About the course

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The Postgraduate Certificate in Cultural Intellectual and Visual History focuses on the survival and transmission of culture across time and space, with a particular emphasis on the Renaissance but spanning the entire period from the late Middle Ages to Modernity. The Warburg Institute is a leading centre for the study of the interaction of ideas, images, and society, and provides students with access to world-leading research, teaching and expertise. This course builds upon the institute’s long and distinguished tradition of the study of history, culture, and society. It is ideal for students who have an interest in these subjects, and who are looking for an intellectual challenge, but who do not want to undertake or cannot yet commit to a full MA.

 

I would unreservedly recommend the Institute as a place of study. It offered me a unique understanding of the interactions between image and word, art history, religion, literature and philosophy, across space and time.

Dr Laura Popoviciu, former MA and PhD Student

Why study with us

  • Access to the best resources for the study of Renaissance art and culture in London. Our open-stack Library, Photographic Collection and Archive is of international importance in the humanities. One of 20 libraries that changed the world, and with over 300,000 specialist volumes, it serves as an engine for interdisciplinary research and study.
  • With approximately 40 graduate students admitted to taught courses each year, you will join a tight community of peers that benefits from close discussion with expert tutors and small-group teaching.
  • Our students come from a wide range of backgrounds and areas of study, from art history to literature, philosophy, history, anthropology, classics, and more, making for a dynamic and interdisciplinary learning environment.
  • Through the Institute’s prestigious research projects, fellowship programmes and events, and its informal collegiate atmosphere, students have extensive opportunities for networking with an international community of scholars, which significantly enriches the learning experience and can provide ideal connections for the future careers.
  • Located in Bloomsbury, you will be placed at the centre of London’s academic and cultural hub, and students benefit from visits and training sessions at neighbouring institutions including the British Museum, the Government Art Collection, the Wellcome Trust and the British Library, and further afield the V&A, the Dulwich Picture Gallery, the National Portrait Gallery and the Courtauld Gallery.  
  • The Postgraduate Certificate at the Warburg Institute offers both an intellectually stimulating and rigorous place to study, and because we are a relatively small institute we are able to provide a welcoming and supportive academic community. Learning and research is a pleasure, and we are dedicated to ensuring that every student feels at home and is able to advance in, and enjoy, their area of study.
"The Warburg has inspired my curiosity to no end"

Lauren Steele, 2020 MA student

Careers and Employability

In addition to key skills relating to scholarship, students also acquire important transferable skills that will be useful in any workplace. These include:

  • Writing in different ways for different readerships
  • Researching effectively
  • Presentation skills
  • Problem solving and analytical skills
  • Critical reading and thinking
  • Time management

The Postgraduate Certificate can provide a stepping stone for those who wish to progress to further postgraduate study, as students will gain 60 credits which can be used towards a master’s degree rather than graduating with the Certificate.

Discover what some Warburg alumni have gone on to do on our blog. 

Degree overview

The programme combines the study of historical texts and their cultural contexts with an introduction to current academic debates. Students receive training in:

  • Intellectual and Cultural History of the Renaissance, dealing with such issues as the emergence of humanism; the image of Rome in early modern Italian city-states; the religious backdrop of the Renaissance, including papal politics and the Reformation; alchemy, magic, and the roots of modern science; exploration, conquest, and colonialism and their impact on views of humanity; and much else.
  • Methods and Techniques of Cultural and Intellectual History. The programme will increase students’ understanding of methods for analysing literary, philosophical, religious and scientific texts of the early modern period, including close readings as well as biographical, political, and cultural contextualization.
  • Current scholarship and professional practice in these areas as well as new and emerging areas of research and scholarship.

The programme is taught through classes and supervision by members of the academic staff of The Warburg Institute. The teaching staff of the Warburg Institute are leading academics in their field who have published widely and are involved with research related to the topics they teach. Staff members’ expertise and current research feed directly into the teaching they provide, allowing students to develop the critical skills for academic research and creative independent projects.

Teaching and Learning

All students take one core module and two option modules. The modules selected are taken from those on offer on the MA programme. The course is examined as follows:

  1. Reviving the Past: Introductions to Cultural and Intellectual History – 4,000-word essay
  2. Two option modules – 4,000-word essay for each option

Option modules are subject to change. Additional modules may be offered, depending on both student numbers (a minimum of three students required per option) and teaching staff availability.

Core Module

Reviving the Past

“Reviving the Past” introduces students to foundational knowledge and research skills for the study of the cultural, intellectual, and visual history of Europe, with a focus on the period comprised between the late Middle Ages and early modernity. It will provide students with a firm grasp on key elements of the transmission, renewal, and transformations of the classical tradition while introducing them to theory and method in intellectual and cultural history.

