the Second Year, but you will be asked to apply for them at the start of Trinity Term of your first year, since some may be capped or require foreign language skills. Section 4 contains descriptions of and further information about the individual Further Subjects available to History of Art students.

Classical, Pre-Modern and Non-Western Options and Modern Art Options are taken by students in their Second Year, with one option selected in the first category and one in the second. These options ensure that students will complete the degree with knowledge of a variety of historical periods and geographical areas. Since these options are offered by a wide range of faculties (including Classics, Oriental Studies, Archaeology and Anthropology, Modern Languages, and the Ruskin School of Art), students will also be exposed to many different approaches to visual and material culture when taking these options, from the literary to the anthropological, and from that of the archaeologist to that of the contemporary art practitioner. On these options, see Sections 5 and 6.

Special Subjects enable undergraduates to work very closely with primary visual and textual sources, constructing their own understanding of a given subject from the original evidence. Critical and rigorous engagement with that evidence is at the core of the Special Subject. Special Subjects are taken in Michaelmas Term of your Third Year. It is the only part of the syllabus to be examined through two components. One of these, a three-hour examination paper, requires comment on a number of passages (known as ‘gobbets’) or individual images taken from the full range of texts and images prescribed for a particular Special Subject. The other assessment consists of a 6,000-word extended essay, to be submitted before the beginning of Hilary Term of the Third Year, on a subject chosen from a list of questions provided by the examiners around the middle of the Michaelmas Term of the Third Year. This will provide you with the opportunity both to demonstrate your knowledge of the source material and the wider historiographical debate about a particular issue or problem and to submit a well-constructed piece of work, displaying a full scholarly apparatus of references and bibliography, on a scale that is appropriate to the depth of study required of a Special Subject. Section 7 contains descriptions of the various Special Subjects available to History of Art undergraduates and details of their prescribed texts and images, which as you will see are considerably more extensive than those prescribed for the Further Subjects.

The Special Subject Extended Essay tests your ability to conceptualise and structure a substantial (6,000-word) essay on one of a selected group of questions that the examiners of that Special Subject will propose around the middle of Michaelmas Term of the Third Year. It is intended that this essay be written on the basis both of extensive secondary reading and knowledge of the primary textual and visual sources prescribed for the Special Subject, and will provide an opportunity to demonstrate both your familiarity with these sources and your ability to interpret them critically and intuitively.

The Undergraduate Thesis will be one of the most satisfying pieces of work that you produce while pursuing the History of Art degree at Oxford: an opportunity to select a topic entirely independently and to devise your own research strategy to explore it in detail. You will be encouraged to begin thinking about a possible subject for a thesis in Trinity Term of your Second Year, if not earlier. All undergraduates will receive tutorial guidance and support in thinking about the practicalities of researching a chosen topic, and later in bringing together the source material, constructing an argument, and drafting a plan for writing the thesis itself. The thesis is to be no longer than 12,000 words, including references and any appendices, but excluding the bibliography. Practical advice and detailed regulations for writing theses are in Section VIII.

Full details of all FHS course options and requirements (including information about availability, required languages, capping, assessment, etc.) can be found in Sections 3-8. The tables presented on the following two pages are merely intended to provide students with a general, term-by-term overview of teaching patterns.

The following table outlines the Second Year programme and teaching pattern.

*Because of the varied teaching patterns of the available Classical and Modern Art options, the FHS Coordinator and your College Tutor will guide you in making your option choices spread across your workload over the year.

The following table outlines the Third Year programme and teaching pattern.

Plus exam revision classes for core and optional courses in TT.

As in the First Year, you will need to make a diary and plan your work time carefully. You should expect to work an approximately 40-hour week, including contact hours and private study. But everyone works to a different personal pattern. Should you find the work becoming unduly stressful at any point, you should not hesitate to talk with your tutors in the Department and in your college, who will be able and happy to advise you and to refer you to additional academic and pastoral support if this is needed.

In the History of Art FHS, the forms of teaching are generally the same as in the First Year, but the expectations of tutors are more rigorous and exacting. The forms of teaching, which are explained in detail below, consist of tutorials, lectures, and classes, with different courses using different combinations of these possible options. The differences may be particularly marked in the case of courses offered by other departments and faculties in comparison to Department of History of Art courses.

Tutorials are a principal form of teaching.  Up to seven or eight tutorials may be arranged over a single term for an individual course. Each tutorial will usually involve a pair of students and a tutor, although in some cases the student may be allocated individual tutorials and in others may be in small groups of three or four students. For the Undergraduate thesis, students will be assigned an expert supervisor who will run one-to-one tutorials.

A tutor’s approach to the conduct of tutorials will vary to some degree, reflecting his/her personality, intellectual interests and chosen approach, and an assessment of the capabilities, experience or interests of the students. What can be said is that the tutorial is not primarily about the learning of facts and the provision of information about a subject. This is not an occasion for a mini-lecture by the tutor, not an occasion for telling you things.  The tutor will obviously correct errors of fact and misunderstanding, and suggest ways to improve your techniques of argument and presentation.  But essentially s/he will engage with your argument.  The tutor may try to attack your argument, to put forward an alternative interpretation to which you need to respond.  The point of a tutorial is to develop creative discussion of the basis of the analysis which you have presented, trying to develop themes, deepen particular points, suggest qualifications etc.  (The literary critic F.R. Leavis famously characterised academic discourse as a process of ‘That is so, isn’t it?, followed by ‘Yes, but…’.)  The tutorial should be a constructive dialogue between yourself, your tutorial partner(s) and your tutor.  You need to be an active participant, positively engaged, prepared to stick up for yourself, ready to consider critically your tutor’s arguments.  A good tutorial should be invigorating (and tiring) for all those involved.  You should also remember that a tutorial is helping you to construct the framework of an approach to a period, a culture or a series of cultures.  By definition, it cannot give you a complete picture, and is not setting out to do so.  Once you have the structure in place, you can go on to flesh out particular aspects which interest you, and make cross-connections with other things which you have studied.  No tutorial is a self-contained entity, nor is any essay; they form part of an ongoing process of developing your own historical imagination, an attitude to history which is yours.

This sense of positive engagement is the running theme.  You should not be a passive recipient, imbibing knowledge from book, visual image, lecture or tutor.  You are not trying to find the ‘right’ answer.  You will be involved in a continuous process of arguing, with your reading, with your tutor, with your fellow students, above all with yourself.  What we are trying to cultivate is a critical (constructively critical) habit of mind which should become second nature.

Students may find the feedback from tutorials varying in style and quantity between tutors. Feedback during tutorials will be primarily given orally: in dialogue, by asking questions, your tutor will lead you to the strengths and weaknesses in your argument. Usually, you will also find some written comments or questions on making reference to factual errors, or comment on stylistic strengths and weaknesses, the larger structure of the argument, issues omitted or key works not read. However, the oral response of your tutor is your main feedback. Most tutors won’t give you a mark, as writing your tutorial essays is a learning process towards a critical engagement with the materials, not a result. Writing a tutorial essay is not, of course, the same thing as an essay written in an examination – but it is a preparation towards it. The dialogue between tutor and student, and the larger discussion between a tutorial group constitute an important element of formative assessment. The style of this verbal commentary may vary amongst tutors, some of whom will offer commentary/assessment on performance in a formalized manner at a particular point in the tutorial, others offering advice, criticism and suggestion in a more extensive and informal way. Any successful tutorial will provide substantial, detailed feedback, but students should be alert to interpreting and understanding the combination of written and verbal assessment, criticism and encouragement received.

Academic progress

If you have any issues with teaching or supervision please raise these as soon as possible so that they can be addressed promptly. Details of who to contact are provided in ‘Feedback and Complaints Procedures’ in this handbook.

In addition to the organisation of most tutorials (especially after the First Year) and some classes, colleges are responsible for the collection and delivery of termly reports to undergraduates on their work over the term via TMS (Teaching Management System). The reading of reports (an occasion often known as ‘Collections’) provides an opportunity for the student to discuss her or his progress with a tutor or other college officer. Colleges will also organise practice examinations (also known as ‘Collections’) at the start of the following term, providing students with the incentive to consolidate their previous term’s work, and to practise their examination technique.

Lectures continue to be offered for many of the courses taken in the Second and Third Years, although these will not necessarily be held in the same term in which you will be having tutorials and/or classes for the course. Compared to some of the lectures you will have attended in the first year, you will find that lectures directed at FHS papers will be more focused: they will aim to open up fresh aspects of a paper or topic, and will not in most cases be intended to give you an introductory outline to the subject as a whole. Lectures are for instruction and stimulus beyond what can be obtained from your reading: they reflect the benefits of a research-active academic culture in which lecturers will have their own specific appreciation and interpretation of these art historical issues based on serious study. But in consequence, it should not be assumed that lectures intended for the FHS will serve up a subject on a plate, ready for straightforward regurgitation to examiners. In a few courses, screenings of films will be offered in addition to or instead of formal lectures.

Please note: The guiding purpose behind lectures offered in conjunction with Second- and Third Year courses is fundamentally different from the often more general and introductory types of lectures offered in the First Year. By the Second Year of the History of Art degree, it is assumed that you will be able to undertake such basic orientation on a new subject on your own initiative.

Classes are used as a further means of teaching and are no less important a component of your courses than tutorials. You will already have had experience of class-based teaching during the first year. Classes provide a very different learning experience from tutorials. Because of the larger number of students involved, the terms of intellectual exchange between students and tutor are altered, and students have greater opportunities for working in groups and for learning from each other.

