Master in Critical Studies 2022

Deadline: Monday, Feb 28, 2022, 11:59pm

The Master in Critical Studies program is an artistic-scientific program. It lasts five semesters with an artistic-academic project being developed in the final semester. The program is completed with a Master of Arts (MA) degree.

 

The program is intended for students who have a diploma or a B.A. in a subject related to the arts or humanities and/or for those who have achieved a corresponding qualification in an artistic discipline and who wish to pursue an artistic-scholarly education.

 

The program pursues three teaching objectives. It is intended to prepare students for academic doctoral studies, primarily in art theory and cultural studies but also in the disciplines of education in the arts and in architecture. It is intended to equip students to continue artistic research towards an arts-based research doctoral study, a PhD in practice or a comparable qualification. It is intended to prepare students for activities in public artistic and cultural fields of practice, especially for work in journalism, specialized and academic journalism as well as for curatorial, archival, mediational and other such activities.

The program has artistic, theoretical, propaedeutically preparatory, practical and such parts in which forms of practice are purposefully intermingled and their clear demarcation called into question.

The course consists of six modules. In each of these modules, students take courses during the first four semesters. In the first module, students individually join art classes at the Institute of Fine Arts and participate to a limited extent in regular art classes. In the second module, they develop artistic and scholarly approaches in project studies with two teachers each from different disciplines. In the third, they choose between seminars offered by the Institute for Art Theory and Cultural Studies. In the fourth module students attend a practice-oriented seminar held by an external specialist. In the fifth module, methods and aspects of artistic-scientific practices are discussed in the framework of the Kolloquium, partly on the basis of the students' own works and working methods. In the sixth module, elective courses can be taken. In the fifth semester, the Master's project is developed.

 

The Master in Critical Studies program is primarily oriented towards those critical positions that have been inspired by, among others, Gender Studies, Post- and Decolonial Studies, Subaltern Studies, Cultural Studies and Queer Studies, but also by the Frankfurt School, Poststructuralism and Deconstruction. In addition, theories of the visual, medialities, the public, and the social will be addressed - throughout in relation to artistic processes and methodologies.

 

Students will work in small teams and cross-institutional larger groups. They will be supervised from a pool of faculty from almost all institutes of the Academy, although they will be primarily involved in the Institute of Art and Cultural Studies.


Admission Examination for the Master in Critical Studies and Submission of the examination assignment online:

from February 1 until February 28, 2022, until 11:59pm.

https://calls.akbild.ac.at/calls/

Review of the assignment by a commission:

March 1 until March 20, 2022.

Applicants who are invited for a personal interview / oral examination will be notified by email on March 25, 2022.

Examination interviews of the invited applicants with the commission:

March 2 and 3, 2022, from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.

The interviews take place in small groups of two to four applicants. You can decide whether you want to conduct the interview in German or English. You will be asked to briefly introduce yourself and outline your proposed project before the commission (please be very brief and keep this presentation to a maximum of five minutes), and shortly explain your decision to apply for the Master in Critical Studies. Afterwards, members of the commission will ask you a few questions regarding your application.

The commission will decide who is admitted to the study program by April 21, 2021. You will be informed about the results by e-mail.

Master in Critical Studies: Completion of a bachelor degree in a related field or equivalent, proof of possession of special university entrance qualification (for applicants from so-called Third States), successfully passing the admission test and proof of German and English language competency before admission (at least B2 of the Common European Reference Scale for Languages)

https://www.akbild.ac.at/portal_en/studies/studieninfos_en/admission/admission-to-study/enrolment?set_language=en&cl=en

For inquiries please contact: Studienabteilung@akbild.ac.at

Examination Assignment:

Please sketch an artistic-academic project that you could imagine to realize as a Master's thesis at the end of the program. This project should combine scholarly and artistic components in an interdisciplinary manner. Explain which research methods you would like to use, whether and how you would like to work on which humanities and cultural studies questions, which artistic techniques and realization modes could be used. Which social contexts could your project be relevant in? Do you have a specific audience in mind?

Length:

Please write no less than 4,000 characters and no more than 10,000 characters.

Form:

Use your own words but define your terminology. You are not expected to apply a specific academic or artistic jargon. State the reasons for your decisions.

Language:

Your text can be written in either German or English.

Documents to be submitted:

* CV (1 single document; pdf)

* Examination Assignment (1 single document; pdf)

* work samples: portfolio or text work (If no portfolio is available at the time of application, also independently written works in shorter formats (no final papers or seminar papers) can be submitted); (1 single document; pdf)

* Diploma and/or certificate of the highest academic degree (unlimited files; pdf) (if the degree that qualifies you for MA study at the Academy of Fine Arts is not completed at the time of application, please upload a letter of information stating what degree you will be completing, when the graduation is scheduled, at what institution, and in what area of study the degree will be completed)

 

For further information please contact Dunja Reithner (d.reithner@akbild.ac.at, +43 1 588 16-8101)

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