About the Program, Graduate, Art History Department, WCAS, Northwestern University

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Art History graduate students celebrate with Professor S. Hollis Clayson on the day of her inauguration as Bergen Evans Professor in the Humanities.

About the Program
Art History at Northwestern University is a focused doctoral program for students with a solid undergraduate grounding in the field. Students are admitted on the basis of their preparation in these areas and on the faculty's analysis of the student's research writing.

Coursework moves from a general, conceptual survey of the discipline to a more specific exploration of the student's field. Advanced students in the department may take courses in other fields, including such interdisciplinary programs as African studies, American culture, comparative literature studies, and women's studies. The department also offers an intensive two-week summer seminar abroad, with a different professor teaching a different topic each year.

Students may supplement the University's extensive curriculum by taking courses at the University of Chicago and at other Big Ten universities through the Committee on Institutional Cooperation. Students who wish to participate must begin the application process six weeks prior to the first day of class. For appropriate forms and more information, see the CIC Web site http://www.cic.uiuc.edu/programs/TravelingScholars/. Also check out http://www.cic.uiuc.edu/programs/FLEP/index.shtml for CIC's Foreign LanguageEnhancement Program. As a result of Northwestern's affiliation with the Newberry Library in Chicago, students may take seminars conducted by visiting faculty in a variety of disciplines in the library's Center for Renaissance Studies Consortium.

Recent Changes to the Graduate Program
In 2006 the faculty, working in conjunction with graduate students, revised the departmental requirements for qualification for Ph.D. study. These changes represent the department's efforts to respond to students' feedback as well as to the standards of other PhD programs in Art History at peer institutions. The changes are intended to offer students the opportunity to master a wide major subfield as well as a (non-contiguous) minor subfield, while focusing efforts on producing a dissertation proposal that will be useful in the process of applying for outside funding in the fourth year.

*Please click this link to see a detailed description of changes to the graduate program, including a year-by-year timeline and evaluation details (updated August 2007).

*Click here for new graduate fellowship nomination guidelines.

*Detailed fellowship report for graduate students, updated 10/2007.

*Click to view a detailed description of the Shanley Summer Fellowship

Restructured Program Requirements
All graduate students will now take a comprehensive oral Ph.D. qualifying examination in both major and minor fields in the winter quarter of the third year. Students submit (and defend, in a meeting with their dissertation committee) a dissertation proposal no more than ten pages in length in the spring quarter of the third year.

Summary of Requirements
The Art History department requires all of its graduate students to have completed the following requirements prior to being advanced to Ph.D. candidacy:
-The satisfactory completion of department-administered reading comprehension exams in French and German. Candidates studying Asian art are required to pass exams in Chinese or Japanese during coursework, as well as one of the European languages. A second Asian language is required for passage to candidacy.
-Fulfillment of residency and course requirements.
-Successful passage of the Ph.D. qualifying exam in the third year (second year, for students entering with an MA). The exam will cover the major field, a nodal or focus field therein, and the minor field.
-Successful defense of a ten-page dissertation prospectus by the end of the spring quarter of the third year (second, for students entering with an MA).

Evaluation
In addition to coursework, graduate students will be evaluated on the first year qualifying paper/exam, the constitution of bibliographies for examination areas, the oral Ph.D. qualifying examination, and the Ph.D. prospectus.

Masters Degree
Please note that the department does not offer a terminal Masters Degree in art history but the degree may be earned during the course of the PhD program.

Language Requirements
A reading knowledge of French and German - distinct from the language of source materials from the area of specialization - is mandatory. An examination specifically geared toward reading the art historical literature is passed at the end of the first year of residence for the first language, and at the end of the third year (or at the time of advancement to candidacy) for the second language.

Students pursuing the study of Asian art history must pass an exam in either French, German or their research language (e.g. Chinese) by the end of the first quarter, by the end of the second quarter, they must have passed an exam in their research language. Another Asian language (or languages) will be required for completion of the Ph.D. as appropriate to the field of study.

The order of language study and exams should be determined in consultation with the Asian art faculty and the Graduate Advisor. In some cases, students may be awarded an extra year of funding in order to accommodate these additional language requirements.

Areas of Study
Northwestern University offers a Graduate Program in Art History leading to the award of the Ph.D. degree. Students may concentrate their research in the fields of Ancient Art, European Art and/or Architecture (Medieval, Renaissance, Baroque, or Modern), Asian Art, African Art, American Art and/or Architecture, and Theory and Interpretation.

Courses in other Northwestern University departments and programs such as Gender Studies, Comparative Literary Studies and African Studies -- as well as those taught at other Big Ten Universities and the University of Chicago -- supplement the Department’s own curriculum. Art Institute of Chicago curators frequently offer courses in our department, and Northwestern's affiliation with the Newberry Library in Chicago permits students to enroll in seminars conducted by visiting faculty in the Library's Center for Renaissance Studies.

Educational Goals
The award of the Ph.D. in Art History at Northwestern marks the accomplishment of two pri-mary goals. First, the completion of a significant program of sustained, independent research, culminating in the writing of a dissertation. Second, the achievement of a broad knowledge of European and American Art, balanced by an engagement with African or Asian Art, or alternatively, an extensive knowledge of African or Asian Art, balanced by an engagement with European and American Art.

Museum and Library Facilities
The Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art, located in a new modernist building on the Evanston lakefront campus, has an extensive collec-tion of European and American works on paper, a sculpture garden, and a diverse and ambitious exhibition program. The yearlong Block Fellowship and the Block Summer Fellowships offer graduate students significant curatorial opportunities. The Art Institute of Chicago, a world-class museum, collects European and American prints, drawings, paintings, photographs, architectural drawings, and decorative arts; and Asian, African and Latin American art. Other major Chicago museums include the Museum of Contemporary Art, the Terra Museum of American Art, the Chicago Historical Society, the Field Museum of Natural History, and the Oriental Insti-tute of the University of Chicago.

The Northwestern University Libraries possess 4 million volumes, 3 million microfilms, and 40,000 current journals and serial publications. There are more than 90,000 art books in the Art Collection, housed in the Gothic-Revival Deering Library. The Charles Deering McCormick Library of Special Collections, also in Deering Library, owns illuminated manuscripts, incunabula, and rare source material on 19th- and 20th-century American and European art, architecture and design. The University Library’s Africana Collection (the Melville J. Herskovits Library of African Studies) is the largest of its kind in the world. The Art History Department’s Slide Library collection exceeds 275,000 slides and has over 70,000 records in the database, searchable online, as well as some 2000 digital images (accessible only through Northwestern networked computers). http://www.wcas.northwestern.edu/slidelibrary/

The Newberry Library in Chicago has an outstanding collection of illuminated manuscripts and early printed books as well as an excellent reference collection. The research facilities of the Ryerson and Burnham libraries of the Art Institute of Chicago and the Regenstein Library of the University of Chicago further complement Northwestern's research holdings.

Programs
Summer Seminar: Each summer the entire first-year class travels abroad to study together intensively in a two-week graduate seminar taught by a member of our faculty. Locations and topics vary from year to year.

Graduate Student Symposium: Each spring the graduate students mount their annual Graduate Student Symposium bringing other PhD students and a keynote speaker to campus from across the country.

Department Colloquium: Throughout the year, the Department Colloquium series brings faculty and graduate students together to hear and discuss faculty and student work in progress.