Is the Cultural Studies programme in the School of Fine Art, History of Art & Cultural Studies focussed on art or art history?
No. We are certainly interested in art and artistic practises. The Level II Cultural Studies core requirement is a year-long module in ‘Aesthetics’ which is also taken by History of Art majors. While aesthetics is broadly speaking the study of art, this module approaches it from a quite theoretical standpoint. It turns out that the question of art (its definition, its status, its necessity…) is a very interesting one for philosophy, and indeed philosophers come back to struggle with this question regularly, even obsessively, throughout the history of philosophy, as if ‘art’ were the name of precisely the thing that is constantly slipping from the philosopher’s grip. So this situation is necessarily of interest to Cultural Studies (how do you account for this thing which resists being called to account? What are the limits of these philosophical projects?), whether or not one has any detailed knowledge in the artistic forms and practises in question. In sum, you are not required to have
