Course summary

Art History and Spanish & Latin American Studies at Aberdeen brings together thorough grounding in a modern European language and culture with fascinating in-depth study of buildings, sculptures, drawings, paintings, prints, decorative and industrial arts from all periods, at Scotland’s top-rated university for the impact of its research in the history of art. You’ll gain great specialist and transferable skills to add to your language and open up a range of exciting career options. Spanish & Latin American Studies at Aberdeen has an outstanding reputation, with the highest possible rating of ‘Excellent’ in the last national Teaching Quality Assessment. Aberdeen is one of the most dynamic place to study the Spanish language and the cultural frameworks in countries where it is spoken. We’ll equip you with the skills to communicate in a global language, spoken by 350 million native Spanish speakers in 19 Latin American states, the Spanish Peninsula, and increasingly in the US. You’ll also study historical, anthropological, literary and cultural texts, films and visual culture of Spain and the Latin American countries. You’ll complement this with extensive specialised knowledge of the history of painting, sculpture, architecture and the decorative arts in Europe and North America from the Middle Ages to the present day. You’ll study in buildings centuries old, yet with the most modern teaching and technology, inspired by teachers and researchers whose specialist areas range from Pictish art, medieval architecture, Italian Baroque painting, early modern prints, and Scottish and British painting from the 17th to 20th centuries. As an integral part of your 5-year programme you will spend the whole of year three taking your language and cultural skills to a very high level as a teaching assistant or visiting student in a Spanish-speaking country. Your specialist skills make you ideally placed to enter the art gallery and museum sectors, arts education, publishing and journalism, or fine art conservation. Your language skills will open international opportunities, and your transferable skills including teamwork, time management, and highly developed enquiry, analytical and presentational skills are really suited to a range of careers. Ranked the leading university in Scotland for the impact of Art History research and second in the UK in the latest UK Research Excellence Framework.