BA Creative Arts and Cultural Industries

This module introduces some of the major musical cultures of selected regions in Asia, Africa and the Middle East through a focus on musical instruments. We explore what instruments can tell us about society, class, and gender; symbolic systems related to music; the histories of musicians and performers; creativity and the imagination; and the transformation of “traditional” musical systems in contemporary societies and global industries.

This course introduces selected popular music cultures of the world, examining case studies from Asia, Africa and the Middle East, as well as diasporic and globalised styles. Each lecture will introduce: representative musical styles with their characteristic sounds, instruments and forms; the cultural contexts within which they have developed; relationships between music and global and local forces including political power structures, gender, nationalism, tourism and globalisation; the roles of musicians and those working in music industries; circumstances surrounding musical performance, recording and dissemination of music.

This module supports students with their transition to Higher Education. It delves into the study of Humanities, with a focus on questions concerning the colonial genealogy of Humanities and the ways of decolonising Humanities, and skills acquired in the various disciplines in the college. Students learn to identify and describe the skills they acquire in this module and during their studies in the Humanities. Students are introduced to research, reading, listening, writing, performance and communication skills through multiple disciplinary lenses, addressing the planetary questions of this age. They compare different disciplinary approaches and are encouraged to reflect on interdisciplinary approaches to studying the Humanities, grounded in different regions. This enables students to make more informed decisions in the designing of their individual educational journey. Students practice their skills and reflect on their skills through real-world projects, drawing on critical content from all disciplines in the College of Humanities at SOAS.

This module introduces the scope, aims and methods of art history as a discipline from its Eurocentric origins through to contemporary approaches to art and its histories in a global era. In conjunction with Theories of Art, this module establishes the methodological and theoretical foundations for further art historical study. In Objects of Art History, approaches to objects and their histories will be explored with a focus on key concepts, such as art, artefact, style, form and media, artists and makers.

Alongside studying individual objects, art historians also examine the spaces, locations, institutions and contexts within which they may be seen and evaluated. This module will introduce the many contexts of use for objects, including the religious, social and material circumstances in which a 'work of art' was created and used.

This module examines a range of key art historical concepts and theories in more detail. Seminar discussions will examine how these theories, issues and concepts may be evaluated in relation to the study of Asian and African art.

A full-year module, this is a practical course on performance in four Asian and African music traditions. Available traditions may vary from year to year. Students will normally have weekly group lessons with established musicians of the respective traditions. Students are assessed by their tutors continuously throughout the sessions based on their effort and progress, yet in the last session of each block (instrument), there is a more formal assessment by the practice tutor and the module convenor.

This module provides a critical introduction to the film and screen cultures of Asia, Africa and the Middle East. Approaching film in terms of cultural identity and self-expression, this module will place screened films within a general framework of national tradition and identity and provide a platform for students to reflect on the unity and diversity of the human condition across different regions. A selection of 21st century films will be explored within their cultural, social and political context of production, exhibition and reception, and students will be guided to reflect on different functions of cinema.

What role do the internet and its associated tools and devices play in facilitating movements for social justice? This first-year module will use examples of prominent digital-driven campaigns and causes from all over the world, from geopolitical conflicts to environmental movements to indigenous and decolonial rights campaigns - to examine the role of digital communications tools and platforms in bottom up" democratic movements, and the challenges associated with these approaches. Do technologies such as AI have a role to play in assisting social justice, or do they merely constitute surveillance? The module may examine formats including social media text, images and video, and podcasting, and these skills will also be covered."

Why is it so crucial to talk about “digital” technology, and what is important or distinctive about it? This is the standard first-year theory module that sets the tone for the course and frame other modules. It will enable students to cultivate a critical distance from digital technologies while appreciating and identifying the aspects of the digital world that they find most interesting as budding scholars and professionals.

Why is there so much hype afforded to new technologies? Who develops these technologies and who stands to gain from them? What kinds of value do they produce for users and developers alike? What is the implication of using a technology developed in one cultural context, in another? This module considers the development of new and emergent digital technologies, such as virtual and extended realities, varied forms of artificial intelligence and algorithms, cryptocurrencies and blockchains - in a global context. It examines the life cycle of new digital technologies, from the ideation and innovation process, venture capital, state sponsorship, development, manufacturing, advertising, cultural meaning, actual uses, and eventual obsolescence.

This module is primarily designed to introduce students who have no background in Film Studies, or in analysing cinema, to the vocabularies used to understand and analyse film language. The module will thus focus on the close reading of specific films – from the early days of cinema, just after its invention in 1895, to the present – so as to deconstruct and analyse their technical, visual, aural and spatial features. While it will be inevitable that we look at certain European and North American films – particularly when analysing ‘mainstream’ film language – we will put the emphasis on our regional film expertise to introduce students to important films from Africa, Asia, the Middle East, and also the Soviet Union and Latin America.

Based around the three broad themes of Religion, Trade and Empire, this module examines a series of individual objects in context from across Asia and Africa to explore the role of material and visual culture in understanding the history of global connectivity. Each case-study will demonstrate the transmission of ideas, motifs, materials, objects and people within Asia and Africa and in interaction with Europe, over around 1500 years from the 2nd-3rd to the 18th centuries CE.

Building upon Global Arts: connected histories (to 1800)(Term 1), this module develops an understanding of the arts of Asia and Africa from the 19th century to the present, encompassing the period when many regions were impacted first by European colonialism and later by nationalist and postcolonial movements.

