Excursions
JAG Excursion – History of Art
The undergraduate programme engaged facilitators from Johannesburg Art Gallery to offer a research excursion for students. This excursion offered an entry point into the complex histories and contemporary engagement of the museum and its collection.
The facilitators of the workshops are practitioners who have worked closely with JAG through residency and internship programmes as well as JAG staff who have generously offered their time and insights to this programme.
Writing Retreat – Postgraduate
As part of the department’s focus on developing research and writing skills students regularly go on writing retreats. These are an opportunity for independent writing, real-time feedback from staff and during the period of online learning, an opportunity for staff and students to work together in one location.
Public Culture Excursions
Public Culture examines a cluster of concepts that have become central to how we think and act in the interdisciplinary field of Heritage Studies. The course focuses on how notions of culture are understood and deployed in the public sphere, by and for various stakeholders, to various ends. Regular excursions take place during this semester and these included options for students not based in Johannesburg. Trips included the Voortrekker Monument and Freedom Park, Marabastad and beyond: Pretoria’s heritage ‘from below’: Session on public history led by Dr. Ali Khangela Hlongwane (Wits History Workshop), Fietas, the Hector Pieterson Memorial Museum and the Credo Mutwa site.
Postcolonial Art History
The Postcolonial Art History course embarked on a number of walks and hikes. Based on the concepts of epistemic walks (Augusto 2007), walking as pedagogy (Bates and Rhys-Taylor 2017) and walking and landscapes (Tilley, 1997; Pearson and Shanks, 2001) the courses engagement with both knowledge production and research methodologies took place outside of the classroom whilst walking in different landscapes and environments. This seminar programme focuses on the historical, sociological and post/de-colonial approaches to reading, understanding and (de)constructing art histories today, especially as they are experienced within the landscapes of South Africa. Walks took place at the Walter Sisulu Botanical Garden, Tswaing Meteorite Crater, Fouriesberg, Eastern Free State, Houghton and Yeoville.
