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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.

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), 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.

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.

In this module, students will begin their studies of the areas of Asia, Africa and the Middle East. The module will use the city-spaces and urban life of London to begin to engage with cultures from these regions as they are transported and transformed as they find roots in this post-imperial centre.

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 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.

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 that have been used to understand and analyse film. It focuses on the close reading of specific films to explore 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, and the Middle East. The module will also introduce students to key moments in film history and to important concepts and ideas in film theory which will give them a firm grounding in order to progress to more sophisticated film studies modules.

Wherever possible, film language and concepts will be explained to students in more practical ways, for example through possible guest lectures or excursions so that students can talk to different filmmakers about how they construct the language of film within their own work, and what the history and theory of film mean to them. Students can choose whether to be assessed via written or audiovisual essays.   

The module will comprise four thematic blocks, the themes of which will vary each year but may include, for example: Situating the Discipline; Perspectives on Art History; Art and Perception; and Art and Interpretation. Lecture topics may include: Material Culture, Architecture and Space, Context and Value, Museology, Visuality, Gender, Semiotics, Phenomenology, Hermeneutics and Deconstruction and others.

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.

The module 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.

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 the Arts, 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.

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.

This module combines curatorial training with an exploration of key debates in the theory, history and practice of curating art, music and media in a global context. The module includes a series of off-site visits in galleries and arts institutions during which students will meet curators and engage with current perspectives on curating in London. Students will study the histories and debates of curating through a close reading of seminal exhibitions, manifestos and texts, and will cover themes including collecting and display, postcolonial exhibition practice, representation and the ‘other’, curatorial initiatives in Asia, the Middle East and Africa, curating sound and music, and the use of archives and digital technologies in curating.

This module is about cultural and social change in Africa in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. It covers the entire continent, north and south of the Sahara, as well as considering the cultures of the African diaspora. The aim to is explore African cultures and societies across the established divide in the continent's modern history between the era of colonial rule in the first half of the twentieth century and that of renewed African sovereignty from around the 1960s. A range of social changes are examined, but the focus will be on the history of popular and visual cultures, including artistic production in the fields of music, dance, theatre, film and plastic art. A central concern is to think about the historical processes that have shaped contemporary society and culture today.

The module examines the history and historiography of the early modern Muslim world, focusing on the three empires of the Ottomans, the Safavids, and the Mughals. Using the preexisting historiography of the period as an opening point, the module asks to reexamine key concepts such as 'empire', 'global history', and 'early modernity'. With this, the module will challenge the central position of European empires and trading companies to the historiography of the early modern world and the assumed link between early modern endeavours to 19th-20th century Colonialism.

This module will focus on urban musical practices and soundscapes, including theoretical approaches drawn from contemporary literature in ethnomusicology and associated disciplines, and will enable students to put classroom learning into practice via a guided individual field study.

Focusing primarily on the Asia-Pacific War, this module critically explores the multiple ways in which memories have been created, circulated, and consumed in Japan, the Koreas, and the Sinophone area.

This module offers a historical and contemporary Black perspective on social experiences and activism through engaging with popular culture, politics, feminism and black communities across the globe.

Key themes include:

Black politics in the diaspora, Black and Civil rights movements, Histories of the Black Atlantic, Slave Trade, debates on the formation of African and Afro-descendant communities and cultures in the Americas, The Black Indian Ocean, Black feminism, war, resistance and Joy. The module will explore travelogues, film, cinema, literature, music and other genres as it explores representations of the Black Diaspora.