History of Art and Literature
History of art and literature is a genuinely interdisciplinary combination that examines the two most central forms through which human beings have sought to represent and interpret their experience: the visual image and the written word. The disciplines are distinct in their methods and traditions but deeply entangled in their histories: writers have always responded to pictures and sculptures, and visual artists have drawn inspiration from literature, mythology, and narrative. Studying both together allows you to ask questions about representation, meaning, and culture that neither discipline can fully answer on its own.
At the University of East Anglia, this three-year full-time programme is taught within a university with a distinguished tradition in both literature and visual culture. UEA is the home of the Creative Writing programme that launched a generation of major British novelists, and its art history provision is connected to the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, one of the most important collections of non-Western and modernist art in Britain, which provides regular direct access to original works as part of your studies. You will develop close reading and close looking skills in parallel, studying literary and artistic texts across a broad historical range and engaging with the critical and theoretical traditions that scholars have developed to interpret them.
A typical entry tariff of 136 points reflects the programme's rigour and accessibility.
Graduates of history of art and literature programmes work in galleries, museums, publishing, arts journalism, education, heritage organisations, and the wider cultural sector. The combination of strong writing ability and visual cultural literacy is valued by employers across many creative and intellectual fields. Further study at master's level in art history, literary studies, museum studies, or cultural policy is a natural continuation, and the programme provides excellent preparation for doctoral research in either discipline.