MA - Design History & Material Culture

The taught MA in Design History and Material Culture is a pioneering course that examines the history of design and material culture from the eighteenth century through to the present day, providing a unique forum for the study of objects, architecture and interiors within their social, historical and theoretical contexts. The programme draws on the wide-ranging academic expertise of staff in the fields of the history of decorative arts and design, dress history, architectural history and material culture, and benefits from close relationships with a wide range of museums and cultural institutions. Seminars and lectures on campus at NCAD are complemented by a study trip to London and sessions at the National Museum of Ireland and various historic properties. The course is offered on a full-time or part-time basis over one or two years respectively. Full-time students attend seminars on Mondays and Fridays whereas part-time students attend on either Monday or Friday, depending on their year of study. Students attend classes from September to June and submit a major piece of work in the autumn.

For more information on this programme, please click here for the dedicated MA Design History and Material Culture website or contact the programme coordinator, Anna Moran, at morana@ncad.ie.

The modules offered during the academic year 2009-2010 include the following: Design and Material Cultures – a seminar open to researchers interested in exploring ideas about material culture and design: this might be through an interest in design activity and practice, particular historical positions in relation to questions of materiality and a concern with how what we are is formed through exterior environments that habituate and prompt us. Approaches to domestic space in the Georgian era - This course introduces students to both the material and ideological aspects of interiors designed during the Georgian period, and aims to foster an appreciation for the myriad critical approaches to studies concerned with the history of domestic space and the material culture of the home.

Uncovering the Everyday: shopping and consumption in Eighteenth century Ireland - Focusing on the consumer culture of the eighteenth century, this module uses case studies to explore the ways in which people accessed, used and valued goods. Theoretical approaches will be used in considering the ways in which objects were not just commodities with functional or exchange value, but were integral to the shaping of personal, local and national identities.

Research Methods - introduces students to key concepts and skills in academic research in visual and material culture.

Design for the Luxury Markets in Ancien Régime France, 1750-1789 – Focusing on issues surrounding innovation, imitation, taste and gender, this module examines the design, production and retailing of the luxury goods of France during the second half of the eighteenth century.

Space, Place and Identity in Nineteenth-Century Ireland - A series of guest lecturers will present on their own primary research in the areas of interiors, typography, print culture and retailing history. Alongside exploring the range of identities – political, social, religious and gender – expressed via such material, speakers will pay particular attention to the historiography of their subject, and in doing so reflect on the way such subjects have been interpreted and approached by other historians. Dress, Meaning and Identity - the module examines the role of dress in constructing social and cultural identity. Rather than seeing dress as ‘reflecting’ history, the module explores dress as an agent of history, embodying new ideas and changing cultural norms.

Dress and Irish Material Culture - Building on visual, material and oral history sources, this module explores the role of dress in Ireland in negotiating the realms of nationality, gender, religion and status.

Living with the past? Taste, display and decoration in the nineteenth-century home – this module explores the broader forces that shaped not just the decoration of the home during the nineteenth century but also the notion of ‘home’ itself, reflecting on issues surrounding morality, display, authenticity and gender, together with changing ideas regarding efficiency within the domestic environment.

Spatial Cultures – run in collaboration with the School of Architecture, University College Dublin, this module examines aspects of space and culture with particular reference to theories of urbanism in art and architecture.

An Introduction to the Material Culture of Ireland - The aims of this course are to introduce students to the design and material culture of Ireland, to discuss theories of material culture and Irish culture generally with specific reference to design in the twentieth century, and to develop students’ skills if historical and critical analysis through lectures, seminars, research and writing.

Modernity, Modernism and Design - This course addresses modernism in terms of specific case studies related to individual designers, key texts and particular outputs such as urban design, typography and theatre design. Running alongside that is a concern with modernity in terms of a temporal construct, an attitude and a cultural phenomenon.

The Reinvention of Identity: State and commercial visual communications in twentieth-century Ireland – an exploration of contemporary theories of national and cultural identity as a means of contextualising and decoding state and commercial visual imagery.

DesignedArt: Converging fields and critical responses in contemporary practice - The historically complex relationship between design and art is becoming even more problematic as practitioners in both fields constantly redefine their own programmes. This module will explore how these disparate fields variously enrich and subvert each other. When artists incorporate the vernacular of design and architecture into their practices (and vice versa), can the results go beyond a referential endgame to create modes of practice that are critically generative of new ideas?

Archival narratives: hands-on workshops on the use of archives in qualitative and quantitative research - Students will be shown how to assess the properties and characteristics of different types of documents, extract relevant information from large amounts of material, correlate disparate sources and construct complex arguments based on the sources. Students will also be introduced to digital arts and humanity methods – that is the tools and techniques that are used to gain new knowledge in the various academic fields which constitute the arts and humanities – including data capture and data analysis.

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