MA Art History

The Master of Arts in Art History requires a minimum of 30 hours of post-baccalaureate study. This includes two required art historical theory and methodology courses ARTH 5308 and 5309, 12 hours of graduate art history, 6 hours of an extra-departmental minor, and 6 hours of thesis. Additionally, reading knowledge of at least one foreign language is required. In their final semester in the M.A. program, students must successfully complete an oral defense of the thesis.

Admission to the M.A. program normally presumes that students hold a BA in Art History or a BA in a related field with at least 24 undergraduate hours in Art History. Up to 9 of these hours may be completed through leveling at TTU. Applicants are required to take the GRE exam (in time to have the scores submitted by the application deadline). Acceptance is also contingent upon satisfaction of all Graduate School requirements for admission www.depts.ttu.edu/gradschool. After admission, the faculty determines specific leveling requirements and a degree plan for each student.

Students, in consultation with a faculty advisor, may craft a broad curriculum from the following areas:

Contemporary art and critical theory;
European art from ancient and medieval through modern with emphases on Italy, France, and northern Europe;
Colonial and Modern Latin American art;
Chicano/a art;
Pre-Columbian Mesoamerican and Native American art.

The program also supports two trans-geographic areas of concentration, the History of the Book as Art and Borderlands & Contact Zones:

The History of the Book as Art

Considers handmade or artistically-produced books as expressions of aesthetic sensibilities tied to sacred, political, historical, and creative agendas.
Provides the opportunity to explore the historical and ongoing transitions in aesthetic communicative media, for example, the relationships between hand-made, print, and digital imagery;

Provides the means to investigate relationships between word and image in a variety of historical periods and media.

Outside the School of Art, the Department of English offers a Book History emphasis, including courses with relevant content, such as ENGL 5343.001 Studies in Literary Criticism: Histories and Theories of the Book (see http://www. english.ttu.edu/ grad_degrees /BH/)

Borderlands & Contact Zones

Challenges students to examine diverse forms of cultural contact in their historical settings and how these affect the production and interpretation of art;
Encourages students to adopt a geographically intra-regional approach to investigation;
Provides the means to re-conceptualize the epistemological ‘centers’ and disciplinary boundaries of art and Art History, in a variety of historical eras.

Outside the School of Art, the Department of History teaches HIST 4382: Borderlands/Translational History and Culture. Several other courses in English, Anthropology, and History use this theoretical construction to address a variety of historical situations.

Expanding the “minor”
For the six-hour minor, students may choose any field of study beyond art history. Literature, history, museum studies, an additional foreign language, and courses in contemporary theory are typical choices.

Additionally, the courses taken for the Art History MA minor (six hours) may be applied toward other programs at Texas Tech. For example, students may obtain a nine-hour “Formal Minor” in Museum Studies from the Museum Science program (available courses include Museology; Museum Administration; Museum Collection Management; Museum Law, Ethics and Standards; Museum Interpretation and Communication; Museum Preventive Conservation; Museum Education; Museum Collections Documentation.)

Students may also apply their six hour minor to several Graduate Certificates (15 – 18 hours) at Texas Tech, including: Historic Preservation, Medieval and Renaissance Studies, Publishing and Editing, Urban and Community Design Studies, and Women’s Studies.

Resources
Texas Tech University hosts many special collections and archives relevant for research in art history, including a Rare Books collection with Mesoamerican and Medieval European codex facsimiles; the Southwest and Millennial Collections of photographs, videos, and oral recordings; the papers of Charles Peirce, the American philosopher and semiologist; and the Sowell collection, a repository of the papers of important writers on Literature, Community, and the Natural World.

Further Opportunities
MA students are encouraged to take advantage of Study Abroad programs during the summer months, especially so that they may become familiar with works of art or pursue archival research relevant to the thesis topic.

Texas Tech has campuses in Seville, Spain and Quedlinburg, Germany where students can take intensive language courses in addition to other courses relevant to the thesis topic. Texas Tech also has reciprocal agreements with universities in Mexico. Accredited Art History courses are offered through many programs in Barcelona, Florence, Lima, London, Rome, Seoul, Tokyo, etc., administered through Texas Tech University’s International Cultural Center. Credit for Study Abroad courses in Art History must be approved by the Art History faculty.

Typical Plan of Study

Year 1 Fall

Year 1 Spring

Year 2 Fall

Year 2 Spring

ART 5316
Art History
Art History
(Foreign Language)

ART 5309
Art History
(Foreign Language)

Art History
Minor
(Foreign Language)

ART 6000 (6 hours)
Minor

Faculty
The six (soon to be seven) art historians at TTU have distinguished records of publication and/or curatorial and administrative experience. Collectively, they have held research fellowships at the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute (Williamstown, MA), the Center for 17th and 18th –Century Studies (UCLA, Los Angeles, CA), the National Gallery of Art, the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts (both in Washington, DC), the Harvard Center for the Study of World Religions (Cambridge, MA), the British School at Rome (Rome, Italy), the Centro Studi sulla Civiltà del Tardo Medioevo (San Miniato, Italy), and Dumbarton Oaks (Washington, DC).

Application
Applications for the inaugural semester, Fall 2012, are due April 1, 2012. Thereafter, applications will be due January 5 for the following Fall.

Application to the MA in Art History must be made both to the Graduate School www.depts.ttu.edu/gradschool and to the School of Art. (click here for application packet)

Admission Standards
· Students entering the MA program in Art History should have a BA in Art History or a BA in a related field with at least 24 undergraduate hours in Art History. Up to 9 of these hours may be completed through leveling at TTU.

· Alternatively, students whose undergraduate degree is not in art history may complete the Graduate Certificate in Art History and Criticism at TTU. The GCERT requires 6 hours of undergraduate Art History for admission. Students must complete 15 hours of graduate-level Art History to receive the GCERT. If used to fulfill leveling requirements, hours earned for the GCERT do not transfer to the MA degree plan.

· Applicants are required to take the GRE exam (in time to have the scores submitted by the application deadline).

· Admissions decisions are based on a holistic consideration of the student application, including transcripts, GRE scores, writing sample, letter of intent, and letters of recommendation.

Financial Assistance
Applicants are encouraged to apply for Graduate Assistantships (quarter-time or half-time appointments may be made).

Competitive scholarship funding is available through the University Graduate School http://www.depts.ttu.edu/gradschool/scholarships/ (Note that the ATT Chancellor’s Fellowship, which provides $3,000 for each of two years, has an early deadline, so if students seek this support, the deadline for application to the School of Art will be January 5, 2012).

Additional competitive scholarships are available through the School of Art, see http://www.depts.ttu.edu/ART/SOA/nav/grad/info/finaid.php.