The precise purpose and form of any series of classes is largely determined by a range of factors that a class tutor will take into consideration: the particular challenges of the material to be discussed, the range of prior knowledge within the group and the relationship of the classes to lectures and tutorials. However, in general, classes may involve a variety of things: an oral presentation by one or more students followed by a discussion; a series of short presentations by several students; collective presentations by groups of students; or the discussion of particular problems and themes identified in advance. The class tutor may mix these approaches both within sessions and between them.

Many classes will involve some kind of oral presentation (often involving the use of PowerPoint slides), and it is important to appreciate the ways in which a successful presentation differs from a tutorial essay. The purpose of a presentation will vary from class to class, and typically tutors will brief students about how the presentation will contribute to the class as a whole. For example, in a presentation that is intended to stimulate debate among students already familiar with the material, the student should not merely convey standard factual information; rather, they should identify issues for discussion by the group. Such presentation can thus often be much more open-ended than a tutorial essay. It is important to stress the responsibility of students making presentations towards other members of the class. A poorly researched, ill-thought-out, or unduly thin presentation can inhibit the learning of the entire class in the session in which it is made. Those students who are not presenting in any given week will nevertheless be expected to have prepared for the class by having undertaken a body of reading that will have been identified by the class tutor. Students are encouraged to use the classes to raise problems they have encountered in their reading, particularly in the interpretation of texts and images.

Successful classes depend on a range of skills, many of which are shared with tutorials, but some of which are developed much further. In common with tutorials, classes require careful preparation, a willingness to ask questions (both of the tutor and of other students), attentive and purposeful listening, and the ability to refine and defend an argument in the light of discussion. Among those skills that classes take further are: an understanding of how individuals interact in groups; the playing of a variety of roles within the group (leading, supporting, challenging, ice-breaking), and some tutors may use student chairs to direct the discussion; working collaboratively with others; presenting material in an engaging, attention-grabbing manner; and, in some cases, the effective use of visual materials in making oral presentations.

Bibliographies will either be provided by your tutor for the specific topics on which you have chosen to write essays, or the tutor may talk you through essential and otherwise important or relevant books on a more substantial course bibliography when setting up a topic for the next essay. In many faculties (including the History Faculty), general course bibliographies are available through ORLO or Canvas.

As always, however, you should be prepared to use your own initiative and to supplement bibliographies you may have been given or directed towards by a willingness to be resourceful and adventurous in discovering additional books and articles. Do not assume that any of the bibliographies given out by tutors or course convenors, however apparently voluminous, represent everything published, even in recent years, on a particular subject. It is particularly important to be aware of this when compiling bibliographies and amassing reading for your thesis and your Special Subject Extended Essay. In getting beyond the course bibliographies and those provided by tutors, on-line bibliographic resources are particularly useful: for more details of these see Section XV on ‘Information Technology’.

Languages are an important part of art historical enquiry. It is obvious that a society that writes and speaks a language other than English requires knowledge of that language to be understood in any depth. At Oxford, you will be expected to make an effort to maintain or learn any relevant languages if you are to study the visual culture of another society at a specialised level. Strong language skills may be necessary for admittance to some FHS options (see below) or to undertake some Undergraduate thesis topics.

Special classes called ‘French for Art Historians’ and ‘Italian for Art Historians’ are organised by and run by the Oxford University Language Centre.  Talk to your college tutor and the FHS Coordinator if you would like to attend. General courses in French and other languages are also available through the Language Centre – please discuss this with your college tutor. 

Please note: Some FHS options require an ability to read a modern foreign language. The proportion of texts set in a foreign language varies among these subjects; in some it is quite small, and the relevance of the language skill may primarily lie in the ability to read relevant secondary books or articles. But if you think you may want to study one of these subjects you should take steps early on to keep up or improve your knowledge of the relevant language: the Language Teaching Centre offers you an excellent opportunity to do so. Knowledge of foreign languages also of course broadens the scope of all of your secondary reading, equips you to benefit more from travel, may help you in your Undergraduate thesis, and provides a marketable additional skill when it comes to seeking employment after university.

Study for the Final Honour School will occupy just 21 months of your life from October of your Second Year to June of your Third Year. But at the end of it, you will have acquired skills and knowledge that will make you an art historian for life. As such you will have enormous opportunities for a satisfying career in a wide range of spheres.

Students who have graduated from the University of Oxford with an Honours degree in History of Art will have acquired by the end of three years of intensive study a wide range of skills and abilities. Students will have, among other things:

• demonstrated a knowledge and understanding of the origins and functions of artefacts within specific world cultures, characterised by range, depth and conceptual sophistication.
• engaged and enhanced their critical skills, imagination and creativity as an intrinsic part of an intense learning experience in a demanding tutorial system.
• developed the skill of independent, analytically rigorous thinking, drawing on technical skills in art historical investigation and exposition.
• acquired skills, some of relevance to the continued professional development of art historical understanding, others which are transferable to a wide range of employment contexts and life experiences.

These latter, transferable, skills involve:

• the ability to find information, organise and deploy it.
• the ability to draw on such information to consider and solve complex problems in ways that are imaginative and analytically acute, yet sensitive to the needs and cultural expectations of others.
• the ability to work well both independently with a strong sense of self-direction, and in constructive cooperation with others.
• the ability to effectively structure and communicate ideas in a variety of written and oral formats.
• the ability to plan and organise the use of time effectively.

Your tutors certainly hope that some of you will want to continue to be active art historians, by going on to do research as a graduate student, by entering the teaching profession, in which it is especially vital that the history of art continues to be strong and dynamically and effectively taught, or by training to work in a museum, gallery, auction house, library or archive. Tutors can advise you on all these possibilities.

But there are many art historians working in the professions beyond the academy and the museum/gallery world.  Art historians, thanks to the range of skills acquired in their undergraduate courses, flourish in a wide range of careers.  You should make use of The Careers Service at 56 Banbury Road, with information also available online at: https://www.careers.ox.ac.uk/

The Careers Service has a large library for you to consult, and the advisors there have a wealth of experience and suggestions. You should visit the Careers Service first of all during your Second Year, in order to start narrowing down your choices. The Oxford Careers Fair takes place in Michaelmas Term every year, bringing together employers from a wide range of sectors throughout the UK to talk about graduate opportunities and postgraduate study options. You should not get yourself into the situation where a preoccupation with finding a job damages your work in the Third Year, when the Special Subject, the thesis and revision for your final examinations will require a very high proportion of your time.

Above all, however, life after the Final Honour School will be all the better if you have enjoyed and taken the fullest opportunity to study the History of Art in its broadest sense while here. The paths of art history are never straight and narrow, and studying at Oxford gives you every opportunity to explore their variety and complexities.

Finally, a reminder that a wide range of information and training materials are available to help you develop your academic sills – including time management, research and library skills, referencing, revision skills and academic writing – through the Oxford Students website: http://www.ox.ac.uk/students/academic/guidance/skills.

Tabular overview of Classical, Pre-Modern and Non-Western Art Options available in 2025–26

Note: Your college tutor may wish to contact the convenor of the course for further information – please do not contact the convenor directly yourself.

The nature and purpose of Classical, Pre-Modern, Non-Western Art Options

History of Art undergraduates take their Classical, Pre-Modern and Non-Western Art Option in the Second Year. There are up to nine options to choose from (depending on availability), ranging widely both geographically and chronologically. These options ensure that students will complete the degree with knowledge of a variety of historical periods and geographical areas. Since these options are offered by a wide range of faculties (including Classics, Oriental Studies, and Archaeology and Anthropology), students will also be exposed to many different approaches to visual and material culture when taking these options, from the archaeological to the anthropological. They will enable you to study subjects in which tutors and convenors are themselves actively engaged in research, and your choice may well arouse interests that you yourself may wish to pursue subsequently, for instance, in the Undergraduate thesis. However, please note that the choice of subject for your Undergraduate thesis, which you will complete in the Third Year, may impose certain restrictions on the use you may make of material from the thesis in answering questions in other papers, including in the examination for the Classical, Pre-Modern or Non-Western Art Option. These restrictions are set out in the Regulations relating to the Undergraduate thesis.

These options are taught in a variety of ways, but usually include a combination of tutorials (arranged by your college tutor) and lectures. Some also involve university classes (arranged through by the convenor of each option). Please read the section on ‘Forms of Teaching’ in Section 2) for guidance on how to get the most out of these different forms of teaching. When considering your course choices, please keep in mind that some courses are offered by other departments and faculties, which may have quite different patterns of teaching than is the case for Department of History of Art courses.

All Classical, Pre-Modern and Non-Western Art Options are examined in a single three-hour paper in the relevant Final Honours School. You should consult past examination papers in the subjects in which you are interested in order to gain an idea of what is involved in the course. These are available in the relevant faculty library, in many college libraries, and on-line. For more information on how to access past exam papers, follow this link: https://www.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/collections-and-resources/past-exam-papers. 

Capping of Classical, Pre-Modern and Non-Western Art Options

Since the demand for some of these options may exceed the capacity of the relevant faculty to teach them, some options may be ‘capped’. This means that a ceiling has had to be placed on the number permitted to enrol in the course. Information on which Further Subjects have been capped and the number of places available in each case for History of Art students can be found in the tabular overview of Further Subjects above. You are required to select more than one option as your first choice cannot always be guaranteed.

