BA Liberal Arts with International Study / Course details

Methods and methodological concerns are at the heart of all research: the questions that we ask can impact the answers that we find. As such, it’s particularly important to develop a critical understanding of methodologies, both when evaluating others’ research, as well as developing your own.

This course trains you to think critically about methodologies across the arts and humanities, partially in differentiation to scientific methodologies. There will be an emphasis on how we understand and interpret different ideas in arts-based research, which will allow you to delve into concepts such as objectivity and subjectivity, and their role in research. 

You will have a chance to reflect on how you might apply different methodologies to your own interdisciplinary, challenge-led research that you will develop throughout your Liberal Arts degree programme (and beyond). What sources and datasets will you use, how will you bring together ideas from different disciplines, and how will you consider the impacts and implications of your research? The course helps you to think about the role and value of the humanities as represented through its methods, and this is an important foundation for Liberal Arts study. You will be able to make connections across ideas while raising appropriate critiques of them, which are skills that will be continually emphasised throughout your programme.

• To highlight the importance of methods and methodologies in research;
• To deepen an understanding of differences and similarities across arts, humanities, and science-based research
• To equip students to raise appropriate critical questions of others’ use of methods, particularly in terms of objectivity and subjectivity;
• To train students to begin to think reflexively about the use of methods in developing their own challenge-led, interdisciplinary research throughout the Liberal Arts programme.

1. Methods and methodologies
2. Handling sources
3. Qualitative and quantitative data
4. Hermeneutics and interpretation
5. Objects and objectivity (Mus. Medicine and Health)
6. Subjects and subjectivity
7. Curation and collection (M’cr Museum)
8. Frameworks and approaches
9. Interdisciplinarity
10. Developing research projects 1
11. Developing research projects 2 

Weekly structured interactive discussion of topics and readings, plus object-centred discovery work (structured by a work sheet), with interspersed short lectures. Subject to practical constraints, some of the classes may take place at cultural institutions such as the Manchester Museum and the Science and Industry Museum.

At the successful completion of this course unit students should be able to:

• Articulate some of the alternative approaches one might take to a research topic and the role of interdisciplinarity
• Reflect critically on the role of the researcher’s own experiences and culture in defining and answering a research question
• Critically evaluate academic literature and research projects with reference to the link between a research question, evidence and methodology  
• Demonstrate familiarity with some of the principles of research design in terms of methodology. 

At the successful completion of this course unit students should:

• Have developed their ability to articulate complex subjects clearly
• Have developed their ability to create a structured argument
• Have developed their skills of critical response another’s argument  
• Have enhanced their familiarity with some of the principles of research design in terms of methodology. 

At the successful completion of this course unit students should:

• Have enhanced their ability to locate relevant information through digital and other sources  
• Be able to locate and use library and museum descriptions of texts, material objects or visual objects
• Have developed their confidence in using the resources of museums and libraries for arts-based research
• Have enhanced their ability to differentiate the reliability of web-based sources.  

At the successful completion of this course unit students should have enhanced:

• group-working skills

• independent research skills

• Reflexive skills.

Lorraine Daston and Peter Galison, “The Image of Objectivity”, Representations 40 (1992), Special Issue: Seeing Science, pp. 81-128

Elizabeth A. Behnke, “Husserl, Emund. Phenomenology of Embodiment”, Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, https://iep.utm.edu/husspemb/  

Timothy J. Clark, “‘I am a Woman’: The Spring Nudes”, in Achim Borchardt-Hume and Nancy Ireson (eds.), Picasso 1932: Love, Fame, Tragedy : the EY Exhibition (London: Tate Publishing, 2018), pp. 76–87

Julie Thompson Klein, ‘A Taxonomy of Interdisciplinarity’, in Robert Frodeman, Julie Thompson Klein, and Carl Mitcham (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Interdisciplinary Studies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), pp. 15-30

Arthur Marwick, 'The Historian at Work', in his The Nature of History, 3rd edn. (London: Macmillan, 1989), pp. 208–233.