Visual Cultures and Art History

The goal of this tuition fee-paid program is to create a place of excellent training into the field of visual cultures and art history. The main ambitions of the program are: 1) to train students to a complex understanding of visual cultures from the Middle Ages to the present day, with a deep focus on the role of visual media in constructing and shaping the analysed societies; 2) to promote skills in collective work, scholarly research, intellectual independency, and cultural mediation in both academic and non-academic institutions (i.e., museums, galleries, research institutes, editing houses); 3) to put forward a transdisciplinary approach to visual, material, and ritual cultures, at the core of research in Bildwissenschaft and art history; 4) lastly, to create an international network of institutions collaborating around this master, conceived in an avant-garde way both on theoretical and practical bases.

After successfully completing his/her studies the graduate is able to:

• Independently, or integrating a research group, produce scientific scholarship using his/her advance knowledge of visual cultures, of heuristic research, but also of up-to-date scholarly perspectives, paradigms, and theories in humanities;
• engage in both scholarly and public debates regarding issues related to visual cultures, medias, and art history in particular;
• use English academic (or dissemination) writing skills;
• continue building a professional international network already started to be established during internships and stay abroad during the master’s programme;
• display practical know-how in the fields related to visual cultures, established especially during internships, both in academic or non-academic contexts.

- Cultural management and monument care

- Art consulting

- Tourism

- Journalism (press and publishing, radio, television, online services)

- Pedagogy (high schools, teaching to adults, university) and mediation of art

- Cultural Mediation

Special focus on practical know-how, both academic and non-academic, will be an integrative part of the master’s programme. As part of their curriculum, students will be doing a – a semester long – mandatory traineeship in a cultural or scholarly institution. These can be ranging from outstanding museal poles (with all possible jobs related), international research institutes, cultural foundations, or editing houses. As such, the practical training will be related deeply to the type of institution chosen for the internship, proposing a broad range of possibilities. Furthermore, during the collective work on a research project, part of the curriculum, students will be introduced to the practical aspects of scholarly work, going through all the steps of the intellectual elaboration throughout the publication of an original scientific project.

The master thesis is the occasion for students to be confronted with a very specific topic within his/her field, and to put to practice his/her acquired skills in heuristic research, in independent scholarly writing, in communication with a network of institutions and/or individual scholars, as well as to contextualise, within the historiography of the subject an within an up-to-date panorama of scholarly perspectives, his/her object of study. The thesis should fulfil all the criteria of a publishable scholarly achievement and can in ideal cases lead to an actual scholarly publication.

Students trained within the master’s programme will present a highly competitive profile for applying to a Ph.D. programme at a Czech university, abroad, or in co-tutoring between a Czech and foreign university. The training in intellectual independency, know-how of visual cultures, but also their practical knowledge and the multidisciplinary approach promoted by the programme will allow the conception of an enticing Ph.D. project, already suited for international competitive contexts. The preparation, as part of the programme, of a publishable scholarly article as well as the first connexions established with a professional international network will enhance the possibilities of future Ph.D. candidates. Students trained in this master’s programme are also ideal candidates for further studies in the adjacent fields of the milieus related to visual studies, media, art history, and mediation of culture.