History of Art
visiting students
History of Art at St Edmund Hall offers Visiting Students the opportunity to study a wide range of periods, methods and themes in art history through Oxford lectures, small-group tutorials and direct engagement with the University’s collections.
Programme Information
History of Art aims to arrive at an historical understanding of the origins, meanings and purposes of art and artefacts from a wide range of world cultures. It asks about the circumstances of objects’ making, their makers, the media used, their functions, their critical reception and their subsequent histories.
The course educates students in the historical interpretation of art in its cultural contexts. It also provides skills in the critical analysis of objects through the cultivation of visual literacy, as well as encourages students to analyse critically related texts and documents.
Visiting Students can choose from a combination of Core and Optional courses. Most options may be taken as either a Primary course (8 tutorials) or a Secondary course (4 tutorials), although some are restricted to one format.
Students with limited prior experience in History of Art are strongly encouraged to select at least one Core course as a Primary course.
The Core courses provide a foundation in visual analysis, key methods in art history and major texts in art theory, and are offered across Michaelmas, Hilary and Trinity Terms. Optional courses allow students to explore more specialised themes and periods, including British and French art, photography, and independent research.
When selecting your courses, please check the individual course descriptions carefully, as some options are available only as Primary or Secondary courses. Your programme should also reflect your previous experience in Art History.
Core Courses
This option may be taken as either a Primary course (8 tutorials) or Secondary course (4 tutorials). Visiting Students with limited prior experience in History of Art are strongly encouraged to take it as a Primary course.
This course introduces you to the fundamentals of visual analysis through direct engagement with artworks in Oxford’s key collections, including the Ashmolean Museum, Christ Church Picture Gallery, and the Bodleian Library, as well as historic sites across the city. Throughout the term, you will develop the skills to identify and analyse the material characteristics of artworks (such as scale, medium, and technique) and their formal elements (including composition, space, perspective, light, colour, line, texture, and brushwork). You will learn to draw on these observations to interpret works of art and situate them in relation to the artist’s wider body of work, the artworks’ historical and cultural contexts, and their reception by contemporary audiences.
This option may be taken as either a Primary course (8 tutorials) or Secondary course (4 tutorials). Visiting Students with limited prior experience in History of Art are strongly encouraged to take it as a Primary course.
This course introduces key methods in art history through close readings of foundational texts. The methods covered include:
- Formalism
- Connoisseurship
- Iconology
- Semiotics
- Social History of Art
- Psychoanalysis
- Feminist Art History
- Postcolonial Theory
For your essays, you will be invited to draw on these approaches to analyse an artwork of your choosing from Oxford’s collections or beyond.
This option may be taken as either a Primary course (8 tutorials) or Secondary course (4 tutorials). Visiting Students with limited prior experience in History of Art are strongly encouraged to take it as a Primary course.
This course examines the complex relationship between artworks and their viewers. Drawing on a range of theoretical perspectives from art history, philosophy, and media studies, you will explore how society, politics, technology, and display shape the ways art is experienced. The tutorial topics include:
- Realism/Illusion
- Reception and Context
- The (Fe)male Gaze
- Technology and Perception
- Display
- Iconoclasm and Physical Response
- Spectacle, Simulacra, and Desensitisation
- Viewing Art Today
This option may be taken as either a Primary course (8 tutorials) or Secondary course (4 tutorials). Visiting Students with limited prior experience in History of Art are strongly encouraged to take it as a Primary course.
Through close readings of foundational texts, this course introduces key concepts and debates in art theory from antiquity to the eighteenth century. Over the term, you will explore how artists and theorists understood the nature, purpose, and value of art, how their ideas were contested across different historical periods, and how theoretical debates shaped artistic practice.
Topics covered include:
- Invention and Imitation
- Paragone
- The Status of the Artist
- The Hierarchy of Genres
- Disegno and Colore
- The Imitation of Antiquity
- Taste
- The Sublime
Optional Courses
This option may be taken as either a Primary course (8 tutorials) or Secondary course (4 tutorials).
This experimental course explores how concepts and methods from literary and film genre theory can be applied to the study of painting. Through critical engagement with key theoretical texts, you will examine how pictorial genres emerge, evolve, and operate.