Please note: Course descriptions and details of convenors, lectures, classes, tutorials, etc. may change and students are thus advised to consult the handbooks and websites of the relevant faculties (i.e., Classics, Oriental Studies, and Archaeology and Anthropology), as well as the latest on-line version of the History of Art FHS Handbook. The faculties’ handbooks and websites should also be consulted for information about bibliographies, prescribed texts and images, etc.

Greek Art and Archaeology, c.500–300 BC

(FHS: Archaeology and Anthropology, Classical Archaeology and Ancient History)

Course Convenor: Dr Rachel Woods (Classics)

The images and monuments of the fifth century BC made a decisive break with the visual modes of the archaic aristocracy and established the influential idea that images should try to look like what and whom they represent. This subject involves the study of the buildings and architecture of classical Greek cities and sanctuaries as well as the images and artefacts that were displayed in them, and one of its major themes is the swift emergence and consolidation of this revolutionary way of seeing and representing that we know as ‘Classical art’. The images and objects are best studied in their archaeological and broader historical contexts, and typical questions to ask about them would include: What were they used for? Who paid for them, made them and looked at them? And what ideas and priorities did they express in their local settings?
This paper looks at the full range of ancient artefacts, from bronze statues and marble temples to painted pots and clay figurines. The Ashmolean Museum has a fine collection of relevant objects, especially of painted pottery, and the Cast Gallery houses plaster copies of many of the key sculptured monuments of the period, from the Delphi Charioteer and the Olympia sculptures to portrait statues of Demosthenes and Alexander the Great. The examination paper reflects the broad division of the evidence into (A) architecture, urbanism, buildings; (B) statues, reliefs, and sculptures; and (CT’s) wallpaintings, mosaics, painted pottery, and other artefacts.
A wide range of lectures and classes are given throughout each academic year - on sculpture, wallpainting, vase-painting, and architecture.

J.J. Pollitt, Art and experience in Classical Greece (Cambridge, 1972) is a good, brief introduction.

The course is taught via a series of lectures in Hilary and Trinity Terms, with tutorials offered in either Michaelmas or Trinity Term. The course is is examined by a three-hour paper at the end of the Third Year.

Art under the Roman Empire, AD 14–337

(FHS: Faculty of Classics, Greek and Roman Archaeology)

Course Convenor: Prof. Peter Stewart (Classics)

The long imperial Roman peace has left the densest and most varied record of artistic and visual representation of any period of antiquity, and at the height of the empire more cities, communities, and individuals than ever before came to invest in the 'classical' culture of monumental representation. The course studies the art and visual culture of the Roman Empire in its physical, social, and historical contexts.

The period saw the creation of a new imperial iconography—the good emperor portrayed in exemplary roles and activities at peace and war. These images were deployed in a wide range of media and contexts in Rome and around the empire, where the imperial image competed with a variety of other representations, from the public monuments of city aristocrats to the tombs of wealthy freed slaves. The course studies the way in which Roman images, self-representation, and art were moulded by their local contexts and functions and by the concerns and values of their target viewers and ‘user-groups’.

Students learn about major monuments in Rome and Italy and other leading centres of the empire (such as Aphrodisias, Athens, Ephesus, and Lepcis Magna) and about the main strands and contexts of representation in the eastern and western provinces. They will become familiar with the main media and categories of surviving images - statues, portrait busts, historical reliefs, funerary monuments, cameos, wallpaintings, mosaics, silverware, and coins and learn how to analyse and interpret Roman art and images in well-documented contexts and how to assess the relation between written and visual evidence.

The course is taught via a series of lectures running through all three terms, with tutorials offered in either Michaelmas or Trinity Term. It is examined by a three-hour paper at the end of the Third Year.

Hellenistic Art and Archaeology, 330–30 BC   

(FHS: Faculty of Classics, Greek and Roman Archaeology)

Course Convenors:  Prof. Maria Stamatopoulou (Lincoln College)

The Macedonian conquest of Asia brought a forced expansion of the Greek imagination and environment that has left an abundant and varied trace in the visual and material culture of the period. The course studies major themes, contexts, and media of Hellenistic art, set against the dense archaeology of the best-preserved cities and sites of the period – from Macedonia to Bactria, from the Aegean to central Italy. The material includes distinctive categories of object, such as bronzeware, clay seals, gems, glassware, grave stelai, jewellery, mosaics, silverware, statues in bronze, statues in marble, terracottas, and wall paintings.

Major subjects include: (1) the art and cities of the kings at the height of their power in the late fourth and third centuries BC, (2) the visual remains of Greek-local interaction in Egypt and Iran, (3) the monuments of the old city-states that flourished within and between the Macedonian kingdoms, and (4) the complex process of acculturation by which the apparatus and technology of Hellenistic art and material culture were adopted in Italy.

Introductory Bibliography:
Burn, L. Hellenistic Art (London 2004)
Dillon, S.  Ancient Greek Portrait Sculpture: Contexts, Subjects, and Styles (Cambridge 2006), esp. ch. 5
Pollitt, J.J. Art in the Hellenistic Age (Cambridge 1986)
Smith, R.R.R. Hellenistic Sculpture: A Handbook (London 1991)
Smith, R.R.R. Hellenistic Royal Portraits (Oxford 1988)
Venit, M. S.   Monumental Tombs of Ancient Alexandria: The Theater of the Dead (Cambridge 2002)
Wallace-Hadrill, A. Rome’s Cultural Revolution (Cambridge 2008)
Zanker, P. The Mask of Sokrates: The Image of the Intellectual in Antiquity (Berkeley 1995), ch. 2  

There are 16-20 lectures on Hellenistic Art and Archaeology given in two independent series in Hilary Term on an alternating two-year cycle and 6 lectures on Hellenistic sanctuaries in every second Michaelmas Term. Tutorials are given through the year, and there are 4 university revision classes in Trinity Term. The course is examined by a three-hour paper at the end of the Third Year.

Gothic Art through Medieval Eyes

Course Convenor: Professor Nancy Thebaut (History of Art)

This course will consider how medieval people looked at medieval art. Focusing on art and architecture made ca. 1200-1500 in western Europe, it will  consider the ways that material, technique, style, scale, and iconography shaped their reception. Special attention will be given to the ways that medieval people understood vision to operate and how images both facilitated and structured sight. Topics will include the optics of courtly love, the dangers of errant vision, gendered modes of looking, and visionary experiences of the divine. 

The course will be taught through a series of classes together with tutorials. It is examined by a three-hour paper at the end of the Third Year.

Visual Culture in Contemporary East Asia

Course Convenor: Professor JP Park (History of Art)

During the last century, China, Japan, and Korea experienced unprecedented levels of political, cultural, economic, and social transformation that confined and defined the practice of art and the artists themselves. We will pay particular attention to the way the artists of these cultures looked at their reality for inspiration in structuring their various projects. This overlap between art and society in modern East Asian states will introduce students of art history and Asian studies to a range of thought-provoking issues: the artist’s interaction with Western styles and techniques, modernism, political ideologies, government censorship, alienation from tradition, wars, popular culture, economic development, consumerism, and twenty-first-century globalization. In this seminar, students are expected to make sharp and critical analyses of how artistic trends and the tastes were formulated and instituted at given moments of these societies’ history. While examining a variety of media including paintings, prints, sculpture, commercial advertisements, propaganda posters, performance, animation, comics, and films, this course will also introduce a variety of scholarly studies, which are built upon different academic methodologies and perspectives. No previous knowledge of Asian art or culture is necessary.

The course will be assessed by examination at the end of the Third Year.

Ancient Egyptian Art and Architecture

(FHS: Oriental Studies, Egyptology and Ancient Near Eastern Studies with Archaeology and Anthropology)

Course Convenor: Prof. Elizabeth Frood (Oriental Studies)

Suspended 2025-26

This course surveys ancient Egyptian art from around 3000 BC to Graeco-Roman times, with examples and detailed material being drawn mainly from the second half of the period. The approach ranges from discussion of the position of art in Egyptian society to detailed study of individual artefacts and types. The Egyptian collections in the Ashmolean Museum are used for part of the course. The lectures move from architecture - notably temples and tombs - within which works belonging to other genres were sited, to relief, painting, statuary, decorative and ephemeral arts, genres such as the stela and the sarcophagus, and the legacy of Egyptian art in the West. Issues raised by the material include the nature of artistic traditions, art and agency, representational forms, text and image, and approaches to iconography. Some of these are explored in lectures and in classes and tutorials. Teaching is by lectures in Michaelmas and Hilary terms of the second year, with tutorials and classes normally held in the following Trinity Term. The course is assessed by examination at the end of the Third Year.

This course is an option in the BA in Egyptology and Ancient Near Eastern Studies that is available also to Art History and to Classical Archaeology and Ancient History.

Encountering South Asian Culture

Course Convenor: Dr Mallica Kumbera Landrus (Ashmolean Museum)

Art in South Asia presents a remarkable case study in the creation of a visual vocabulary and language of meaning. Students will be encouraged to explore a range of visual material from the Indian subcontinent, its long figural tradition, the issue of an icon in the Indian context, as well as artistic versus textual traditions, besides other relevant issues. Art will act as a focus, but the function of the sculptures will in large part be the subject.

The Ashmolean collections have some of the earliest sculptures from South Asia to arrive in any Western collection. As a University Museum with sumptuous objects from India, the Ashmolean is second to none. The students will have the opportunity to use the rich resources of the Museum’s collections to explore issues surrounding the use of art within ritual and as socio-political tools in South Asia.

