Graduate

The graduate program in history of art and architecture is a doctoral program designed to train scholars and teachers of art history in one of three areas of concentration: East Asian, modern/contemporary, and Europe before 1750. While this area remains the focus of their study and research, the program trains students to teach and think broadly. Curriculum requirements and teaching assistantships give students opportunities to study and learn outside their area of concentration. Students are also expected to study outside the History of Art and Architecture department to begin framing the kind of interdisciplinary questions that are increasingly demanded both in teaching and in scholarship.

Generally the program requires six to eight years to complete; the MA degree is granted in the second year as a step toward the doctorate. We fully fund all our doctoral students with generous multiyear packages of financial support, including fellowships and teaching assistantships. Recent PhDs have an outstanding placement record.

We invite graduate students to take an active role in department governance. Graduate students participate on department committees and in department meetings, and have a collective vote on questions of department policy, faculty hires, and other matters. For more information, see the department bylaws.

Foreign applicants

The department is a home away from home for faculty and graduate students from every continent. More than one-third of our graduate students hail from outside the United States, including countries as diverse as China, Taiwan, Japan, Israel, Romania, Italy, and Colombia. The faculty constantly engages in collaboration with colleagues abroad and would welcome graduate students who wish to maintain close ties to universities in their own countries. The department also actively assists students in developing competitive proposals for grants to conduct research abroad. The low cost of living in Pittsburgh, in addition to generous funding packages available to students of all nations, make the department an ideal solution for foreign graduate students. The department strives to accommodate international graduates by allowing qualified students to receive credit for courses already completed abroad. Flexibility, an international outlook, and commitment to innovative research mean that students can leave Pittsburgh prepared to work in the United States and abroad.

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