For students taking this option as a Primary course, Week 2 will include a tutor-led session at the Ashmolean Museum, offering a historical overview of the development of genres in painting. In Week 8, you will write an essay on a genre of your choice, applying the theoretical approaches explored throughout the course.
The tutorial topics include:
- What Is a Genre?
- Painting Genres: A Historical Overview
- Mechanisms of Genre Development
- Genre and the Viewer
- Genre and Sociohistorical Context
- Genre and Ideology
- Genre and Institutions
- Genre-Focused Essay
This option may be taken as either a Primary course (8 tutorials) or Secondary course (4 tutorials).
This course explores the complex relationship between the work of art and its reproduction. Over the term, you will consider theoretical questions surrounding the status of the original and the copy, alongside a range of historical concerns: the diverse purposes and uses of reproductions, the technical challenges involved in reproducing works of art, and the ways in which decisions about what to reproduce reflect the aesthetic tastes and cultural values of different periods. The course combines discussions of key theoretical texts by Walter Benjamin, Paul Valéry, André Malraux, Stephen Bann, Bruno Latour, Michelle Henning, and others with practical sessions at the Weston Library, the Ashmolean Museum’s Western Art Print Room, and the Visual Resources Centre of the Department of History of Art, during which you will examine reproductions first-hand.
This option may be taken as either a Primary course (8 tutorials) or Secondary course (4 tutorials).
The eighteenth century witnessed profound transformations in the production, circulation, display, and consumption of art, giving rise to new forms of spectatorship that anticipated the ways we engage with art today. Traditional systems of patronage were increasingly supplemented by public exhibitions, expanding art markets, and new forms of reproduction, bringing artworks before ever more diverse audiences. These developments transformed not only how art was encountered, but also how it was understood and produced. This course examines the new subjects, practices, and institutions that shaped eighteenth-century art, with particular attention to the changing relationship between artworks and their viewers.
The themes of the tutorials are:
- New Mechanisms of Art Commerce
- Mass Reproduction
- Luxury
- Connoisseurship and Taste
- Public Exhibitions
- The Emergence of Art Criticism
- The Grand Tour
- Celebrity
This option can only be taken as a Primary course (8 tutorials).
This course introduces the history of British art from the 16th to the end of the 19th century through close study of key artists (including Christopher Wren, Joshua Reynolds, Thomas Gainsborough, William Hogarth, William Blake, John Constable, and J.M.W. Turner), movements (the Pre-Raphaelites, the Arts and Crafts, and the Aesthetic Movement), and phenomena (the portrait miniature, the English landscape garden, political caricature, and early modern photography). As part of the course, you will engage closely with Oxford’s collections, architecture, and grounds. If circumstances permit, the course will also include a day trip to Tate Britain.
This option may be taken as either a Primary course (8 tutorials) or Secondary course (4 tutorials).
Covering the early decades of photography, from the 1820s to the 1880s, this course introduces you to the origins and early development of the medium. Throughout the term, you will examine the work of pioneering photographers, explore the technical challenges that shaped early photographic practice, and consider how the invention of photography was understood in the nineteenth century. The course combines close readings of primary and secondary sources with practical sessions at the Weston Library, where you will have the opportunity to examine original photographs by leading early practitioners, including William Henry Fox Talbot and Julia Margaret Cameron.
This option can only be taken as a Secondary course (4 tutorials).
This option offers you the opportunity to undertake an extended research project on a topic of your choosing, developed in consultation with the tutor. Your project may focus on any area of History of Art, allowing you to pursue your individual interests and explore a particular subject in greater depth. Throughout the term, you will receive individual guidance on developing your research question, identifying and evaluating relevant sources, constructing an argument, and presenting your findings in a sustained piece of academic writing.
Our Tutors
Sofya
Dmitrieva
Non-Stipendiary Junior Research Fellow in European Languages
Dr Sofya Dmitrieva is a non-stipendiary Junior Research Fellow in European Languages at St Edmund Hall. Sofya is a historian of art and visual culture, specialising in eighteenth-century France. Her research interests span genre theory, perception studies, and the history of collections.
Visiting Students
More information about becoming a Visiting Student at St Edmund Hall – including finance, accommodation and how to apply