Although no previous experience is necessary or expected, any student who feels that they might not have the necessary background for this course is encouraged to meet with the convenor before the first class. This may simply be a matter of reassurance or to develop an additional study plan if that seems appropriate.

The course is assessed by examination at the end of the Third Year.

American art

Course Convenor: Prof Charlene Villaseñor Black

This course provides an introductory survey of American visual art from the colonial era to the 1960s, including painting, sculpture, architecture, photography, and prints made by artists working in the United States and American artists living abroad. The history of American art is inseparable from the political and social contexts that shaped the foundation of the United States and a burgeoning picture of national identity that artists across time sought varyingly to represent, redefine, or resist. Proceeding both thematically and chronologically, the course explores significant art historical case studies along this trajectory, including colonial strategies for mapping a "New World"; portraiture and racial politics; landscape painting and environmental conservation; photography and the industrialized image; indigenous art and sovereignty; cultural nationalism and the construction of a "usable past"; the rise of modernism and postmodernism along with artistic movements such as Abstract Expressionism, Pop art, conceptualism, and Land art. Students gain familiarity with methods of close looking, visual analysis, and material studies as well as the diverse creative traditions that enrich American art. 

Topics In Islamic Art

Course Convenor: Dr Francesca Leoni (Ashmolean)

Developed around the Islamic collections of the University of Oxford’s renowned museums and libraries, this paper will introduce students to some of the most topical subjects in the pre-modern Islamic artistic tradition. Each week one object will function as a “gateway” to explore a range of themes and associated issues, amongst which aniconism and figurative art; religious and secular inspiration; gender and social status; models of artistic production and patronage; art as political and ideological tool; and the relationship between text and image. Art will thus be the starting point of a rich journey designed to familiarise students with the social and cultural context of the chosen works, in addition to questions of aesthetics, style and function.

Classes and tutorials will take place in the museums where the objects are held, giving students a chance to explore Oxford’s unparalleled collections and use them to broaden their knowledge and appreciation of Islamic art and culture.

No prior knowledge of the subject is required. However, it is strongly recommended that students acquaint themselves with the general history of the Islamic world and its visual culture by exploring the resources listed below both prior to start of the course and before the weekly classes.

Latin American Cinema

Course Convenor: Prof. Ben Bollig, Prof. María Blanco (Modern Languages)

This paper will provide you with the opportunity to discover and explore major movements in the history of cinema in the countries of Latin America, from the golden age of narrative film in the 1940s, to the radical experiments and manifestos of the 1950s and 60s to the slick blockbusters and internationally successful co-productions of the twenty-first century, including documentaries. The course encourages comparisons between directors, movements and films from different countries, through the lens of issues such as race, class, gender, social movements, ecology, and landscape. Students may also choose to focus on specific directors, normally chosen from the following list: Emilio Fernández, Tomás Gutiérrez Alea, María Luisa Bemberg, Alfonso Cuarón, Alejandro González Iñárritu, Lucrecia Martel, Fernando Meirelles, Glauber Rocha, Walter Salles, Nelson Pereira dos Santos, Fernando Solanas, Pablo Larraín, Patricio Guzmán. Spanish or Portuguese are not essential requirements but students should be aware that a number of films on the filmography do not have subtitles.

Tabular overview of Modern Art Options available in 2025-26

Please Note: Your college tutor may wish to contact the convenor of the course for further information – please do not contact the convenor directly yourself.

The nature and purpose of Modern Art Options

History of Art undergraduates will normally take their Modern Art Option in the Second Year. There are up to seven options to choose from (depending on availability), ranging widely both geographically and chronologically. These options ensure that students will complete the degree with knowledge of a variety of historical periods and geographical areas. Since these options are offered by a wide range of schools and faculties, students will also be exposed to many different approaches to visual and material culture when taking these options, from those used by literary theorists to those deployed by contemporary art practitioners. They will enable you to study subjects in which tutors and convenors are themselves actively engaged in research, and your choice may well arouse interests that you yourself may wish to pursue subsequently, for instance, in the undergraduate thesis. However, please note that the choice of subject for your undergraduate thesis, which you will complete in the Third Year, may impose certain restrictions on the use you may make of material from the thesis in answering questions in other papers, including in the examination for the Modern Art Option. These restrictions are set out in the Regulations relating to the undergraduate thesis.

Modern Art Options are taught in a variety of ways and can include different combinations of tutorials (arranged by your college tutor), classes (arranged through the convenor of each option), lectures and film screenings. Please read the section on ‘Forms of Teaching’ in Section 2.4 for guidance on how to get the most out of these different forms of teaching. When considering your course choices, please note that some courses are offered by other departments and faculties, which may have quite different patterns of teaching and even assessment than is the case for Department of History of Art courses.

Modern Art Options are examined either in a single three-hour paper in the relevant Final Honour School at the end of Trinity Term of the Third Year or by submitting an extended essay by the end of Week 9 of Hilary Term of the Second Year. You should consult past examination papers in the subjects in which you are interested in order to gain an idea of what they involve and find out from the relevant faculty whether sample extended essay questions are available. Past exams are available in the relevant faculty or school library, in many college libraries, and on-line. Information on how to access past exam papers is available here: https://www.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/collections-and-resources/past-exam-papers.

Only your candidate number, not your name, should appear on the title page of any extended essay submitted for the Modern Art Option. Failure to submit a required extended essay or lateness in submission are both extremely serious and can lead to outright failure of the whole examination. Where a candidate for any written examination in which a thesis (or other exercise) may be, or is required to be, submitted as part of that examination wishes on some reasonable grounds to be permitted to present such a thesis (or other exercise) later than the date prescribed by any statute, or regulation, the procedure shall be as follows:

(a) the candidate shall apply in writing through the Senior Tutor [of their college] to the Proctors for such permission enclosing the grounds for the application;

(b) the Proctors shall consult with the Chairman of Examiners about any such application and shall then decide whether or not to grant permission.

Please note: Any extended essays submitted for a Modern Art Option must conform to the standards outlined in the ‘Notes on plagiarism’ found in Section 8.2 below.

For any Modern Art Options examined by an extended essay, students must adhere to the submission, presentation, formatting and referencing criteria established by the Faculty, Department or School offering the course in question. This information can usually be found in the latest FHS Handbook of the relevant Faculty, Department or School. In the case of essays submitted for an option under the aegis of Modern Languages or the Ruskin School, the method of assessment differs in timing for History of Art students in that they are required to submit their essay in their second year of study (see Regulation).

Capping of Modern Art Options

Since the demand for some Modern Art Options may exceed the capacity of the relevant faculty or school to teach them, some options may be ‘capped’. This means that a ceiling has had to be placed on the number permitted to enrol in the course. Information on which options have been capped and the number of places available in each case for History of Art students can be found in the tabular overview found above. You are required to select more than one option as your first choice cannot always be guaranteed.

Please note: Course descriptions and details may change and students are thus advised to consult the handbooks and websites of the relevant faculties and schools (i.e., Modern Languages and the Ruskin School), as well as the latest on-line version of this Handbook via the HoA Students site of the History of Art area of Canvas. The faculties’ and schools’ handbooks and websites should also be consulted for information about bibliographies, prescribed texts and images, etc.

Literature and the Visual Arts in France

(FHS: Modern Languages, Special Subjects)

Course Convenor: Prof. Helen Swift (Modern Languages)

The paper offers students the opportunity to explore the different relations between literature and the visual arts from medieval times to the 19th century, focusing on a wide range of writers, artists and movements. Among the topics explored will be the way(s) language conveys images, and images tell stories; the uses of realism and fantasy in literature and art; and the links between word, picture and ‘message’ (including book illustration in manuscripts and early printed editions). Writers and artists examined include Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meun, Guillaume de Machaut, the Limbourg brothers, Poussin, Lebrun, Watteau, Marivaux, Diderot, Greuze, David, Baudelaire, Manet, Zola and Courbet.

The course is taught through 8 lectures in Michaelmas Term; 4 seminars and (per student) 1 tutorial in Hilary Term. It is assessed by an extended essay aggregating to about 6,000 words and not exceeding 8,000 words, on a title or titles from a list circulated by examiners on the Modern Languages Canvas at 10am on the Friday of Week 5 of Hilary Term and to be delivered by noon on the Monday of Week 10 of Hilary Term of the Second Year for History of Art students.

Introductory Readings:

J.J.G. Alexander, Medieval Illuminators and their Methods of Work (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992)

Andrew Taylor, ‘Authors, scribes, patrons, books’, in The Idea of the Vernacular: An Anthology of Middle English Literary Theory, 1280-1520, ed. Jocelyn Wogan-Browne, Nicholas Watson, Ruth Evans, and Andrew Taylor (Philadelphia: Penn State University Press, 1999), pp. 353-65

Alain Mérot (ed), Les Conférences de l’Académie Royale de peintre et de sculpture (2003)

Jacquline Lichtenstein, La couleur éloquente (1989)

Denis Diderot, Salons (especially 1761–67)

Philip Conisbee, Painting in Eighteenth-Century France (1981)

Louis Hautecoeur, Littérature et peinture en France du XVIIIe au XXe siècles (1963)

Baudelaire, Curiosités esthétiques (collected as Critique d’art, Folio)

J.A. Hiddleston, Baudelaire and the Art of Memory (1999)

Scott, David H.T., Pictorialist Poetics: Poetry and the Visual Arts in Nineteenth-Century France (1988)

Peter Collier and Ross Lethbridge (eds), Artistic Relations: Literature and the Visual Arts in Nineteenth-Century France (1994)

Zola, Le Ventre de Paris, and L’Œuvre, plus his art criticism, Ecrits sur l’art

William J. Berg, The Visual Novel: Zola and the Art of his Times (1992).

