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Semester 1

The Power in Small Things, 1700-1900 (HIAR10204)

Subject

History of Art

College

CAHSS

Credits

20

Normal Year Taken

3

Delivery Session Year

2023/2024

Pre-requisites

Visiting students must have completed 3 History of Art courses at grade B or above, and please note that we will not consider History courses unrelated to Art, or practical Art courses, towards these pre-requisites. We will only consider University/College level courses. Please see Additional Restrictions below.

Course Summary

This course considers how global dynamics of power are mediated through small things and questions the extent to which they informed and responded to socio-cultural, political and historical shifts in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

Course Description

Although often overlooked, small things are everywhere in history, from small tokens or trinkets, to coins, or portrait miniatures. How do we define small things in material and visual culture? This course considers the power and agency of small things which have travelled globally across the transatlantic world in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. It will use the permanent collection of the National Museum of Scotland as its core inspiration with gallery visits and object-focused sessions. Each week adopts different art historiographical methodologies, from anthropology, to queer history, to military history, and post-colonialism. It considers a range of objects, from glass beads which were used as exchanges of currency for human life in the transatlantic slave trade, to snuffboxes, to political tokens, such as Wedgwood's infamous abolition medallion. Students will have the opportunity to choose the small things for discussion in Weeks 5 and 7 and these will inform group podcasts, episodes of which we will write, make and produce together in the latter half of the course.

Assessment Information

Written Exam 50%, Coursework 50%, Practical Exam 0%

Additional Restrictions

Unless you are nominated on a History of Art exchange agreement, visiting students are only permitted to enrol in one 3rd year History of Art course each, per semester, before the start of the relevant semester’s welcome period – and spaces on each course are limited so cannot be guaranteed for any student. Enrolment in a second course from this group will depend on whether there are still spaces available in the September Welcome Period, and cannot be guaranteed. It is NOT appropriate for students to contact staff within this subject area to ask for an exception to be made; all enquiries to enrol in these courses must be made through the CAHSS Visiting Student Office. This is due to the extremely limited number of spaces available in this very popular subject area.

view the timetable and further details for this course