Graduate Degree Coursework Requirements and Guidelines
I. Thirty graduate-level credits are required for the M.A. degree.
II. These credits are to be distributed in the following way:
1. Four graduate seminars (700-level) in the department, one of which must be the Methods seminar taken in the first year.
2. The remaining classes should be taken with four different Art History faculty members. The four do not include instructors for Methods and the Museum Studies seminar.
3. It is strongly recommended that students take at least three courses in their major field of study and two courses in their minor field (see the section on examinations for the MA degree below).
4. One course may come from outside the History of Art and Architecture with the agreement of the student’s advisor and the Graduate Program Director (GPD).
III. A full-time course load as defined by the Graduate School is nine credits. If a student is holding a Teaching Assistantship, auditing a number of courses, or studying for the MA Exam, six credits may qualify as full-time. The Graduate Program Director must approve all proposed courses.
IV. From time to time, students have elected to take additional courses for audit credit, as opposed to full credit. This option is particularly useful in preparing for the Image Exam (described below). Official audits appear on the transcript, but do not count toward the degree requirements stated above. The minimum standard for an audit is regular attendance, with no absences. Permission of the instructor is required, and students should be sure to check with the instructor to determine what constitutes an audit, since requirements may vary from instructor to instructor. Furthermore, while the Graduate School allows for a change from graded credit to audit until the last day of classes, the student must have permission of the instructor for the change and must be passing the course at that point. The last day for graduate students to drop a class (which appears as DR on the transcript) is listed yearly on the academic calendar.
V. While students are encouraged to pursue individualized work, no more than six credits of Independent Study may be counted toward the 30 hours for the degree.
VI. The University allows the transfer of up to six credits of graduate work at another institution or six credits completed as a non-degree graduate student on campus (provided that the student registered for the course through the Graduate School). Individual petition to the GPD accomplishes the transfer.
Graduate Student Advising
In the first year of study, during Counseling Week each semester each student consults with the GPD about his or her schedule. The GPD will help students balance their level of preparation and interests with the general requirements and pattern of offerings.
At the end of the first year, graduate students select a faculty advisor in their major field of study. The faculty advisor serves as chair of the student’s M.A. Examination committee, discusses coursework, and offers career counseling.
Foreign Language Requirement
For most careers in the history of art and architecture, knowledge of foreign languages, especially French and German, is extremely important and often a fundamental requirement. Students in the MA Program are expected to read in a foreign language in connection with their academic work, especially in seminars.
Students must demonstrate a reading knowledge of Chinese, French, German, Italian, Japanese, or Spanish (or another relevant foreign language) in order to receive the MA degree, and they must pass a language examination before becoming eligible to take the MA examination.
The written examination requires translating a selected passage of art-historical writing into English. The passage must be translated in 90 minutes with the use of a dictionary. The GPD administers the examination once at the beginning of each semester. Individual exams will not be given to students who do not pass at the beginning of the semester. All students are required to take the examination during their first semester and subsequently until they have passed it. The faculty considers language proficiency in making awards for Teaching Assistantships.
Students who do not pass the examination at once are required to take credit or officially audit a language course during their first semester. They must continue to take language courses or other concrete steps toward learning a language, as determined by the GPD until the requirement is met. In exceptional circumstances, the graduate-level study of a foreign language may satisfy the requirement.
Examinations for the M.A. Degree
The following are the guidelines for examinations, which will go into effect beginning with the class of students entering the MA program in fall 2026 and taking exams beginning in fall 2027. (*For students who entered the program before Fall 2026, consult the graduate program handbook that was distributed to you for the older guidelines, which will continue to apply for the 2026-2027 academic year. A summary of these guidelines can be found here [PDF])
There is no thesis requirement for the M.A. in History of Art and Architecture. Instead, there are two written exams, the Image Exam and the Essay Exam, as well as a culminating Oral Exam. Students with incompletes in coursework may not take the Image, Essay, or Oral exam. Upon entering the program students will be given the image list and should spend time in their first year of the program preparing for the image exam.
I. Timing
Students must take the Image Exam in their penultimate semester of coursework. The Image exam is given the first Friday of the first week of the Fall semester. Exact dates to be announced. No portion of the Image Exam may be rewritten, but a student may retake the entire Image Exam once. The second opportunity to take the Image Exam will take place on the first Friday of the spring semester.
Students may take the Essay Exam no earlier than the last semester of coursework. The Essay Exam is given on the first Friday in April. In the (rare) case of a student whose final semester is in the fall semester, the essay exam will be scheduled for the first Friday in November.
Students who pass the Image Exam but fail the Essay Exam may retake the Essay Exam once. In this circumstance, portions of the Essay Exam may not be rewritten, but the student must retake the entire Essay Exam.
II. The Image Exam
The image exam will be written by hand.
1. Image Identifications (five minutes for each identification)
What is a satisfactory image identification response essay?
Identify the work of art correctly. The identification should include creator (if known), title of the work, date and period if given (e.g. dynasty), and location for architectural works. It does not need to include the museum collection in which the work is held. The response should then comprise a graduate-level response essay to the question, "why is this work on the list of
required images?"
