The Yale Center for British Art offers a biennial Graduate Student Summer Seminar, which takes the form of a week-long intensive course taught by a team of scholars from the Center and other institutions. At the heart of these seminars is an immersion in the collections of the Center and elsewhere at Yale University. Each seminar takes as its focus a specific topic that draws upon the strengths of the collections, and sessions are taught primarily in the Center's galleries and Study Room.
Eligibility
Students from Yale and anywhere in the world may apply. Up to ten students will be selected. Students working in any discipline are eligible to apply, but applicants must articulate the ways in which the theme of the course relates to their doctoral research. It is anticipated that the seminar will contribute to their research historically, conceptually, and methodologically, and it is expected that the students' own research, in turn, will cast light on the collections.
Preparation
Students are assigned tasks in advance of the seminar, including reading and the preparation of presentations, so that each participant arrives at the seminar prepared for informed and high-level discussion.
Travel
Participants are expected to reside in New Haven for the duration of the seminar. Successful applicants will be provided with round-trip travel to New Haven, as well as accommodation and meals for the duration of the seminar.
The Summer Seminar program is made possible by a generous grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
Apply
The 2011 Summer Seminar is closed to additional applicants. Summer Seminars are held biannually and the next Summer Seminar will be offered in June 2013. Details of the seminar, and how to apply, will be made available in fall 2012.
Past Summer Seminars
The Center has held two previous Summer Seminars, each of which focuses on a different subject.
Making Art, Picturing Practice: The Artist's Studio in Britain, ca. 1700–1900 (2011)
Instructors: Martina Droth, Yale Center for British Art, and Mark Hallett, University of York
The 2011 Summer Seminar examines the artist’s studio as both as site and idea, exploring the processes of learning, teaching, training, and production that take place there, as well as the ways in which the self-image of the artist is mediated therein. Ranging across a wide spectrum of studio environments, the seminar seeks to open up exciting new approaches to the study of this central arena of artistic practice, collaboration, and display.
Visual Cultures of British India (2009)
Instructors: Gillian Forrester, Yale Center for British Art, and Timothy Barringer, Yale University
The 2009 Summer Seminar brought together students working in the area of visual culture in the British Empire, with particular focus on India. Ranging in chronological scope from Mughal culture and British expansionism to the contemporary art of India and the Indian diaspora, the seminar drew upon the rich array of visual materials in the Center’s collections, including maps, broadsides, panoramas, drawings, and prints intended for specialist and popular markets, as well as paintings, photographs, sculpture, and documents relating to the history of collecting.