Graduate Overview

Through immersive research intertwined with studio practice, writing, or both, students explore ways of seeing and representing social, cultural, and visual phenomena. The curriculum balances topic-based seminars, independent work with advisors, and electives to create a singularly interdisciplinary course of study.

At the heart of the Master of Arts degree in Visual and Critical Studies is a core structure of visual theory surrounded by a flexible curriculum in which students, guided by SAIC faculty advisors, design their own course sequence to match their interests.  The Visual and Critical Studies program aims to redefine disciplinary practices, and explores interdisciplinary, transdisciplinary, and postdisciplinary thinking and making.

Each year artists, curators, and scholars participate in critiques of MAVCS student work.  This opportunity enables students to understand their production in a broader context.

Depending on students’ research interests, the final thesis may be a written work of criticism, a creative writing project, a body of work presented in a gallery during the annual student-run exhibition, or a hybrid-platform production.  Graduate students also organize an annual symposium to share their research in a professional context.

Visitors

Recent visitors to the Visual and Critical Studies department have included:

• Akili Tommasino (on Black Panther Party newspapers
• Ling Yang (on Boys’ Love in Chinese online culture)
• Lauren Berlant (on dissociative poetics)
• Boris Groys (on changing the world through art)
• Nicholas Mirzoeff (on political activism and visual culture)
• Gordon Hall (on object lessons)
• Joey Orr (on public art actions)
• Szu-Han Ho (on transnational collaboration)
• Francois Piron (on the social life of books)
• Ben Kinmont (on social sculpture)
• Pierre Von-Ow (on conversation pieces)
• Mitesh Dixit (on “Complex Projects” at Delft University of Technology, Netherlands)
• Nico Dockx (on archives)
• Zak Kyes (on Fighting With Inanimate Objects)