BA Art History and Visual Culture and English
About this course
Art history and visual culture combined with English brings together two disciplines that share a deep concern with how human beings make meaning. Art history examines the visual world: how images, objects, spaces and designed artefacts carry meaning across time and culture, and how the methods of interpretation developed by art historians can illuminate everything from Renaissance altarpieces to contemporary photography. English attends to the written and spoken word: how literature, language and textual forms work, what they tell us about the societies that produce them, and how close reading and critical analysis can reveal what is otherwise obscure. At the University of Nottingham you will study both disciplines across three years, developing skills in visual analysis, close reading, and critical argument across the two fields. You will engage with art, design, architecture, film and visual culture alongside poetry, fiction, drama, and non-fiction, building the kind of broad humanistic literacy that both disciplines individually aspire to and that together they achieve more fully. The University of Nottingham's strength across both departments gives the combination genuine academic depth, and you will be taught by researchers who are active scholars in their fields. Graduates of art history and English are well placed for careers in a wide range of cultural and creative sectors. Publishing, journalism, arts criticism, gallery and museum curatorial work, arts administration, heritage, broadcasting, and cultural policy are all well-established destinations. The research, writing and communication skills you develop are valued in education, the civil service, law (with further training), public relations, and consultancy. Many graduates go on to postgraduate study in art history, English, cultural studies, museum studies, or related fields, pursuing academic research or specialist professional qualifications. For students drawn to the life of the mind across both the visual and the literary, this degree offers a richly rewarding intellectual home.
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