The module is divided into three main units. The first unit explores the concern with the legacy of antiquity spreading across Western Europe in the Middle Ages and early Renaissance. The second unit focuses on the complex cultural and intellectual changes brought about at the turn of the sixteenth century by the great geographical discoveries and by movements of religious reform. The third and final unit investigates engagements with ancient science in the seventeenth century and follows the constitution of a new, globally organized vision of the earth and cosmos into the early nineteenth century.

Students will become familiar with a range of specific historical cases and dynamics by making use of both primary and secondary texts in the Warburg Library; and they will learn to problematize keywords such as “medieval”, “Renaissance”, “Western”, “nature”, “culture”, “civilization”, “modern”, “transmission” and “translation” and their implications for contemporary understandings of the past. Throughout, students will learn through a combination of lectures and discussions, and through active engagement with authentic primary sources and relevant scholarly work.

Option Modules

Classical Disorders: Architecture, Painting and the Afterlives of the Renaissance

Taught by Dr Caspar Pearson

This module examines Italian Renaissance architecture and urbanism, focusing particularly on ideas about the built environment and the city. Approaching themes such as conflict, beauty, giganticism, exile, and power, the module considers how Renaissance architects, artists and writers responded to the complex problems posed by the urban societies in which they lived. It begins by considering the writing and architecture of Leon Battista Alberti, a theorist and practitioner who conducted a lifelong investigation into society, art, and architecture, which he developed across technical treatises, dialogues, works of fiction, and an array of largely incomplete buildings in Rimini, Florence, and Mantua. It then examines the works of other thinkers and practitioners of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, touching on written works such as Filarete’s Libro architettonico, the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, and Palladio’s Quattro libri, as well as a range of buildings including the Villa Farnesina, the Palazzo Te and the Laurentian Library. Alongside this, the module from time to time examines historiography, taking in nineteenth- and twentieth-century debates about, and responses to, Renaissance architecture. Throughout, we will consider how buildings, texts and works of art might be related to debates regarding pictorial and tectonic qualities, order and disorder, measure and measureless, and history and oblivion.

Cosmological Images: Representing the Universe

Taught by Professor John Tresch

This course will study cosmograms: concrete objects which represent the universe as a whole. It will explore connections between art and science, including the intellectual function of images and the aesthetics of representing the cosmos and knowledge about it, in science, religion, and folk traditions. Students will be provided methods for studying such objects in action, as part of ritual practices, projects of knowledge, and political programs.

One aim of the course will be to trace the changing form and content of cosmograms from the medieval through modern period, especially with regard to scientific images. The course will trace the gradual emergence of a cosmology said to be mechanical, materialist, and objective, and its interactions and oppositions with other views of the cosmos. By exploring these conflicts and controversies through a focus on cosmograms, we will ground these longstanding issues of intellectual history in concrete contexts and the making of objects and images.

Methods and Techniques of Scholarship: Reading and Writing History

(Unassessed)

The main goal of the module is to introduce you to the nuts and bolts of scholarly work in late medieval and early modern cultural history (broadly conceived) and to prepare you for undertaking original research in this field.

In the Autumn Term ('Reading History'), our team of instructors will introduce you to a series of seminal articles and studies on different 'objects' (text, artworks, concepts, problems), showing you how each object can be - and has been - approached from a variety of perspectives. This will help you form a broad sense of the field of cultural history, its historical development, different methodologies, and open possibilities. We will also have skills-oriented sessions on topics such as reading scholarship, using and writing book reviews, conducting bibliographical research, and writing in an effective academic style.

Mapping Worlds: Medieval to Modern

Taught by Dr Alessandro Scafi

The aim of this course is to explore how maps have served to order and represent physical, social and imaginative worlds from around 1200 to 1700. The focus is on the iconographic character of maps and the complex relation between art and science that is found in mapmaking throughout history. Students will be introduced to a wide range of images from different time periods and made for a variety of purposes, with the intent of drawing together art history, literature, philosophy and visual culture. Theoretical issues will be approached concerning, for example, the association of word and image, the definition of maps and their difference from views and diagrams, but the background and purpose of individual examples will be also discussed. These include medieval world maps produced as independent artefacts or drawn as book illustrations, mural map cycles of the Italian Renaissance, early modern prints made to identify and describe lands mentioned in the Bible or the archaeological mapping of cities.  The course will investigate the creative and projective power of maps and their value as historical testimonies. Mnemonic, thematic, allegorical and pilgrimage maps will be also approached. This module is supplemented by visits to London museums and galleries.

