Course Overview

This postgraduate programme will analyse representations of death and dying through an investigation of theoretical concepts and debates applied to all aspects of visual culture, including fine art, film, fashion, material culture, photography, television and gaming. Students will be encouraged to analyse case studies in relation to sociological, psychoanalytic and philosophical theoretical disciplines on death.

The course will specifically consider:
• How is death manifested aesthetically within visual and material culture?
• How does visual and material culture document narratives and experiences of mourning and bereavement?
• What socio-cultural and ideological perspectives emerge in an analysis of death’s presence and absence within visual culture?

Course Content

As a student on this course, you will develop an understanding of critical positions within multi-disciplinary frameworks. We encourage you to integrate theoretical perspectives on death and bereavement with academic discourses on the production, reception and representation of texts within media, art and design. Staff teaching on this programme are actively engaged in examining the relationship between death and visual culture and their theoretical and practice-based research will assist you in positioning your own critical approaches and research interests.

Areas of study will include:
• Reportage, War Photography and notions of the sublime
• Narrative and objects : The Story of death
• Technological Taxidermy : Recognising faces in Celebrity death
• Sociological, cultural and anthropological approaches on death : Continuing Bonds and you
• Object-based research as primary research
• Psychological approaches to Loss : Fraud to Kubler Ross
• Bazin, Barthes and Mulvey : Spectral qualities within photography and the moving image
• Wit : Bereavement models in Film
• Representation and the Editorial
• Approaches to the Uncanny : Liminal identities within visual culture
• Keeping it Clean : Semiotics and the Material
• Materiality and Mortality : Fashion and Abject bodies

Students will attend seminars and group tutorials that will nurture critical insights and encourage the development of individual areas of investigation. In addition to assessing the relationship between visual material and socio-cultural and historical contexts relating to death within these sessions, you will also work towards a certificate in Research Methods. This will enable you to locate your own research within a cross-disciplinary context.

Assessment

Assessment throughout the first and second semesters will comprise of essays, work-in-progress presentations and portfolio review (for practice-based research). Final assessment in the third semester consists of either a dissertation or the presentation of practice-based research with an accompanying written submission.

This programme is offered on a full (one year duration) or part-time (two year duration) basis and is delivered on one day per week during the first and second semesters. You will be expected to be self-directed at all other times with regular correspondence with your personal tutor.

Career Potential

Graduates of the MA Death and Visual Culture programme will likely pursue careers in a variety of professional and creative industries contexts. It is anticipated that many may seek to develop a career in education and academia and perhaps develop their postgraduate research further.

Entry requirements

Applicants are required to posses a good BA Hons qualification (or equivalent). This course is particularly suitable for those who have an undergraduate degree in Art and Design, Film Studies, Media, Psychology, Photography, Sociology, Fashion and Textiles

For further information please contact Cath Davies at CADavies@cardiffmet.ac.uk