AHT4504 Art theory research seminar
Faculty of Art, Design and Architecture
AHT4504 Art theory research seminar is a level 4, 6-credit-point, undergraduate unit from the Faculty of Art, Design and Architecture, offered in 2020 in Semester 2 at Caulfield. It has no prerequisites.
- Credit points
- 6
- Offered in 2020
- Semester 2
- Caulfield
- Assessment
- No exam
- 2 tasks
This is the 2020 handbook entry. See the 2027 entry.
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Overview
Designed as a flexible unit, with an innovative small-group mode of delivery that enables the unit content to be student-led. It is specifically designed to enable you to contextualise your own creative practice in theoretical terms. With an emphasis on creative and critically aware approaches to visual production, the unit aims to open up and consolidate research avenues that may be particularly productive for your individual personal directions.
Offerings in 2020
| Teaching period | Campus | Mode |
|---|---|---|
| Second semester | Caulfield | On campus |
Assessment
- Annotated Bibliography, Abstract, and Research Question40%
- Mini-Exegesis or Research Essay60%
Learning outcomes
When you finish this unit, you should be able to:
- 1
Demonstrate a grasp of key concepts in contemporary art theory relevant to the area of practice which you are pursuing;
- 2
Relate the terms of your practice to the broader field of contemporary art;
- 3
Practice criticism in small forums, identifying critical questions of other people's practice and considering and conjecturing how aesthetic standards are the expression of cultural values;
- 4
Sustain an exegetical defence of your work and its placement in current visual production;
- 5
Explain the senses in which your art practice involves research.
Workload and teaching
- Seminars24 hours
- Teaching approachResearch activities
12 hours per week including 3 contact hours plus 9 hours of independent study.
Learning resources
Required resources
Karen Barad, Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning (Durham: Duke University Press, 2007).
Shawn Wilson, 'Research as Ceremony: Indigenous Research Paradigm', Ph.D. diss., Monash University, Melbourne, 2004.
Eve Kosofsky Sedgewick, Epistemology of the Closet (Berkeley, California: University of California Press, 1990).
Heather Davies, 'The Queer Futurity of Plastic', video-recorded lecture, Sonic Acts, Amsterdam, https://vimeo.com/158044006, accessed July 19, 2019.
Rebecca Ann Hobbs, ' Nga puia o Ihumatao (The volcanoes of Ihumatao) ', Ph.D. diss., Elam, University of Auckland, Tāmaki Makaurau, 2018.
Timothy Morton, Dark Ecology: For a Logic of Future Coexistence (New York: Columbia University Press, 2016).
Elizabeth Grosz, 'Chapter 4: Lived Bodies - Phenomenology and the Flesh', in Volatile Bodies: Toward a Corporeal Feminism (Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 1994).
Mark Fisher ‘'The Slow Cancellation of the Future’ and 'Postmodern Antiques: Patience (After Sebald) ', both in Ghosts of My Life: Writings on Depression, Hauntology, and Lost Futures (Winchester: Zero Books, 2014).
Karen Barad, 'On Touching: The Inhuman that therefore I Am', differences 23, no. 2 (2012): 206-223, https://doi.org/10.1215/10407391-1892943 .
Excerpt from Jan Bryant, Artmaking in the Age of Global Capital: Visual Practices, Philosophy, Politics (Edinburgh University Press, 2019).
McKenzie Wark, Molecular Red: Theory for the Anthropocene (London and New York: Verso, 2016).
Brian Martin, 'Immaterial Land and Indigenous Ideology: Refiguring Australian Art and Culture', Ph.D. diss., Deakin University, Melbourne, 2013.
Claire Bishop, ‘The Perils and Possibilities of Dance in the Museum: Tate, MoMA and Whitney’, Dance Research Journal 46, no., 3 (December 2014): 62-76.
Judith Butler, 'Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory', Theatre Journal 40, no. 4 (December 1988): 519-531.
Christian Marazzi, Violence of Finance Capitalism ( Los Angeles, CA: Semiotexte, 2010).
Leo Bersani, ‘Sexuality and Aesthetics’, October 28 (April 1984): 27-42.
Eva Ilouz, Cold Intimacies: The Making of Emotional Capitalism ( Cambridge, UK; Malden, MA: Polity Press, 2007).
A selection of readings nominated by students, to read between weeks 5 and 12. Discussion groups to select up to 7 items, 1 per week, from the following list:
Amanda Boetzkes, Plastic Capitalism: Contemporary Art and the Drive to Waste ( Massachusetts: MIT Press, 2019).
Karen Barad, 'Diffracting Diffraction: Cutting Together-Apart', Parallax 20 (2014): 168-187.
Jack Halbertstam, In a Queer time and Place: Transgender Bodies, Subcultural Lives (New York: New York University Press, 2005).
Sara Ahmed, Living a Feminist Life (Durham: Duke University Press, 2017).
Excerpt from Greg Lehman and Tim Bonyhady, eds, The National Picture , exh. cat. (Canberra: National Gallery of Australia, 2018).
Elizabeth Grosz, Space, Time and Perversions: Essays on the Politics of Bodies (London: Routledge, 1995).
Desmond Manderson, 'Not Yet: Aboriginal People and the Deferral of the Rule of Law', ARENA Journal 29/30 (2008): 219-272.
Amanda Beech, 'Art and its "Science"' (2014), in Robin Mackay, ed., Speculative Aesthetics (Massachusetts: MIT Press, 2014), 14–24.
Jack Halberstam, Ga Ga Feminism: Sex, Gender and the End of Normal (Boston: Beacon Press, 2012).
Claire Bishop, 'Performance: Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker', Artforum 53, no. 10 (Summer 2014): 8-9.
Leo Edelman, No Future: Queer Theory and the Death Drive (Durham: Duke University Press, 2004).
Mel Y. Chen, Animacies: Biopolitics, Racial Mattering and Queer Affect (Durham: Duke University Press, 2012).
Jack Halberstam, Sex, Gender, New Normal (Boston: Beason Pres, 2012).
Excerpt from Khadija von Zinnenburg Carroll, Art in the Time of Colony ( Abingdon, Oxfordshire: Routledge, 2016).
Contacts
- Chief Examiners
- Dr Jan Bryant
- Unit Coordinators
- Dr Jan Bryant
Common questions
What are the prerequisites for AHT4504?
AHT4504 has no prerequisites.
When is AHT4504 offered?
In 2020, AHT4504 runs in Semester 2 at Caulfield.
Does AHT4504 have an exam?
No. AHT4504 has 2 assessment tasks and no exam.