Undergraduate Course: Wartime: Military encounters in British art from the Seven Years' War (1756-63) to the Battle of Waterloo (1815) [Level (HIAR10198)
Course Outline
| School | Edinburgh College of Art |
College | College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences |
| Credit level (Normal year taken) | SCQF Level 10 (Year 4 Undergraduate) |
Availability | Available to all students |
| SCQF Credits | 20 |
ECTS Credits | 10 |
| Summary | This course addresses military encounters in visual and material culture in Britain, from the second half of the eighteenth century to 1815, a period in which Britain was engaged in a sequence of wars across the globe. |
| Course description |
This course addresses the visualisation and materialisation of aspects of war fought between Britain and her enemies. It considers this period as one of intense wartime which witnessed the Seven Years' War, the American Revolutionary War, the French Revolution and the Napoleonic wars. In pictorial terms, it is bookended by Benjamin West's The Death of General Wolfe, 1770 and David Wilkie's Chelsea Pensioners Receiving the London Gazette Extraordinary of Thursday, June 22, 1815, announcing the Battle of Waterloo, 1822. The course looks at a wealth and range of relevant martial materials via case-studies, including colossal oil on canvas history paintings, monumental sculptures erected in Westminster Abbey, London, the popular immersive spectacle of the panorama, fashionable portraiture, battlefield tourism and military uniforms and accessories. It seeks to understand how civilians experienced wartime by thinking about the various visual and material modes and modalities by which it was mediated between foreign theatres of operations and the domestic sphere.
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Entry Requirements (not applicable to Visiting Students)
| Pre-requisites |
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Co-requisites | |
| Prohibited Combinations | |
Other requirements | None |
Information for Visiting Students
| Pre-requisites | As numbers are limited, visiting students should contact the Course Secretary directly for admission to this course. |
Course Delivery Information
| Not being delivered |
Learning Outcomes
On completion of this course, the student will be able to:
- Demonstrate with some depth and across a breadth of material, knowledge and understanding of British involvement in warfare from around 1750 to 1815.
- Demonstrate with some depth and across a breadth of material, knowledge and understanding of the ways in which warfare in this period was represented in visual and material culture.
- Analyse the ways in which civilians in this period understood and experienced warfare in both foreign and domestic realms, as this can be seen in the visual and material culture of the time.
- Critically examine the scholarship of warfare and its representation in this period.
- Present and convey clearly in writing information about this specialist field in the history of art.
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Reading List
Nigel Arch, 'The wearing of the red: The redcoat and the British brand', Costume, 41.1 (2007), 99-104.
Linda Colley, Britons: Forging the Nation, 1707-1837, (3rd edition, New Haven and London, 2009)
Mary A. Favret, War at a Distance: Romanticism and the making of modern wartime, (Princeton, 2010)
Stuart Semmel, 'Reading the tangible past: British tourism, collecting and memory after Waterloo', Representations, 69 (2000), 9-37
Katie Trumpener and T. J. Barringer (eds.), On the viewing platform: The panorama between canvas and screen, (New Haven and London, 2020)
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Additional Information
| Graduate Attributes and Skills |
Visual and critical analysis; Clear thinking and the development of an argument; Independent research; Presentation and communication skills; Organisation and planning; Teamwork through group discussion |
| Keywords | War,British history,American Revolution,Napoleonic Wars,French Revolution,Military dress,Portraiture |
Contacts
| Course organiser | Prof Viccy Coltman
Tel: (0131 6)50 8426
Email: Viccy.Coltman@ed.ac.uk |
Course secretary | Miss Ellie McCartney
Tel: (0131 6)51 5879
Email: emccartn@exseed.ed.ac.uk |
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