A graduate-level essay should articulate what makes a work both important in and of itself and representative of something larger than itself. If there is something significant about the work itself that justifies its place in art historical scholarship, note that (for example, an innovation; or something noteworthy that the artist, artisan, or architect does with form or structure, whether a "first" or not). But these works are also chosen because they relate to larger contexts: context may be a historical phenomenon or event, an artistic movement, a cultural concept, or theory. Note that this list has the word "or" in it. Certain works of art have attracted more discussion relating to historical context than theoretical context. The lectures we give, textbooks, monographs, and the latest journal articles that discuss these works will offer this context. To summarize: the ability to express something that is significant about a work's form and how that work relates to a larger context is what constitutes a graduate-level answer.
Can you provide a sample essay response?
A sample essay response for a work of art from X time period and place will look different from a response for a work of art from Y time period and place. Instead, we provide the guideline above as an overarching and flexible rubric that can be applied to all of the works on the required image list.
2. Unknown Images (15 minutes each)
Students will be shown unknown images (one selected by each member of the graduate faculty). They must attribute and write about five of the total shown. The unknowns will be given to each student during the Exam as a packet of color reproductions.
III. The Essay Exam
Once a student has chosen her or his major and minor fields, she or he meets with the professors who will serve on the committee in the Fall of the second year in the program. At this meeting, professor and student discuss general issues and themes that might be addressed in the exam but not exact question topics. The advisor and student should decide upon the bibliography to be covered, consisting of about ten to fifteen items per essay topic, by December 1. The student must also select two members from the faculty as an examining committee and must identify one as committee chair. The faculty will appoint a third committee member if there is a tie vote in evaluating the Essay Exam. The members of the committee usually represent the major and minor fields of concentration. An additional faculty member may serve on the committee in the case of a publishable paper (see below).
For the Essay Exam, students must answer two of at least three questions in the major field and one of at least two questions in the minor field. Each essay is one-hour long. The fields are listed below. Other fields may be selected with faculty consent.
European/American Art before 1750
- Ancient
Medieval
Italian Renaissance and Baroque
Colonial Latin America
European/American Art after 1750
American Art (Colonial to 1940)
European, 1750 to 1914
European/American Art, 1880 to the present
Architecture in Europe and the United States, 1800 to the present
Latin American and US Latinx Art
Black diasporic art and visual culture, 18th and 19th centuries
Non-Western Art
Islamic
East Asian
** Basic Guidelines for MA Essay Exams**
1) The questions on the exam are based on the student’s graduate work in the major and minor field. As such, the core issues addressed should come from upper-level survey courses the professor offers in the field (especially extra graduate level readings and research), as well as graduate seminars in the field.
2) Once a student has chosen her or his major and minor fields, she or he meets with the professors who will serve on the committee in the Fall of the second year in the program. At this meeting, professor and student discuss general issues and themes that might be addressed in the exam but not exact question topics. The advisor and student should decide upon the bibliography to be covered, consisting of about ten to fifteen items per essay topic, by December 1. It may
also include material from classes the student has not taken or only audited, if the professor provides a recent syllabus. The student should meet with each essay advisor again by March 1 to ensure that they are studying the correct material to prepare for the exam that Spring.
3) The Essay Exam answers should show broad comprehension of both the major and minor fields. This includes artists and works of art, as well as scholarship.
4) On the Essay Exam there will be at least 3 questions in the student’s major field and 2 questions in the minor field. (The student answers 2 questions in the major and 1 question in the minor.)
IV. Publishable Paper Option
In exceptional cases, students who have carried a research project to a sufficient state of completion while enrolled in the MA program and under the supervision of a member of the department's faculty may be nominated by that faculty member to submit a publishable paper in place of the written examination in the major field (the student would still take the Essay Exam in the minor field). The student must declare their intention to write a publishable paper under faculty supervision to their advisor by April 1 of their first year in the program. The student will provide the professor with a proposal of the project by the first day of classes in their second year of the program, which the professor will present for approval to the entire faculty by the second faculty meeting of the semester. A draft of the final paper must be completed and distributed to all exam committee members by the beginning of the term when the student plans to complete degree requirements. The final draft is due to all members of the student’s committee at least two weeks before the date of the Essay Exam.
Basic Guidelines for Publishable Paper Proposal
The Publishable Paper Proposal should be 2–3 pages (12-point font, double spaced) plus 1-2 pages for Bibliography and 1-2 pages for images (the entire Proposal should total no more than 7 pages). The Proposal must be explained concisely in language appropriate to a scholarly audience who are not specialists in the specific field in question.
The Proposal text should feature a working title and include the following:
- project overview (discussing region(s), time period, and issues of study; types, styles, mediums, and genres of art, architecture, and visual culture; key questions to guide the research)
- historical, social, and cultural context
- short review of existing literature on the topic
- academic and social relevance; contributions to art history and other disciplines and fields
- explanation of methodology and relevant theory
- plan for the student's research including primary sources, archives, fieldwork, or other travel
V. The Oral Exam
The Oral Exam is a defense of the Essay Exam and an overview of the student’s participation in the Program. Once students are notified that they have passed the Essay Exam, they will arrange immediately with their committee to schedule the Oral Exam, which usually takes place about a week after the Essay Exam to meet the Graduate School notification of graduation deadline. The Oral Exam is normally about one hour long. Students will be notified if they passed the entire exam at the end of the Oral.
VI. Grading Standards
Students must achieve a B or better on all portions of the MA Examination to pass.