Admission and Degree Requirements

Master of Arts

Students seeking admission to the Master of Arts degree program are expected to have an undergraduate degree in art history or to have completed substantial coursework in art history. Students must also demonstrate the capacity for advanced academic work.

The program requires thirty semester hours of coursework, including six hours in the thesis course and six hours in supporting work (supporting work consists of upper-division or graduate courses in such related areas as history, literature, anthropology, archaeology, classical civilization, philosophy, architecture, music, museum education, and area studies). In addition to Art History 395, Art Historical Methods, the student must complete four seminars selected according to his or her chosen degree track (general, ancient, medieval to early modern, or modern). The student takes an additional three semester hours of art history preferably as a seminar but, in certain cases, as a reading tutorial (Art History 396, Advanced Reading Tutorial) or a lecture tutorial (Art History 396K, Advanced Lecture Tutorial). The student must show evidence of the ability to read one foreign language by the end of three long-session semesters in the program.

Doctor of Philosophy

For admission to the Doctor of Philosophy degree program, the student must have a master’s degree in art history, or have completed substantial coursework in art history on both the undergraduate and graduate levels. Students with special backgrounds in other disciplines are judged on an individual basis.

Degree requirements are: (1) completion of five seminar courses, including coursework in at least two of the following chronological areas of Western and non-Western art: ancient, medieval to early modern, and modern; (2) reading competence in two foreign languages; (3) successful participation in the dissertation colloquium; (4) a written and oral qualifying examination that admits the student to candidacy; (5) the dissertation; and (6) the oral defense of the dissertation.