Critical and Cultural Theory

In this Masters degree you’ll study cultural analysis in depth, focusing on themes of commodification, language, and subjectivity. You'll study in an interdisciplinary way, developing skills that lead to a wide variety of applications and careers.

This degree takes a philosophical and historical approach to critical and cultural theory. We draw upon the major traditions of cultural theory, including semiology, feminism and gender theory, psychoanalysis, deconstruction, and Frankfurt School theories of the aesthetic, the media and technology. Key critical references include postcolonial and critical race theory, as well as posthumanism and ecocriticism.

You'll be exposed to a range of critical paradigms and develop your skills in close analysis: your ability to identify and unpack the key elements of a critical work or cultural artefact. This attention to the ‘textuality’ of these various texts, broadly defined, constitutes a crucial link between theory and practice, such that the line between critical and creative cultural practice is no longer determinative.

Our diverse and dynamic approach

Cultural studies emerged as a discipline in the mid-20th century as a critical, scholarly response to the social movements of the time – anti-colonial struggles, the civil rights movement and feminism – and as a rigorous study of the relations between culture and class.

This course began in 1987, when an interdisciplinary MA in Cultural Studies was founded at Leeds. From the outset, the course emphasised the theoretical, philosophical and historical aspects of work in cultural criticism, reception and production. The name was changed to better reflect this approach, and it continues to draw students from across the humanities who are thinking about and working with a broad range of objects and genres including literature, film, visual arts, performance, music and philosophy.

The School of Fine Art, History of Art and Cultural Studies has an ambitious interdisciplinary purpose, an active fine art community, a critically and politically engaged social history of art degree and a dynamic museum studies course. While this rich context is one of its defining characteristics, this degree is not limited to a consideration of art and aesthetics. Our approach is also informed by other cultural forms, such as text, music and popular culture and critical traditions – from literary criticism and semiology to sound studies and new thinking on technology, gender, and the posthuman.

The School houses parallax, published by Taylor & Francis, an internationally distributed journal of cultural theory and analysis.

Specialist facilities

Housed within a single central campus location, the School offers a modern and well-equipped learning environment with several exhibition spaces.

The University library is one of the major academic research libraries in the UK, holding a variety of manuscript, archive and early printed material in its Special Collections - valuable assets for your independent research.

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