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DEGREE REGULATIONS & PROGRAMMES OF STUDY 2014/2015
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DRPS : Course Catalogue : Edinburgh College of Art : Architecture and Landscape Architecture

Postgraduate Course: Text and the City (CLLC11098)

Course Outline
SchoolEdinburgh College of Art CollegeCollege of Humanities and Social Science
Credit level (Normal year taken)SCQF Level 11 (Postgraduate) AvailabilityAvailable to all students
SCQF Credits20 ECTS Credits10
SummaryThe course explores the aesthetics and ethics of urban writing, public lettering, and various textual forms that rely upon urban spaces and surfaces: graffiti, commemorative inscriptions, signage, advertising, and text-based public art. It examines the ways in which languages, cultures, spatial ideologies and histories intercede and interplay in the making and re-configuring of urban texts. It looks as well at interpretive strategies and discourses of endorsement and containment of textual experiences and practices. The historical and theoretical reflections are linked to case studies and examples taken from the contemporary art and media, graphic design and street art that explore the relationship of letters, text and language to place, architecture and urban landscape.

The course incorporates trans-disciplinary methodological and theoretical questions crucial for probing urban semiotic landscapes, representations of cities in media texts, spatial and temporal dimensions of multimodal everyday urban texts. Much emphasis will be placed on the multimodality of the forms of presentation of research and on trans-disciplinary methods for investigating texts in specific urban contexts. In their projects, students will creatively engage with urban texts by exploring theories and concepts as well as examining and interpreting textual artifacts, forms of writing, language signs, word-images and related spatial practices, media representations and discourses.
Course description Not entered
Entry Requirements (not applicable to Visiting Students)
Pre-requisites Co-requisites
Prohibited Combinations Other requirements None
Information for Visiting Students
Pre-requisitesMinimum level of English for non-native speakers: 7.0 IELTS or equivalent
Course Delivery Information
Academic year 2014/15, Available to all students (SV1) Quota:  None
Course Start Semester 2
Timetable Timetable
Learning and Teaching activities (Further Info) Total Hours: 200 ( Seminar/Tutorial Hours 22, Feedback/Feedforward Hours 15, Formative Assessment Hours 8, Summative Assessment Hours 25, Programme Level Learning and Teaching Hours 4, Directed Learning and Independent Learning Hours 126 )
Assessment (Further Info) Written Exam 0 %, Coursework 100 %, Practical Exam 0 %
Additional Information (Assessment) The course is assessed based on an illustrated essay of approximately 4,000 words. Essay topics are developed individually by the students over the course of the semester. Students are encouraged to experiment with the form of the essay to best reflect their topic, argument, and the visual strategy selected.
Feedback Not entered
No Exam Information
Learning Outcomes
At the end of the course students will:
- be able to conduct analysis of the graphic forms of writing in their urban context;
- learn to critically evaluate established theories and methods for the study of the relationship between text and the city;
- learn new theoretical instruments for studying texts and images and analyse their relationship to different cultural and disciplinary traditions;
- be able to research, analyse and interpret complex multimodal material;
- learn to analyse and critically assess specific forms of urban writing (graffiti, advertising,
inscriptions, logos) as well as technologies that implicate or rely upon visible texts;
- develop skills in relating theory to the analysis of the material manifestations of textual practices and graphic and spatial dimensions of textual artefacts;
- learn to examine urban space and interpret the city in relation to its multitude of textual and intertextual forms.
Reading List
None
Additional Information
Graduate Attributes and Skills Not entered
Keywordsurban visual culture, graffiti, street art, signage, inscriptions, text and image
Contacts
Course organiserDr Ella Chmielewska
Tel: (0131 6)51 3736
Email: Ella.Chmielewska@ed.ac.uk
Course secretaryMiss Jennifer Watson
Tel: (0131 6)51 5735
Email: Jennifer.A.Watson@ed.ac.uk
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