Art History & Visual Culture and Film & Television Studies

Art history and visual culture and film and television studies is a combination that trains you to analyse, interpret, and critically engage with the full range of visual media, from paintings and sculptures through to cinema, television, video art, and digital imagery. Art history and visual culture asks how images and objects carry meaning, how they reflect and shape culture, and how artistic practice has evolved across different historical moments and social contexts. Film and television studies asks how moving image media are produced, how they construct narrative and meaning, and what they tell us about the societies and industries that make them.

Together, they develop a sophisticated visual literacy and critical vocabulary that are relevant across many cultural and media careers.

At the University of Exeter, this three-year full-time programme develops your analytical skills across both disciplines, drawing on Exeter's strong research base in visual culture and media studies. You will study the history and theory of art from antiquity to the present day alongside cinema history, film theory, and the analysis of television as a distinctive medium with its own aesthetic and industrial dimensions. You will develop skills in close reading, in contextual and theoretical analysis, and in written argument, supported by a teaching environment that, as students have noted, reflects the depth and breadth of staff expertise and the collegial character of studying within a focused group.

The programme includes a sandwich year, a year abroad, and work placement opportunities, giving you professional experience in cultural and creative settings and the chance to study visual culture from within a different national tradition.

Graduates go on to careers in museums and galleries, curatorial and archival work, film and broadcasting, journalism, arts policy, education, and the creative industries. Postgraduate study in art history, film studies, curating, or cultural management is a natural continuation.