EUROPEAN CINEMA

(FHS: Modern Languages, Special Subjects)

Course Convenor: Prof Reidar Due (Magdalen College)

The course, which runs over Michaelmas and Hilary Terms, provides an introduction to methods and issues of film criticism, and to the work of some of the most important European filmmakers. Students will be encouraged to consider formal thematic and historical aspects of a range of European films (all screened in subtitled versions).

The first term outlines European art cinema from 1920 to the 1970s, focusing on the great movements—Russian formalism, German expressionism, Italian neo-realism, French New Wave, presenting the main concepts of film form and introducing each of the chosen films in its historical context.  The lectures and seminars in Hilary Term will focus on European cinema from the 1970s to the present, including countries not discussed in the first term. 

The course is taught through lectures and screenings held across 8 weeks in Michaelmas Term and 5 weeks in Hilary Term.  In Hilary Term the lectures and screenings are accompanied by weekly seminars in which students will be divided into two smaller groups and each student will give a presentation on one of the films screened that term, normally in pairs.  Students will need to attend both lectures and classes, are encouraged to attend the screenings, as well as produce one presentation during the second term. It is assessed by an extended essay aggregating to about 6,000 words and not exceeding 8,000 words, on a title or titles from a list circulated by examiners on the Modern Languages WebLearn at 10am on the Friday of Week 5 of Hilary Term and to be delivered by noon on the Monday of Week 10 of Hilary Term of the Second Year for History of Art students.

Introductory Readings:

John Hill and Pamela Church Gibson (eds), The Oxford Guide to Film Studies.

Robert Lapsley and Michael Westlake, Film Theory: An Introduction, 1988.

Gerald Mast, Marshall Cohen, Leo Braudy (eds), Film Theory and Criticism: Introductory Readings, 1974.

Susan Hayward, Key Concepts in Cinema Studies, 1996.

VISUAL CULTURE IN CONTEMPORARY EAST ASIA

Course Convenor: Professor JP Park (History of Art)

During the last century, China, Japan, and Korea experienced unprecedented levels of political, cultural, economic, and social transformation that confined and defined the practice of art and the artists themselves. We will pay particular attention to the way the artists of these cultures looked at their reality for inspiration in structuring their various projects. This overlap between art and society in modern East Asian states will introduce students of art history and Asian studies to a range of thought-provoking issues: the artist’s interaction with Western styles and techniques, modernism, political ideologies, government censorship, alienation from tradition, wars, popular culture, economic development, consumerism, and twenty-first-century globalization. In this seminar, students are expected to make sharp and critical analyses of how artistic trends and the tastes were formulated and instituted at given moments of these societies’ history. While examining a variety of media including paintings, prints, sculpture, commercial advertisements, propaganda posters, performance, animation, comics, and films, this course will also introduce a variety of scholarly studies, which are built upon different academic methodologies and perspectives. No previous knowledge of Asian art or culture is necessary.

The course is assessed by examination at the end of the Third Year.

History and Theory of Visual Culture since 1900

Course Convenor: Prof. Jason Gaiger (Ruskin School of Art)

 Please note: ‘History and Theory of Visual Culture since 1900’ (formerly ‘Modernism and After’) is the generic title used to encompass the courses in history and theory offered at the Ruskin School; any Art History student who takes the course will be expected to follow the same set of 3 courses as Ruskin Second Year students:

Lectures will take place on Wednesday mornings at 11am. Follow-up seminars will take place on Wednesday afternoons from 2–5 pm.   Course guides and related readings are made available on Canvas for enrolled students. Reading material is also provided on a display stand in the Ruskin Library.  Set texts for each of the seminars must be read in advance. 

History of Art students are assessed based on three essays of no more than 2,500 words each (including footnotes) on aspects of the history and theory of visual culture since 1900. The essays are submitted in the Second Year. One essay must be submitted not later than noon on the Friday of the ninth week of the Michaelmas Full Term in the academic year preceding the examination, one essay must be submitted not later than noon on the Friday of the ninth week of the Hilary Full Term in the academic year preceding the examination, and one essay must be submitted not later than noon on the Friday of the ninth week of the Trinity Full Term in the academic year preceding the examination. 

American art, 1560 – 1960s

Course Convenor: Prof. Charlene Villaseñor Black

Please note: This option can only be taken for this paper if it is not also taken as a student’s Classical, Pre-Modern and Non-Western Art Option.

This course provides an introductory survey of American visual art from the colonial era to the 1960s, including painting, sculpture, architecture, photography, and prints made by artists working in the United States and American artists living abroad. The history of American art is inseparable from the political and social contexts that shaped the foundation of the United States and a burgeoning picture of national identity that artists across time sought varyingly to represent, redefine, or resist. Proceeding both thematically and chronologically, the course explores significant art historical case studies along this trajectory, including colonial strategies for mapping a "New World"; portraiture and racial politics; landscape painting and environmental conservation; photography and the industrialized image; indigenous art and sovereignty; cultural nationalism and the construction of a "usable past"; the rise of modernism and postmodernism along with artistic movements such as Abstract Expressionism, Pop art, conceptualism, and Land art. Students gain familiarity with methods of close looking, visual analysis, and material studies as well as the diverse creative traditions that enrich American art. 

INVENTING PHOTOGRAPHY

Course Convenor: Prof. Geoffrey Batchen (History of Art)

This course will set out to examine two origin stories simultaneously: one concerns the invention of photography, a process that we will trace from the late eighteenth century up until about 1850, and the other, the invention of a history to explain this process, a discursive effort that first emerges in 1839, when photography was announced, and continues up until today. Photography’s conception and realisation depended on a confluence of profound social, cultural, and technological changes, including revolutionary developments in the experience of time, space, and subjectivity. Photography’s historisation depends on the priorities of the historian, be they nationalist, biographical, technological, or philosophical. A close examination of photographs in Oxford collections will be accompanied by a critical study of historical texts about such photographs. How should one write a history of photography’s invention and what is at stake in any attempt to do so? Where and when does photography begin (and end)? Participants in this class will seek some answers.

The course is assessed by examination at the end of the Third Year.

THE EXPERIENCE OF MODERNITY: VISUAL CULTURE 1880–1925

Course Convenor: Prof. Alastair Wright (History of Art)

The course will examine how European artists grappled with modernity between c.1880 (the moment of the ‘Impressionist Crisis’) and c.1924 (the year of Breton’s Surrealist Manifesto).  During the later 19th and early 20th centuries a range of social and ideological formations emerged that constitute the ground of what we now recognize as modernity.  The period bore witness to the rapid growth and transformation of the great Western metropolises; increasing industrialization; the expansion of consumer and leisure culture; the final expansion of the European colonial empires; and the emergence of mass cultural and political formations, both reactionary and revolutionary.  Concentrating on Paris and other centres of European artistic production, we will examine how artists developed new pictorial forms and strategies capable of capturing their experience of the shifting cultural and political environments within which they worked.

The course is assessed by examination at the end of the Third Year.

Latin American Cinema

Course Convenor: Prof. Ben Bollig, Prof. María Blanco (Modern Languages)

There is a Canvas page for this paper: https://canvas.ox.ac.uk/courses/65298

This paper will provide you with the opportunity to discover and explore major movements in the history of cinema in the countries of Latin America, from the golden age of narrative film in the 1940s, to the radical experiments and manifestos of the 1950s and 60s to the slick blockbusters and internationally successful co-productions of the twenty-first century, including documentaries. The course encourages comparisons between directors, movements and films from different countries, through the lens of issues such as race, class, gender, social movements, ecology, and landscape. Students may also choose to focus on specific directors, normally chosen from the following list: Emilio Fernández, Tomás Gutiérrez Alea, María Luisa Bemberg, Alfonso Cuarón, Alejandro González Iñárritu, Lucrecia Martel, Fernando Meirelles, Glauber Rocha, Walter Salles, Nelson Pereira dos Santos, Fernando Solanas, Pablo Larraín, Patricio Guzmán. Spanish or Portuguese are not essential requirements but students should be aware that a number of films on the filmography do not have subtitles.

Assessment takes the form of a portfolio of two essays, one of which must be comparative (i.e. dealing with more than one film) and at least one of which will usually be on one of the films listed in the course filmography. In the work submitted for assessment, students must show detailed knowledge of film material from at least two Latin American countries as well as showing evidence of having studied film theory and analysis.

Tabular overview of Special Subjects currently available in 2024–25

Please note: Your college tutor may wish to contact the convenor of the course for further information – please do not contact the convenor directly yourself.

