AH4221 Gender and Consumption in French Art 1860-1895

Academic year

2024 to 2025 Semester 1

Further information on which modules are specific to your programme.

Key module information

SCOTCAT credits

30

The Scottish Credit Accumulation and Transfer (SCOTCAT) system allows credits gained in Scotland to be transferred between institutions. The number of credits associated with a module gives an indication of the amount of learning effort required by the learner. European Credit Transfer System (ECTS) credits are half the value of SCOTCAT credits.

SCQF level

SCQF level 10

The Scottish Credit and Qualifications Framework (SCQF) provides an indication of the complexity of award qualifications and associated learning and operates on an ascending numeric scale from Levels 1-12 with SCQF Level 10 equating to a Scottish undergraduate Honours degree.

Availability restrictions

Not automatically available to General Degree students

Planned timetable

tba

This information is given as indicative. Timetable may change at short notice depending on room availability.

Module coordinator

Dr M T Knowles

This information is given as indicative. Staff involved in a module may change at short notice depending on availability and circumstances.

Module Staff

Dr M Knowles

This information is given as indicative. Staff involved in a module may change at short notice depending on availability and circumstances.

Module description

This course considers French artistic practice in the late nineteenth century in relationship to themes of urban life, consumption, and gender. Artists studied intensively include Édouard Manet, Gustave Caillebotte, Mary Cassatt, Berthe Morisot, and Edgar Degas. We examine both practices of buying things and the spaces in which things are bought – department stores, boutiques, studios – as well as forms of visual consumption that were specific to the new Paris and to liminal spaces like the balcony, the theater loge, and the café terrace. The influence of Japanese woodcut prints is considered in relationship both to the representation of luxury commodities and female sex workers. Through the work of Cassatt and Morisot, the module queries women’s artistic agency and their exercise of the ‘gaze’. The consumption of the ‘other’ in the context of imperialism will be examined in relationship to photographs of women in French occupied Algeria.

Relationship to other modules

Pre-requisites

BEFORE TAKING THIS MODULE YOU MUST ( PASS AH1001 OR PASS AH1003 ) AND PASS AH2001 AND PASS AH2002

Assessment pattern

5%: Participation 35%: Short essay of 1,500 words 60%: Research essay of 3,500 words

Re-assessment

Take-Home paper = 100%

Learning and teaching methods and delivery

Weekly contact

1h lecturex10 weeks, 2h seminarx10 weeks, 2 tutor's office hour (x 11 weeks)

Intended learning outcomes

  • By the end of the module, students will have gained an in-depth knowledge of developments in the style and subject-matter of Parisian artists representing urban life in France between the 1860s and 1890s; students will be able to identify works of art by relevant artists as well as describe the contributions of significant literary figures (Charles Baudelaire, Émile Zola, and Walter Benjamin) to the understanding of nineteenth-century Paris and its cultures of consumption.
  • By the end of the module, the student will have gained a critical understanding of the history and demography of nineteenth-century Paris, as well as the retail practices that characterized the new city. Students will be able to identify different forms of consumption: from buying, to looking, to wearing.
  • By the end of the module, students will be able to describe the role played by new cultures of consumption in the visual representation of people and commodities.
  • By the end of the module, students will understand the ways that women were represented in relationship to consumerism, as well as the ways that female artists challenged these representations.