Interdisciplinary Arts and Culture Studies

Overview

Bachelors of Art Honours, Interdisciplinary Arts and Culture Studies Programme Code: AHA00

The degree offers an opportunity to engage with the ways in which the worlds of work and artistic practice increasingly reflect dissolving boundaries between traditional disciplines in the arts, humanities, commerce, science and technology, as well as in artistic and cultural practice and policymaking, business and entertainment, and in modes of working.

Curriculum

• The total no. of credits required for award of the degree is 122.
• A minimum of two courses must be selected from the Honours courses offered by the department of Interdisciplinary Arts and
• Two additional courses may be selected from Honours-level courses outside the department. Students are reminded that entry into such courses must be approved by the relevant department.
• Enrolment for WSOA 4118A: Long Essay in Interdisciplinary Arts and Culture Studies, is compulsory. Successful completion of this course is required for graduation.

Curriculum Counselling

• NB: You MUST obtain curriculum counselling prior to registration. Your proposed curriculum must be approved by IACS; additionally, your individual course selections outside the IACS department will require approval by the relevant departments. If you register online without prior curriculum counselling and approval, your registration may be cancelled and/or you may not be able to graduate.

Courses

*(Not all courses are offered every year. Please email the department to confirm your selection is offered in your year of registration)

Participatory Cultures (WSOA 4108A) (Semester 1)

This course invites critical investigation, in the tradition of cultural studies, into the practices and performances that inform various kinds of participatory cultures. In this seminar-based course, we will also focus on how our location in Johannesburg, and more broadly South Africa and the global south, influences and inflects participation in these cultures and subcultures. Given the focus on participatory culture, the course will emphasise participatory styles of learning and assessment. 

Film Studies (WSOA 4131A) (Semester 2)

This seminar course offers an introduction to debates and developments in contemporary film studies. Each year, a selection of topics is explored that may include the Business of Film, Film Studies and Digital Technologies, Spectacle and Narrative in Contemporary Media Culture, Hollywood/Bollywood/Nollywood, Cinema in South Africa and Africa, and/or Film and Children’s Popular Culture.

Students are required to engage in active participation in seminar discussions and complete a series of critical reading and writing tasks culminating in a research essay on an approved film/media-related topic of their own choice. The final essay is completed as a guided research enquiry that offers a textual, ideological, aesthetic, and/or production analysis, and entails engagement with the research/scholarship, debates, practices, and case studies relevant to the selected topic.

Digital Humanities (WSOA 4111A) (Semester 1)

The course offers students from diverse disciplinary backgrounds the opportunity to investigate digital formations and life worlds using critical perspectives that have been developed within the ambit of the Digital Humanities. This seminar-based module will explore the ethical, political, and material, effects of digital technologies within the situated networks both from which they arise and which they produce. The course takes its impetus from intersecting queer, feminist, and anti-racist, approaches to the question of  life-technology intervolvements to reflect on how digital formations might both constitute and/or frustrate the anti-capitalist, feminist, and decolonising, projects that are necessary to (re)shape the terms of a ‘Fourth Industrial Revolution’- a conjuncture that is conditioned by platform capitalism. Adopting modes of investigation used within the Digital Humanities to analyse multiple digital technological platforms and practices, the course provides students with opportunities to hone their research, project development, and reporting, skills.

Long Essay in Interdisciplinary Arts and Culture Studies (WSOA 4118A) (Semester 1 and 2)

Students must complete an Honours research essay of 6000 words (or an approved project) which must be submitted in October of the (final) year of registration.

The Honours research essay/project is undertaken on a topic of your choice which must be approved by the Postgraduate Studies Coordinator. Such research is conducted under supervision by one (or by arrangement, two) members of the University’s staff.

Entry Requirements

For admission into the Bachelor of Arts Honours in the field of Interdisciplinary Arts and Culture Studies, an applicant must have:

1. An average of at least 65% in the final year of her/his undergraduate degree
2. Evidence of strong analytical and writing skills
3. Be available for an interview in person, or via telephone or skype, to a selection panel.

Before applicants can advance to the interview they must complete the BA Honours IACS Questionnaire and submit a sample of scholarly writing. 

Additional requirements may apply.

University Application Process

University Fees and Funding

Click here to see the current average tuition fees. The Fees site also provides information about the payment of fees and closing dates for fees payments. Once you have applied you will be able to access the fees estimator on the student self-service portal.

For information about postgraduate funding opportunities, including the postgraduate merit award, click here. Please also check your School website for bursary opportunities. NRF bursaries: The National Research Foundation (NRF) offers a wide range of opportunities in terms of bursaries and fellowships to students pursuing postgraduate studies. External bursaries portal: The Bursaries South Africa website provides a comprehensive list of bursaries in South Africa.