Credit Points: 30
Study Time: 300 Hours

This more self-directed unit extends and develops your understanding of contemporary practice and related debates from within critical and theoretical contexts.

Students will complete a critical research paper and / or create an online weblog that demonstrates your understanding, critical analysis and evaluation of your chosen subject topic and how it relates to contemporary practice. This will enable you to further integrate your own visual practice with a more developed understanding of relevant critical and contextual theories, debates and issues that arise from the evaluation of current visual practices. Some seminar workshop activities will also be practice based.

Indicative Outline Syllabus
(An Indicative guide to the content covered by this unit) 

• Discourse and Genre in Illustration Practice 
• Visual Narratives & Narrative Theory
• Digital and Post-digital Design Contexts 
• Interpreting reality, referencing and reinterpreting the past. (post-modern bricolage, appropriation, pastiche/parody)
• Technologically determined contexts: postmodern culture and contemporary Illustration practice
• Craft: process: context
• Interrogating the boundaries of Illustration Practice

Method of Delivery
Lecture and seminar presentations based on the topics outlined in the indicative syllabus below, group and individual tutorials, guest lectures, study group activities including educational visits, collaborative creative practice workshops as appropriate

Aims

A1 To extend and deepen your knowledge and understanding of key historical and contemporary theoretical and contextual issues
A2 To develop organisational skills which enable independent learning, critical evaluation and self- management
A3 To further develop critical analysis and interrogation of the subject specialism
A4 To establish an understanding of the various processes and methods of critical enquiry in relationship to Illustration practice

Learning Outcomes
On completion of this unit you will be able to:

LO1 Demonstrate your knowledge and understanding of key historical and contemporary critical theories and contextual issues
LO2 Demonstrate the application of organisational skills and evidence of independent learning, critical evaluation and self-management
LO3 Demonstrate your skills in critical analysis and interrogation of the subject specialism
LO4 Demonstrate your understanding of the various processes and methods of critical enquiry in relationship to Illustration practice

Reference Material

Key
Barthes, R. (1987). Image, music, text. London: Harper Collins.
Foster, H. (2004). Art since 1900: modernism, anti-modernism, postmodernism. London: Thames & Hudson.
Mitchel, W. (1981). On narrative. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Recommended
Barthes, R. (1993). Mythologies. London: Vintage.
Bell, R and Sinclair, M. (2005). Pictures and words: new comic art and narrative illustration. London: Laurence King
Foster, H.(1996). The return of the real: the avant-garde at the end of the century. Cambridge MA.: MIT Press.
Glassner, A.S. (2004). Interactive storytelling: techniques for 21st century fiction. Natick, MA.: A.K. Peters.
Hoesterey, I. (2001). Pastiche: cultural memory in art, film and literature. Bloomington, IN.: Indiana University Press.
Hyland,A. and Bell, R. (2003). Hand to eye: contemporary illustration. London: Laurence King.
Lister, M. (2003). New media: a critical introduction. London: Routledge.
Poynor, R. (2003). No more rules: graphic design and postmodernism. London: Laurence King.
Ryan,M.L. (ed.) (2004). Narrative across media: The languages of storytelling. London: University of Nebraska Press.
Wigan, M. (2009). Basics illustration: global contexts. Lausanne: AVA.
Woods, T. (1999). Beginning postmodernism. Manchester: Manchester University Press.