Religion and Society in Renaissance Italy

Taught by Dr Alessandro Scafi

The aim of this module is to identify and explain the significance of religious culture in late medieval, Renaissance and early modern Italy, providing a basic understanding of the interactions between politics, social life, cultural expression, and religion. From the late Middle Ages to the early modern period politics and religion were inextricably bound together, the Church was involved in temporal matters, and religious beliefs and practices were powerful motivating factors in contemporary policy making; religion was expressed both in rituals and in texts and works of art, and formed a significant dimension of Italian culture and scholarship. Students are encouraged to develop a sound knowledge and critical understanding of Italian cultural history through the discussion of specific themes: the relation between pagan philosophy and Christian faith, Church and Empire, Church and Papacy, faith and space, sex and sanctity, Islam and Christianity, Jews and Christians, Church Councils and spiritual renewal, secular and religious utopias. Religion and Society in Renaissance Italy aims to critically assess the development of religious thought and practice by looking at texts and works of art, reaching – beyond factual information – a critical and unbiased assessment of the past and its complexities.

Renaissance Political Thought from Erasmus to Campanella

Taught by Dr Sara Miglietti

This module will explore some key political texts from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, contextualizing them historically and situating them in a longstanding tradition of moral and political philosophy that stretches back to Classical Antiquity and the Middle Ages, and that has a long and complex afterlife in modern interpretation. We shall consider how Renaissance political thinkers operated within this tradition and yet deeply transformed it, partly in response to specific historical circumstances (e.g. movements of religious reform, the rise of nation-states, and the development of national vernacular languages, the ‘discovery’ of America, and the beginnings of the colonial race), and partly as a result of new theoretical choices (e.g. the rise of political ‘realism’). Our corpus will include both major milestones (such as Machiavelli’s Principe, Erasmus’ Education of the Christian Prince and More’s Utopia) and less familiar sources – from political emblem books to polemical pamphlets from the French wars of religion. Similarly, we shall cover both classic problems of political philosophy (such as the discussion on the best form of government) and more neglected, but nevertheless crucial, issues such as gender relations (e.g. the querelle des femmes, the debate on queenship), and colonial relations (e.g. the debate on ‘just war’ and the establishment of experimental ‘utopias’ in colonial South America).

The World of the Book in the European Renaissance

Taught by Professor Bill ShermanDr Raphaële Mouren and Dr Elizabeth Savage

The aim of the module is to provide an understanding of the culture of the book in Renaissance Europe—a time and place that saw the invention of printing, the growth of both private and public libraries, the development of bibliographical protocols, the advent of the humanist printer, and new techniques for active reading. It also saw the beginnings of colonialism and conquest, cultural revolutions, religious reformations, and profound social upheavals. What role did the book play in these changes—or did it? How can it help us to understand the changing world of the European Renaissance? Through seminars, collection visits, and practical training at a historically appropriate printing press, this module will offer an overview of the history and the historiography of the book, with a special focus on the material aspects of production, dissemination, and use. It is jointly offered by the Warburg Institute and Institute of English Studies.

Course Summary

Degree structure

One core module and two option modules chosen from a range of topics.

Mode of study

Full-time (seven-month programme): one core module in the autumn term and two optional modules in the spring term

Part-time (two years): one core module in the autumn term of year one and one option in the spring term, followed by another option in the spring term of year two

Contact hours

Full-time is 2 taught hours a week in the first term and then 4 taught hours a week in the second term. Along with independent study this would come to 7 hours per week in the first term and 14 hours per week in the second term.

Part-time involves 2 taught hours a week in the first year, which along with independent study comes to 7 hours per week. In the second year, in the first term you will take a break and then there will be 2 taught hours a week in the second term, which along with independent study comes to 7 hours per week.

Fees

UK citizens

Full-time: £2825

Part-time: £1412

The fees listed may be subject to an annual increase.​ For further information on when and how to pay tuition fees please read the SAS tuition fee policy.

Entry requirements

The normal minimum entry requirement is an upper second-class honours degree from a British university, or an equivalent qualification from a non-UK institution, in any discipline in the humanities which is related to the course.

How to apply

Applications for the academic year 2023/24 are now open. Places are offered throughout the year until a course is full. The final deadline for applications is 31 July 2023, though this may move should all places be taken on a particular programme before this date.

Prospective students should fill in an application form through the School’s webpages. For more information on how to apply, including the documentation you will need to provide on the application form, visit the School of Advanced Study's How to Apply page.

Apply here

Learn more

For details of entry requirements, tuition fees, funding opportunities, English language requirements, disability support, accommodation and how to apply, please consult the School graduate study webpages. Detailed course descriptions and information about assessment are available on the Institute’s graduate study webpages and School graduate study webpages.

If you have any queries regarding programme content please contact the Programme Convenor: Professor John Tresch  (john.tresch@sas.ac.uk)

Please note the information in this guide is correct as of November 2021, but the School of Advanced Study, University of London reserves the right to alter or withdraw courses and amend other details without prior notice as required.