The nature and purpose of Special Subjects

Special Subjects are normally studied by History of Art students in Michaelmas Term of their Third Year. The intention of the Special Subjects is to bring you face to face with the original sources on which historical and art historical scholarship is based, and to encourage you to arrive at your own conclusions as a result of detailed study of this primary evidence. There will be up to seven Special Subjects for you to choose from, depending on availability. The list of courses currently available is subject to change before you commence your Third Year; you will be advised by the FHS Coordinator when making your choices in the preceding Hilary Term. All of the courses will enable you to study at first hand fields of research in which Faculty members themselves often have a direct, active interest and you may well find yourself identifying new lines of enquiry within the field.  (It is by no means uncommon for undergraduates to go on to doctoral research in the field of their Special Subject.) Working on the Special Subject in Michaelmas Term of your third year, together with researching and writing your thesis in the following term, should be the most intensive and quite possibly also the most enjoyable experience of your undergraduate career.

Special Subjects are usually taught in a combination of six tutorials (arranged by your college tutors) and eight university classes (arranged through the Faculty by the Convenor for the Subject). Each class is taken by one or two Faculty members who are experts in the field, sometimes assisted by graduate students researching relevant topics. Either tutorials or classes should provide you with two opportunities to discuss your extended essay topic. The classes provide an invaluable opportunity to learn the skills of working effectively in a group; during the course of the term’s classes you will normally be expected to write and deliver at least one paper, to open the class discussion. Please read the section on ‘Forms of Teaching’ in Section 2.4 for guidance on how to get the most out of class teaching. Revision teaching is not provided for Special Subjects.

Special Subjects are examined in two papers in the Final Honour School. Paper I, taken at the end of the Trinity Term, consists of passages for comment (‘gobbets’), taken from the prescribed documents; in almost all cases you are required to complete twelve such commentaries. The object of this paper is to test your understanding of the documents, and ability to interrelate them in order to explain their significance. Paper II consists of an extended essay of 6,000 words – including references but excluding bibliography. Examiners will provide a list of eight possible essay topics by Friday of Week 4 of the Michaelmas Term when the course is being taught. Students will select one question and will have the opportunity to work on this during the second half of the term and over the Christmas vacation. The tutor or class teacher is permitted to read and comment on a plan, but not a complete draft, of the essay. The essay must be submitted electronically by 12 noon on Friday of Week 0 of the following Hilary Term. Guidance on the submission method will be provided. Candidates will be expected to show familiarity with all relevant prescribed texts and the secondary reading, and to use these as the basis of the essay. It is not intended that the extended essay should be a second thesis, requiring an elaborate, independent bibliography of primary and secondary sources, but that it should demonstrate in-depth understanding of the range and relevance of the Special Subject as established through the prescribed texts and Faculty bibliography.

Please note: For all information on the teaching and examination of Special Subjects, please refer to the relevant History Faculty Canvas site: https://canvas.ox.ac.uk/courses/22234/pages/special-subject-paper-options?module_item_id=209553

Advice on the presentation and submission of extended essays in the Special Subject is issued by the History Faculty. All queries should be directed to undergraduate.office@history.ox.ac.uk.

Capping of Special Subjects

Since the demand for some Special Subjects may exceed the capacity of the Faculty to teach them, some subjects may be ‘capped’. This means that a ceiling has had to be placed on the number permitted to enrol in the course. Information on which Special Subjects have been capped and the number of places available in each case for History of Art students can be found in the tabular overview of Special Subjects above. You are required to select more than one option as your first choice cannot always be guaranteed.

One of the two papers by which the Special Subject is examined requires the candidates to write a series of commentaries on short extracts from the prescribed sources (visual as well as textual). For most History of Art undergraduates, the first encounter with this style of examination will be in the ‘gobbet paper’ (Paper I) of the Special Subject.

The most obvious point to bear in mind is that a gobbet is not a mini-essay: an extract from a letter concerning a painting in China in 1600 should not be taken as an invitation to discuss generally the larger issues of the market for art in the Ming period. Not only will it be judged irrelevant by the examiners, but an over-broad discussion will inevitably require more time for writing than you have available.  For the second point about gobbet papers is that the majority require commentaries to be written on twelve extracts. This means a maximum of fifteen minutes per extract, which, for most students, will allow no more than one side, at most one-and-a-half sides, of writing. If you spend twenty minutes on each extract you will end up with nine rather than twelve gobbets at the end of three hours, and short-weight document papers in which entire answers are missing will pull the overall mark down particularly seriously.

The writing of gobbets involves meeting a number of distinct but overlapping requirements.

Immediate context. You should demonstrate familiarity with the document or source from which the extract is drawn. In the case of an image this will involve demonstrating knowledge either of the image itself (a picture, architectural detail or other object), or the larger object (building or painting) from which the image may be a detail.

1. The exam paper will frequently give you the basic information about the provenance of the extract (‘Guicciardini, History of Italy’) so reiterating this in your answer will not impress. You should aim to locate the extract or image by demonstrating that you know about the general content of the letter, document or object. You should show with reasonable precision where the specific passage falls within the letter or document, or – if appropriate – how the given image relates to its context. It certainly isn’t necessary to quote verbatim other sections from the document: knowledge of content is more important than demonstrating photographic memory.
2. Beyond this specific identification, is the extract representative of the wider document/image, or does it reveal something which is subsidiary to or distinctive from the rest of the text?
3. In some cases it may be necessary to explain particular words or names within an extract to show that you understand either their technical meaning or their meaning in this specific context (‘republic’ used in Florence c.1500; ‘history painting’ used in 19th-century France). This is especially the case if the extract is in a foreign language and a particular phrase or word is unusual or potentially ambiguous. It is however unnecessary and a waste of time simply to describe what is said or depicted in the extract or the image in your own words: ‘In this extract Nicholas Hawksmoor is writing to Lord Carlisle about Castle Howard…’, etc.
4. It may also be necessary to explain (briefly) any unusual institutional references either in the text or involved in the authorship. No one would expect you to explain what the Paris Salon was, but the national competition/concours national for the image of the Republic in 1848 would be a different matter.

Clarification of the extract. There are numerous types of document (or images) contained in collections of Special Subject sources, and these will have been written (or depicted) in different styles and will have different purposes and audiences in mind. It is important to identify the type of document from which the extract is taken, and this will raise questions about the intentions of the author(s), the nature of the intended audience, and the relationship of the author to an understanding of any particular bias or argument in the extract.

1. Formal legislation and constitutional documents are intended for publication or permanent record, usually a deliberate statement of the outward intentions of an authority and intended for public dissemination. Obvious questions concern the context in which the legislation was promulgated: if the document appears to represent a clear response to a perceived problem, was this reflected in discussion surrounding its formulation?
2. Extracts from letters usually require consideration of both the correspondent and the recipient. Do we know about their previous relationship – are they close friends, colleagues/political allies or enemies? Does the style reinforce either intimacy or formality? Does anything in the biography of the author or recipient, or previous contact between the two, contribute to our understanding of the extract? (e.g. in appreciating a level of bias or partisanship in the account.)
3. Extracts from diaries and memoirs. Are these genuinely private accounts of events, or intended for wider dissemination? If the latter, are they written to conceal, rather than elucidate, the real issues? Was the extract written at the time or years later?  What purpose did the author have in writing this account?
4. Images of paintings, sculptures and buildings. At what point was the image made, by whom and for whom? It is important to establish whether the image (a sketch, formal drawing or an engraving, for example) is an early draft or plan by the author of the finished object, whether it was a proposal or plan by another person subsequently adapted or borrowed by the author, or indeed whether the image corresponds to an actual object at all. An early sketch or plan may have been substantially modified on the wishes of the patron or by the changing perceptions/aims of the artist. A present-day image of the object will raise questions about later changes from the original (and about the effect of the mode of reproduction on how the object is seen). A critical comment on an image should address analogous questions to those considered in a critique of a passage of written text. Begin with the object itself, its materiality, technique and style. Then use complementary evidence (visual and textual) to contextualise the image and to amplify your examination of the particular value and significance of the image in question.

Broader Context of the Extract. The two obvious concerns here are cross-referencing to other sources, and the extent to which the particular passage or image can tell us about certain themes of wider interest in the period.

i.     Cross-referencing may be to other extracts which you have already discussed in the same paper, or, more usually, to other prescribed documents. Examiners of the gobbet paper are looking for evidence of a comprehensive knowledge of the set texts, and for sensitivity to different accounts and approaches to the same historical issue or event. Without feeling obliged to provide extensive quotations, the ability to demonstrate familiarity with other writings by the same author, to cite other accounts of the same issue which may confirm or contradict this account, other examples of a similar style, or other documents which develop and elaborate upon the theme or the event, are all important in persuading an examiner to award high marks for a gobbet.

ii.    Reference to Wider themes, while avoiding the dangers of writing a mini-essay, is strongly desirable. In the case of images of buildings, paintings or sculptures it is obviously desirable to discuss the purposes for which they were commissioned or created, what, if anything, they were replacing, and whether they fit into a wider pattern of patronage and construction.  In the case of documents (and indeed many images) it’s worth bearing in mind that examiners are likely to have chosen a particular extract for a purpose, and frequently to illustrate the kind of themes that may have been discussed in classes or essays. An extract may have a specific context, but may also say something important about a larger theme, whether this is social mobility, power in the localities, the influence of patrons on works of art, or factional struggle within regimes.  You should certainly show that you recognize the relevance of the extract to these themes.

In General:

Do bear in mind that you are working against the clock, and that concision is essential. Try to start the gobbet punchily, and get to the point quickly without wasting time on extraneous introductory paragraphs.

Do be specific at all times – authorship, importance of date, and significance of style and content. Uncertainty about the rest of the document from which the extract is taken or about historical context emerge with brutal clarity in gobbets. If you don’t know where the extract came from, you shouldn’t attempt to discuss it. There is no getting round the fact that the best route to writing gobbets is to know the prescribed texts and images very well indeed.

