Postgraduate Course: Human Nature: Looking at Ourselves and Others in Northern European Art, 1400-1600 (HIAR11136)
Course Outline
| School | Edinburgh College of Art |
College | College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences |
| Credit level (Normal year taken) | SCQF Level 11 (Postgraduate) |
Availability | Available to all students |
| SCQF Credits | 20 |
ECTS Credits | 10 |
| Summary | What did it mean to be human in the 15th and 16th centuries? What were the stakes of looking at and representing human bodies in art? Artists in Northern Europe drew, painted and printed all kinds of people: fools, soldiers, sex workers, migrants, wildmen; the sick, disabled and poor. They explored impactful strategies around observation, description, and visibility. This course examines how art historical developments in the human figure were complicit in constructing and subverting social power dynamics. |
| Course description |
What kinds of bodies were made visible and for whose gaze in art around 1500? This course considers art historical writing about the human body by introducing students to shifts in Northern European artistic practice at the end of the middle ages and beginning of the early modern period. At this time, ideas about gender, power, agency and self-knowledge were negotiated through experiments in printing highly distributable images and writing about human nature. Students will consider new research about social 'outsiders' drawn from disability studies, feminist, queer and gender studies, and critical race studies that responds to perennial art-historical discourse around observation, naturalism and humanism. Looking at the work of Albrecht Dürer and Peter Bruegel among others, students will confront questions such as: What is the relationship between observation and marginalisation, between the gaze and violence, between figuration and power?
Taught across ten weekly two-hour seminars, students engage in active discussion to unpack the methodological implications of how we write art history about the body. Students will read contextualising primary and secondary sources about artistic practice for seminars and visit local collections. Foundational art history is paired with recent developments in fields of research attending to questions of marginalisation and agency. Students will pursue independent research about an artwork of their choice relating to the themes of the course.
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Entry Requirements (not applicable to Visiting Students)
| Pre-requisites |
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Co-requisites | |
| Prohibited Combinations | |
Other requirements | None |
| Additional Costs | This Course does not require any additional costs to be met by the Student.
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Information for Visiting Students
| Pre-requisites | None |
Course Delivery Information
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| Academic year 2025/26, Available to all students (SV1)
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Quota: 0 |
| Course Start |
Semester 1 |
| Course Start Date |
15/09/2025 |
Timetable |
Timetable |
| Learning and Teaching activities (Further Info) |
Total Hours:
200
(
Lecture Hours 10,
Seminar/Tutorial Hours 10,
Feedback/Feedforward Hours 1,
Summative Assessment Hours 2,
Programme Level Learning and Teaching Hours 4,
Directed Learning and Independent Learning Hours
173 )
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| Assessment (Further Info) |
Written Exam
0 %,
Coursework
100 %,
Practical Exam
0 %
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| Additional Information (Assessment) |
This course has two assessment components.
1) Writing Portfolio, 1,000-words (comprising one 500-word visual analysis and one 500-word critical reading response), 40%, due in Weeks 3-5. The Portfolio relates to Learning Outcomes 3 and 4.
2) Essay, 3,000-words, 60%, due in exam period. The Essay relates to Learning Outcomes 1, 2 and 3.
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| Feedback |
FORMATIVE FEEDBACK:
Students have two opportunities for formative feedback in this course. Each of these opportunities for ungraded feedback concretely aids in preparing students for their summative assessments.
1. A short, spoken presentation supported by engagement with secondary academic texts and visual materials delivered once during the term. Engagement with the assigned key academic text builds knowledge and critical analysis of core course materials which is necessary for successfully completing the final summative assessment. Spoken feedback will be given in class with an optional opportunity to meet one on one with the course organizer for further spoken feedback.
2.
3. An essay plan due in Weeks 7-9. This essay plan contains drafts of key components of the final summative assessment such as a bibliography. Spoken feedback will be delivered in a one-on-one meeting with the course organizer on the essay plan within one week of submission.
In addition, there will be opportunities for peer-to-peer feedback within seminar discussion of final essay projects.
SUMMATIVE FEEDBACK
Summative Feedback for both graded assessments will be delivered in writing by the course instructor.
Feedback on the first summative assessment will help students develop their skills of visual analysis and critical assessment of secondary academic texts. These two specific skills are foundational for their second summative assessment.
Summative feedback will be provided according to University regulations.
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| No Exam Information |
Learning Outcomes
On completion of this course, the student will be able to:
- Conduct interdisciplinary research, synthesising methods, content and theory from art and literary history, social history and the history of medicine.
- Critically evaluate the often contradictory and unstable meanings attached to representations of human bodies and behaviour, and develop a greater understanding of how these representations operated within their broader culture.
- Engage critically with methodological approaches towards the representation of the human figure and body including feminism, gender/sexuality, queer studies, disability studies, critical race theory, identity, and the social history of art.
- Develop skills in visual and textual analysis and historical thinking through the uses of late medieval and early modern texts and images.
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Reading List
Bearden, Elizabeth. Monstrous Kinds: Body, Space, and Narrative in Renaissance Representations of Disability. University of Michigan Press, 2019.
Burke, Jill, Stephen Campbell, and Thomas Kren, eds. The Renaissance Nude. The J. Paul Getty Museum, 2018.
Grossinger, Christa. Humour and Folly in Secular and Profane Prints of Northern Europe, 1430-1540. Harvey Miller, 2002.
Honig, Elizabeth. Pieter Bruegel and the Idea of Human Nature. Reaktion Books, 2019.
Nichols, Tom. The Art of Poverty: Irony and Ideal in Sixteenth-Century Beggar Imagery, Manchester University Press, 2007.
Pearson, Andrea. - Gender, Sexuality, and the Future of Agency Studies in Northern Art, 1400-1600. -Journal of Historians of Netherlandish Art 15, no. 2 (2023). |
Additional Information
| Graduate Attributes and Skills |
Research and Enquiry: Students develop their skills at gathering, evaluating and interpreting primary visual and textual knowledge as they work on their final summative assessment, an independent essay. Class discussion, close reading and formative assessments aid students in developing precise and applicable research skills which can be used to address complex issues outside of the classroom. Students are mentored through the full arc of the research process from developing their enquiry to seeking out appropriate resources to evaluating primary and secondary source evidence. Students leave the classroom more confident in critically evaluating evidence and formulating precise research questions in the face of complex issues and contradictory discourse.
Personal and Intellectual Autonomy: Discussion-based seminars encourage students to practice, refine and express their own independent thinking and intellectual contributions. Students openly reflect on the stakes of their chosen research enquiry for diversifying the ways we write histories of the body in class discussion and peer-to-peer review. Students practice considering the implications of how they express their views.
Skilled Communication: Students develop communication skills through both oral presentations (formative) and written (summative) assessments. In their first summative assessment students learn to evaluate how an author of a critically acclaimed academic text communicates their argument and supporting evidence. This ability to articulate how evidence is used in the discussion of complex issues will increase students' communication confidence outside the classroom.
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| Keywords | gender,disability,history of the body,sexuality |
Contacts
| Course organiser | Dr Jess Bailey
Tel:
Email: Jess.Bailey@ed.ac.uk |
Course secretary | |
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