What can music tell us about society and culture?This module introduces students to the music and sound art of a particular region, viewed through a variety of interconnected topics that have been important in the field of ethnomusicology. Drawing on the Music Department's rich expertise in the musical worlds of Asia, Africa, the Middle East and their diasporas, this module provides the opportunity to explore a different set of classical and contemporary musics, while exploring larger social questions including politics, religion, gender and sexuality, race/ethnicity, media, and identity politics, as they take shape in specific regions.

The course is designed to explore themes – around the emergence of the cultural industries, the commodification of art and culture and the potentialities of digital culture – that are relevant across Media, Music and Arts and Archaeology, and to bring together expertise from each department in a team-taught course. It will give students an overview of the history and scale of the global cultural industries and how they intersect with politics, the economy, and ideas of the self and of community. It will use case studies drawn from across SOAS regions to ground the course in specific examples that address transnational and localised framings.

The course is designed to equip students with a broad range of theoretical and practical approaches to the study of museums. It examines the strategies and practices by which museums interpret, organise and display objects – especially non-Western objects – within diverse cultural contexts.

In this mostly practical module, students take one-to-one lessons in one of the non-Western classical traditions offered at SOAS or in other vocal or instrumental traditions fitting into the SOAS study geography taught by an approved teacher outside the school. In addition to practical tuition, students will be familiar with basics of self-reflective writing and performance theory and start practicing critical reflection on their learning processes around the instrumental or vocal tradition studied.

Hip Hop inspires strong opinions, whether in culture war debates or among urban youth born in the digital era. It is the music of grass-roots activists, but it is also big business. It is often described as a primarily lyrics-driven genre, but its best songs are condensed histories of migration and labour trauma that play out at the level of melody. This module considers how it came to be that this genre, born of post-industrial urban decay but gestated through decades of Afrodiasporic conceptions of versioning, has come to dominate not only the Music industry, but academic discussions of youth culture. Through consideration of Hip Hop’s history, pre-history, and global reach, we draw broader conclusions about migration and diaspora, ethnicity and gender, nation and place, all of which hide in plain sight embedded in musical style.

This module will examine the relationship between cities and film cultures in Africa, the Middle East, Asia and beyond. In addition to examining the city from a film studies perspective, the module will also draw on key ideas from geography, urban studies and cultural studies.

This course offers a historical and contemporary exploration of the important roles played by film festivals in defining, validating, exhibiting, distributing, and (increasingly) producing global cinemas. While it introduces students to the inner workings of the oldest and largest international film festivals, it takes a critical postcolonial approach to the analysis of festivals worldwide and focuses in particular on the treatment of African, Asian, Middle Eastern, and Latin American films and filmmakers on the circuit.

This module will give students the opportunity to experience what it is like to work in their chosen industry, while developing their employability and graduate career prospects. It will allow students to acquire greater knowledge of the industry of their choice and enable them to explore and experience its practices. Students will apply some of what you have learned on their programme and reflect upon their career aspirations.

Important note: This module is offered on a first come, first served basis. In term 1 you will be expected to secure the accredited internship yourself, to be approved by the academic department. The SOAS Careers team are on hand to help you with your CV, interview skills and finding the right organisation for you. Only upon the successful completion of this task, students will be invited to take this module in semester 2 of their degrees.

This module provides theoretical, practical and historical training in decolonising the study of the arts of Asia, Africa and the Middle East. It equips students with decolonising tools and perspectives needed to establish and articulate their intellectual position within the study of the arts.

This module allows students to synthesise their learning in a single project that demonstrates their fulfilment of the programme’s learning outcomes. It integrates their academic knowledge with experiences beyond the classroom and combines their developing knowledge, skills, and personal interests. The project is conceived, designed, and carried out independently, with support and supervision.

The Music Business.

This mostly practical module follows in some logical way on the practical and theoretical content of Performance and Self-reflective Writing 1 (which is a prerequisite). Students must normally continue the practical training in an instrumental or vocal tradition of Asia or Africa (or other SOAS study geographies) begun in the preceding academic year. This is to deepen their performative skills and theoretical-cultural knowledge of the given tradition. Students are expected to perform a more advanced repertoire for their final exam (which is a public performance) and develop a more critical portfolio compared to Performance and Self-reflective Writing 1. If their technical mastery and knowledge allow, they will also start experiencing creative practice within aesthetic and cultural frameworks of the tradition in question.

This module will consider the material and political reality of digital technologies from the perspective of geopolitics, political economy, physical resources, conflict, and climate. It will introduce students to a variety of concepts relevant to these questions as well as examining key current themes relating to the global political economy of digital technology such as: Server farms and energy, cryptocurrencies and fringe groups, technocolonialism (technology and intl. development), undersea cables, security, surveillance infrastructures, minerals like lithium, cobalt, and tantalum (coltan).

This team-taught module will bring together different scholars from across the arts and humanities to consider at an advanced level the impact of digital technologies, such as digitisation, translation or artificial intelligence, on various aspects of human life when they are digitised: language, translation, arts, memory, history and its preservation, authenticity and “fakeness”, religion, pilgrimage, archives, structures of knowledge and information management, and others. Drawing a strong humanities foundation, the module will enable students to consider the impact of digitality on the human in a sophisticated way, without reducing/overlooking the implications of digital transition or falling foul of digital exceptionalism.