Do have a clearly organised set of points arising from and illuminating the gobbet. You should aim to show the examiner that you know why the given extract or image was important enough to feature in the exam paper. There is no mechanical formula or sequence which should be observed in discussing the extract’s specific location in the broader document, the issues arising from style, content and authorship, and/or wider issues raised by the gobbet.

Do try to conclude the gobbet with a forceful point – whether about the wider relevance of the extract, similarities/differences with respect to other accounts of the same event, or something that it reveals about the character or motivation of the author/artist/patron.

Don’t waste time summarizing the previous points in a concluding paragraph; you should be focusing on the next extract.

In addition to the gobbets paper – for which see earlier in this Section – the Special Subject is assessed by an extended essay, submitted at the beginning of the Hilary Term of the Third Year. Like everything you write at Oxford, the extended essay should be written in good English; it should engage effectively with the topic set, and present a clearly structured argument supported by accurate and well-selected evidence. It is important to recognise at the outset, however, that writing a Special Subject extended essay is a very different exercise to anything you are likely to have done before. It is certainly not just another routine, if slightly longer, tutorial essay. Tutorial essays are written as part of your preparation for the FHS examinations; and they do not contribute directly to your degree result. The extended essay does form part of the final assessment, and at present contributes one-seventh of the marks for your degree. So it is an important piece of work, and one that deserves your serious attention.

The extended essay is also obviously different from the thesis that you will already be working on in the Third Year. The extended essay does, like the thesis, require you to produce a substantial piece of work; and it must be properly presented and referenced. But it is shorter than the thesis, and it must answer a question set by the examiners, rather than deal with a topic you have chosen for yourself. It is prepared with the benefit of a full set of associated lectures and/or classes and tutorials, and must demonstrate a good knowledge and understanding of the appropriate prescribed texts for the Special Subject (as well of course as the relevant secondary literature). That is not to say that you may not also study and discuss other sources if they too are relevant: your tutor will give you advice and guidance on this.

Your essay may be discussed by a tutor either in tutorials or in classes (but not both). In the former case, two of your six tutorials should be devoted to the extended essay; these tutorials may be divided into half-tutorials for individual students. When tutors prefer to use classes, you should similarly have two opportunities to discuss your essay. Tutors are allowed to assist students with their essay by discussing the choice of question to be answered, providing additional bibliographic information, talking through arguments, and advising on presentation. They are permitted to read and comment on a plan of the essay. But they may not see or read any text, or comment on any drafts of the essay.

Remember that you must avoid any obvious duplication of material or argument between your extended essay and any thesis you write.

Timetable and presentation

The examiners will publish a set of questions for each Special Subject in Week 4 of Michaelmas Term. Students therefore have the second half of that term and the Christmas Vacation to complete the essay, which must be typed or word-processed. It should be no longer than 6,000 words, including footnotes but excluding the bibliography. This is likely to amount to 18 pages of text (excluding the bibliography) when the essay is printed, as it should be double-spaced on A4 paper.

It is not essential for the extended essay to be divided into separate chapters, or to include a formal preface or introduction. But you may well want to make use of subheadings within the essay, to indicate to the reader the shape and progress of your argument. A bibliography is essential, however. This should list everything that you have cited in the essay (both primary and secondary sources), and anything that has influenced your argument in a significant way; but it need not refer to every book or article you have read while producing it. You will also need to include a list of images if you have included these.

It is important to follow the Faculty guidelines on presentation when preparing the extended essay.

The essay must be submitted electronically by 12 noon on Thursday of Week 0 of the following Hilary Term. Guidance on the submission method will be provided.

Please note: The History Canvas site provides the most up-to-date information about bibliographies, and prescribed texts and images for History Special Subjects:

https://canvas.ox.ac.uk/courses/22234/pages/special-subject-paper-options?module_item_id=209553

Politics, Art and Culture in the Italian Renaissance: Venice and Florence, c. 1475–1525

Course Convenor: Prof. Natalia Nowakowska (Somerville) 

https://canvas.ox.ac.uk/courses/21303

The city-republics of Venice and Florence around 1500 have continued ever since to influence both the political and the visual culture of the western world. Each experimented with republican ideals, and each produced powerful myths, in text and image, of its own significance. Both, additionally, claimed a cultural primacy based on artistic styles. Most potent has been Giorgio Vasari’s triumphalist account of Florentine art: the course gives an opportunity to dissect this influential Tuscan myth, and to compare it with its Venetian rival. The prescribed sources include both art writing of the period and a number of paintings. The course is not confined to the ‘high’ arts, and embraces a broader view of material culture, taking into consideration the market for objects and their social uses. Social distinctions (and their visual markers) will be studied, particularly in relation to gender and to migrant communities. The set texts additionally focus questions about the true relationship of Renaissance culture to Antiquity, the place of religion in this supposedly secularizing society, and changing views of human nature.

Please note: The textual sources are set in English translation. Most are currently in print; a copy of each will be available at the reserve desk of the History Faculty Library. The visual sources are all paintings normally on public display in the National Gallery in London; for convenient reference they may be found illustrated in C. Baker and T. Henry, eds., The National Gallery: Complete Illustrated Catalogue (London: National Gallery Publications, 1995), and fuller descriptions are published in the catalogues by M. Davies, The Earlier Italian Schools (London: National Gallery Publications, 1961) and C. Gould, The Sixteenth-Century Italian Schools (London: National Gallery Publications, 1975).

ENGLISH ARCHITECTURE, 1660‑1720

Course Convenor: Prof Brian Young (St. John’s)

https://canvas.ox.ac.uk/courses/21305

This subject deals with an outstanding period in the history of English architecture – that of Wren, Hawksmoor, Talman and Vanburgh: the period generally known as that of ‘the English Baroque’. It saw the building of St. Paul’s Cathedral, the London churches, Greenwich Hospital, several royal palaces, most notably Hampton Court, the remodelling of the State Apartments at Windsor, and many important country houses, including Blenheim, Chatsworth and Castle Howard. Besides documents relating to the design and construction of these buildings and to the architectural thought of the time, the set texts include contemporary engravings and architectural drawings. Interior decoration and garden design may also be studied. The graphic side of the subject is as important as the documentary, and a good visual memory is desirable. No technical knowledge of architecture is necessary and the requisite knowledge of the classical orders and of foreign influences is not difficult to acquire. It is, however, important to visit a number of buildings in London and elsewhere, many of which are open to the public only during the summer months, and candidates choosing this subject are advised to set aside part of the Long Vacation for the purpose: a list of the main buildings to be visited is distributed in the briefing session at the end of the Trinity Term, which all candidates should attend.

Art and Its Public in France, 1815-67 (suspended 2024-25)

Course Convenor: Prof. Jane Garnett (Wadham College)

https://canvas.ox.ac.uk/courses/21307

This Special Subject is designed to enable students to study a wide range of artistic production in France in the period from the post-Napoleonic restoration to the international exhibition in Paris of 1867. This is an exciting period, in which most of the contours of French artistic life were subject to debate, and in which artists responded closely to contemporary political and social developments. In turn, reviews of salon exhibitions and art criticism in general provided a context for lively discussion of aesthetic and ideological concerns. The role of the state – as patron and arbiter of artistic production – was contested, as were the structures of artistic education; a series of political revolutions was refracted in visual culture; urbanization raised questions about landscape and the relations between town and country, and provided new theatres for visual display.

 Our principles of selection of texts and images have been the following: we have wanted so far as possible, to choose substantial texts with which you can engage from different angles. Delacroix’s journal and Baudelaire’s critical writings are intended as over-arching sources, with relevance to all seven of the themes into which we have divided the course. Both of these central texts are prescribed in English; the other texts are set in French. As result of Francis Haskell’s work, the Department of the History of Art and the Sackler Library together contain an unrivalled collection of salon criticism and other primary material, as well as an extensive body of high-quality black and white photographs of paintings and sculptures of the period from which you can work. You will have CDs containing all the prescribed images and other related images, as a ‘virtual gallery’ from which to work. You are also encouraged to go to see many of the relevant original works, many of which are in Paris, Lille or London, and are thus relatively easily accessible. The Print Room of the Ashmolean is also an important resource.

POP AND THE ART OF THE 60s

Course Convenor: Dr Alastair Wright

https://canvas.ox.ac.uk/courses/24965

The course will examine aspects of Pop Art and other related art movements from the later 1950s to the early 1970s. The primary focus will be on British and American Pop Art, but attention will also be given to developments in other sites (e.g. France, South America, Asia). Prescribed materials will include both texts and numerous images. Prescribed texts will include the writings of artists and critics and period discussions of issues ranging from the mass media to the Vietnam War. Topics will include the relationship between art and mass culture; the avant-garde’s relationship with and/or contestation of the art market; art’s engagement with race, gender, and sexual orientation and the important role played by female, BME and queer artists; and the impact of May 1968 and the Vietnam War on art.

