普瑞特艺术学院

Critical and Visual Studies is a Bachelor of Arts program for independent thinkers and those training to be public intellectuals, curators, visual artists or cultural workers who are interested in addressing pressing social concerns through cultural and visual analysis and skill building.

At the core of the program is the exploration of every aspect of social and cultural life from street and gallery art to climate change, from social media environments to the Global South. The program provides opportunities for autonomous and guided learning towards a research project that more deeply explores artistic, social, visual critical and political meanings of cultural and aesthetic production.

Our program features a core curriculum that builds upon visual analysis and interdiscipline approaches to the social sciences, and the humanities. We focus on the writings and methods of the most exciting contemporary thinkers who are of special importance to critical theory and visual studies. Students choose from a new curriculum that focuses on themes such as immigration, settlement, aesthetics, feminist theory, critical race theory, global urban cities, the histories of resistance, cultural narratives, and the art of protest. Students can minor in Sustainability, Gender and Sexuality Studies, Psychology, History, Social Justice / Social Practice, and from within the School of Liberal Arts and Sciences, and across the Institute in architecture, art history, art and design, and urban planning.

The BA in Critical and Visual Studies gives students critical tools to be able to become key leaders in public intellectual spheres, preparing students to engage in the arts, social debates, and develop writing and critical skills.

The program will give you:

• A critical understanding of society and the visual arts that is grounded in history, global artistic production, qualitative methods, aesthetics, and intersectionality.
• Competency in social theory, analytical structures, techniques of communication, and familiarity with a range of research methods and perspectives.
• The ability to develop and critically integrate written, oral, visual, and spatial expression.
• The flexibility to pursue both in-depth studies as well as opportunities to make links between academic work and the working world through internships in cultural institutions, especially non-profit arts and public service agencies.
• A faculty whose scholarship and teaching is on the cutting edge of cultural criticism and analysis.