Art History and English

Art history and English is a pairing that brings two of the humanities' most developed critical traditions into dialogue with each other. Art history develops visual literacy, teaching you to analyse the style, meaning, context, and history of images and objects across different media and periods. It asks how visual culture has reflected and shaped questions of politics, power, gender, and identity, and how art and its display have both recorded and influenced human experience.

English literature develops a complementary close reading and interpretive practice, engaging with the full range of writing in the English language and with the critical and theoretical approaches that illuminate it.

At the University of St Andrews, this four-year full-time programme is taught at a level that reflects one of Scotland's most distinguished research universities. You will develop sophisticated visual and textual analytical skills, engaging with both disciplines through their primary materials as well as through the critical and theoretical frameworks each has developed. The degree includes a year abroad, which may be used to deepen your engagement with either art history or English in a different academic and cultural environment.

The typical entry tariff of 200 points reflects the competitive nature of entry at St Andrews.

You will develop the ability to analyse both visual and textual materials with precision, to construct and communicate extended critical arguments, and to engage with the complex interplay between visual and literary culture across historical periods.

Graduates pursue careers in galleries and museums, publishing, arts journalism, education, cultural institutions, broadcasting, heritage, the curatorial sector, and communications. The combination of visual and textual analytical skills is particularly valued in roles that require the ability to work across different media and cultural forms. Postgraduate study in art history, English literature, curatorial practice, or cultural studies is a well-established route.