Art and Politics: Class and Power in Chinese Art

Course Convenor: Professor JP Park

https://canvas.ox.ac.uk/courses/100333

This course is designed not only to present a survey of Chinese art but also to provide students with a chance to learn how to read social programs of Chinese history represented in visual language. In order to do this, the course asks students to think of questions, such as “Why does a particular artifact look the way it does?” “Who made it and who obtained it?” “Where was it displayed and for what purpose?” “Who decided what was acceptable and who, if anyone, challenged established styles of production?” Rather than seeing artwork as a passive indicator of changing artistic norms and paradigms, students will learn to interpret images and art critical writing as vehicles through which diverse social groups negotiate competing values and social norms. The issues of power, class, taste, gender, political debate, social criticism, and public opinions throughout Chinese history will be discussed in the class in order to let students understand that art and society are not two separate entities, but they are related to each other in many ways.

The knowledge obtained through addressing these questions will then lead students to a better understanding of Chinese art and society where art functioned as a site for social and political negotiation. In short, this course will teach students how to read social history from art works. The primary materials of investigation in the class will be paintings, but other visual media such as sculpture, crafts, book illustrations, photography, and even consumer products will also be incorporated into the discussion. A range of scholarly studies will be introduced, which are built upon different academic methodologies and perspectives. No previous knowledge of Chinese Art History or History is necessary. 

Art and the Invention of Race (Suspended 2024-25)

Course Convenor: Prof Cora Gilroy-Ware (St Peter’s College)

https://canvas.ox.ac.uk/courses/145713

For centuries, art and visual culture have worked together with economic, scientific, political and religious factors to shape and re-shape what we call ‘race’. While scholars continue to debate the precise origin point and geographical location for the invention of racial difference, this course takes a less comprehensive view. Focusing on the Anglo-American world, we will look at a series of interconnected episodes in this complex history, exploring art’s often underappreciated role in bringing forth, nourishing and sustaining hierarchies based on skin colour and ancestry.

Dating from the mid 18th to the early 20th century, prescribed materials include images of paintings, sculptures, prints and photographs, which will be analysed alongside a variety of contemporaneous written texts, from cultural criticism to scientific literature, novellas and plays. We will begin by looking at the fabrication of Whiteness via oil paint, specifically portraits of female sitters. We will go on to examine the role of satire in sharpening racial divisions before looking at the emergence of racial science, sculpture and polychromy, the fashion for the American Indian figure, racial ambiguity, and the use of the camera to unsettle stereotypical images established in traditional media. We will end with a consideration of how the racialised myths and fantasies we have explored in previous weeks are intimately entangled with the emergence of Art History as an academic discipline. 

• Professor Geoffrey Batchen, Head of Department: Professor of the History of Art; Fellow of Trinity College
• Professor Geraldine Johnson: Associate Professor in the History of Art; Fellow of Christ Church.
• Professor Cora Gilroy-Ware: Associate Professor in the History of Art; Fellow of St Peter’s College.
• Professor JP Park: Associate Professor in the History of Art; Fellow of Lincoln College.
• Professor Alastair Wright: Associate Professor in the History of Art; Fellow of St John’s College.
• Professor Nancy Thebaut: Associate Professor in the History of Art; Fellow of St Catherine’s College.
• Professor Marko Ilić: Associate Professor in the History of Art, Fellow of Wadham College.
• Professor Charlene Villaseñor Black: Associate Professor in the History of Art, Fellow of Worcester College.
• Department Manager: Penelope Lane
• Academic Assistant (Admin Office first point of contact): Rebecca Knight-Morgan (part-time – Mon, Tues, Wed, Thurs) admin@hoa.ox.ac.uk
• Digital Resources and Events Assistant: Alexander Stavrou (part-time - Mon, Tues, Wed) vrc@hoa.ox.ac.uk 

For further information, see: http://www.hoa.ox.ac.uk/academic-and-admin-staff

Students in the Department may also approach their college for additional assistance. The Oxford colleges which take students reading for a History of Art undergraduate degree and the tutor in each college responsible for History of Art students are as follows:

• Christ Church: Dr Brigid von Preussen
• Harris Manchester College: Dr Isabel Ruiz Olaya
• Lincoln College: Professor JP Park
• St Catherine’s College: Professor Nancy Thebaut
• St John’s College: Professor Alastair Wright
• St Peter’s College: Professor Cora Gilroy-Ware
• Wadham College: Professor Marko Ilić
• Worcester College: Professor Charlene Villaseñor Black

The Centre for Visual Studies is a vehicle for conducting research on a far wider range of visual material than is normally embraced by Art History. As well as providing a physical space for research, it is a forum for bringing together people from across the University and beyond who have a research engagement with visual or material studies, broadly conceived.  Lectures, seminars, meetings and workshops are organised under its name for the exchange of information about the work being undertaken. We also welcome Academic Visitors to the Department’s Centre for Visual Studies each year.  For further details, please see www.hoa.ox.ac.uk/centre-visual-studies.

Associated Academic Staff

The Department collaborates in various ways, including extended essay, dissertation and research supervision, with colleagues in other departments and divisions of the University, including the Ashmolean Museum and other University collections. About fifty associated academics further support our Department by offering lectures and courses in their fields of expertise, or participating in various events hosted by the Department.   For research interests, teaching and biographical details for Associated Academic Staff, see: www.hoa.ox.ac.uk/associated-academics

During Michaelmas Term, staff, students at all levels and scholars from throughout the University and beyond are invited to attend the weekly research seminar.  The Department also plays host each year to the Slade Professor of Fine Art, who is always a figure of international standing in the study of the visual arts. The Slade Lectures take place in Hilary Term. All students are encouraged to attend these lectures and other events including the reception for the Slade Professor.  For the most up-to-date information, together with the current departmental lecture list, see the Department’s website: www.hoa.ox.ac.uk/events.

In addition to core lectures, as members of the University, students are also permitted to attend open lectures held within any other department or faculty, although priority should be given to lectures directly related to your courses.  For full listings, please see http://www.ox.ac.uk/students/academic/lectures/.

During term-time, all students are also included in the ‘Weekly Events’ email circulation of core lectures and selected relevant lectures and seminars in and beyond Oxford.

Where restrictions permit us to, various receptions and social events will be organised by the Department to offer our students the opportunity to meet art historians from other institutions as well as elsewhere within the University.

The Edgar Wind Society for Art History, named after Oxford’s first History of Art Professor, is a student society which organises numerous events each year, including gallery tours, film screenings, social evenings and talks given by renowned speakers. The Society’s journal is produced termly on a specific and varied theme, providing a further opportunity for students to engage with the subject and often offering a fresh perspective on an established art historical issue. For more information, see the Society’s website: http://edgarwindsociety.co.uk/

Student Absence

Please note: if you are unable to attend a core seminar, class or tutorial due to illness, it is important that you email admin@hoa.ox.ac.uk before the teaching is due to start in order that we can notify the appropriate member of staff.

Department Contact Details

Department of History of Art, The Stephen A.Schwarzman Centre for the Humanities, Radcliffe Observatory Quarter, Woodstock Road, Oxford, OX2 6GG

Tel: +44 (0)1865 286830  admin@hoa.ox.ac.uk

University Card and Access

Your University Card will be issued to you by your college.  Please email your card details to the Academic Assistant so that this can be added by the system - you will need your card to gain access to the upper floors of the Schwarzman Centre. Please do not allow people to tailgate when using the lift or gates to the staff and student areas of the building. Please advise the Admin Office immediately if you lose your University card as it will need to be removed from the system for security reasons.  Your University card also acts as your library reader’s card and can be activated for access to the University Libraries. 

Food/Drink

Please note that the kitchen in the Department hub is for staff use only. You may make use of the social spaces provided throughout the building, including the seating in the Department hub, but please bear in mind that people may be working nearby. There is a café on the ground floor, where you are able to purchase food and drink.

IT Resources

Personal computers may be used, but must not be connected to the network directly. Printing and photocopying in the department is not available to students. 

Canvas

You will have access to teaching and administrative resources via Canvas, the department’s Virtual Learning Environment (VLE).  General information about how to use Canvas will be provided at the departmental induction.  Any queries about the use of Canvas should be directed to the key users – the Digital Resources and Events Assistant or the Academic Assistant.  Please note: where there are no or very few hard copies, course readings will be made available in the relevant course site of Canvas. In all other circumstances, students will be expected to access either hard copies or electronic versions through the Oxford libraries.  Where permission has been obtained from the lecturer, Core Course lectures are recorded and uploaded on Canvas.  If you have any problems accessing these, contact vrc@hoa.ox.ac.uk or admin@hoa.ox.ac.uk  Students who have disability-related grounds for recording lectures or other formal teaching sessions should contact the  University’s Disability Advisory Service (or disability@admin.ox.ac.uk) for further information on the process for obtaining such permission.  Your attention is drawn to the University policy on the recording of lectures and other formal teaching sessions by students: https://academic.admin.ox.ac.uk/policies/recording-lectures-other-teaching-sessions

Email

Your University or ‘Nexus’ email address is your main point of contact.  It is expected that you check emails daily and read ALL messages as they will include vital information relating to teaching and assessment.  It is recommended that you keep personal emails completely separate from formal University communication.

First Aid and Fire and Safety

Names of First Aiders will be displayed on the Faculty noticeboard.

On hearing a fire alarm, please leave the building via the nearest available route and report to the closest assembly point from where you exited the building. The closest assembly point to the Department is to the north of the building.

If you are likely to need assistance for any reason during an emergency evacuation please contact the Department Admin team.

Security

Access to the staff and student areas of the Schwarzman Centre is limited to those with University cards.  Do not allow people to tailgate you!  Raise any security issues with the admin team/main Reception, but in their absence, contact University Security Services on 272944, for emergencies 289999