Primary Faculty: Professors HARRIS, HEARN (Director, Architectural Studies), LINDUFF, SHEON, STONES, TOKER, WILKINS (Chair), WILLIAMS (Visiting Andrew Mellon Professor); Associate Professors McCLOSKEY, SAVAGE (Director of Graduate Studies), WEIS; Assistant Professor McKELWAY

Affiliated Faculty (Adjunct faculty and those with primary appointments in other areas): Professor RIMER (Chair, East Asian Languages and Literatures); Instructor JUDSON (Curator of Film and Video, Carnegie Museum of Art)

The Henry C. Frick Department of the History of Art and Architecture offers graduate programs leading to the MA and PhD degrees. These programs offer a concentration in the fields of early modern art and architecture (medieval through 17th-century Baroque), modern and contemporary art and visual culture (late-18th century to the present), and East Asian art and archeology (China and Japan). The programs are supported and enriched by interdisciplinary certificate programs at the University, by local museum collections, and by a non-circulating research library located in the Henry Clay Frick Fine Arts Building. Advanced graduate students are able to establish a teaching portfolio and are encouraged to present papers at professional conferences and to publish original research.

Applicants must provide the following:

• A statement of intellectual and professional goals and a short essay on why the applicant wants to study in the department.
  
  
• A term paper or comparable demonstration of an ability to present the results of scholarship.
  
  
• Evidence of language preparation.
  
  
• Three letters of reference.
  
  
• Certified scores on the aptitude sections of the Graduate Record Examination (GRE), and, if applicable, on the TOEFL.

• A statement of intellectual and professional goals and a short essay describing the projected dissertation area. Applicants should have a clear idea of their area of study and should have discussed their plans with an appropriate member of the faculty to ensure that he or she will agree to sponsor the application.
  
  
• An MA thesis, or if this is not available, a substantive demonstration of the student's ability to present the results of scholarship.
  
  
• Evidence of language preparation. Students matriculating from the MA program at the University of Pittsburgh must have a demonstrated proficiency in at least two foreign languages relevant to the proposed dissertation area; students entering the program from another institution must pass two language exams within the first year of residence to remain eligible for financial aid.
  
  
• Three letters of reference.
  
  
• Applicants from outside the University of Pittsburgh must provide certified scores on the aptitude sections of the Graduate Record Examination (GRE), and, if applicable, on the TOEFL.

Students who wish to be considered for financial aid must apply to the graduate program by January 15.

Minimum Course Work Requirement: Twenty-seven credits (typically nine courses) at the 1000 level or above. Twenty-four of these credits must be in art history and three credits in a cognate course outside art history, as approved by the department. Six credits may be transferred from another approved graduate program. No more than two incomplete grades may appear on the transcript, and the minimum final QPA is 3.00.

Within the minimum course work requirement, there are two requirements that ensure the student's breadth and depth of preparation:

1. Research seminars: Four research seminars are required, comprising 12 of the 27 credits required for the degree. Research seminars are 2000-level courses designed to introduce students to a body of scholarly literature and allow them to write an original research paper. At least two such seminars must be taken in the first year of residence.
   
   
2. Distribution requirement: The research seminars must cover at least three of the department's five major teaching areas: Asian, Medieval, Renaissance/Baroque, Modern/Contemporary, and Architecture. If not already met by the distribution of research seminars, a further requirement for students of Western art is to take at least one graduate-level course in Asian art (1000-level or above); students of Asian art must take at least one graduate-level course in Western art. In special cases, the latter requirement may be fulfilled by taking a cognate course.

Thesis: The final requirement for the MA degree is an original research paper, produced under the supervision of two faculty readers and deemed satisfactory by a majority vote of the full faculty in residence. Typically, the thesis is a substantially revised version of a paper produced in a research seminar. It must be submitted no later than November 1 or March 1 of the term in which the degree is expected.

Depending on the student's field of study, more than two foreign languages may be necessary to carry out advanced research. In this case, additional language study may be required, as determined by the student and his/her dissertation committee.

Minimum Course Work Requirement: A total of 72 credits are required for the PhD degree, of which 27 may be transferred from the MA program at the University of Pittsburgh or 24 from MA programs in art history at other institutions. At the PhD level, 18 credits (typically six courses) must consist of graduate-level lecture courses (1000-level or above) or seminars (2000-level or above), in either art history or cognate disciplines relevant to the student's field of study. The remaining credits may be comprised of independent study and dissertation research, subject to the approval of the student's dissertation committee.

Core Course: A core course in theory and methodology (HAA 2005) is required of all PhD students. Students matriculating from the MA program must take the course at the MA level before applying to the PhD program. Students entering the PhD program from another institution must take the course in their first year of study.

Dissertation Committee: In the first term of PhD study, the student must assemble a dissertation committee consisting of the faculty advisor, who serves as the dissertation director, and at least two other faculty members from the Department of History of Art and Architecture. (The Department Chair serves ex officio on the committee and may be counted as one of the three required members.) This committee must approve the student's dissertation topic, program of study, and the areas for comprehensive examination.

Annual meetings of the dissertation committee, to be chaired by the faculty advisor, are required by the University until the student finishes the degree or withdraws from the program.

Comprehensive Examination: The comprehensive examination is normally taken at the end of the second year in the PhD program. The examination committee (normally the same as the dissertation committee) tests the student in three areas which are usually conceived as broad research fields relevant to the student's dissertation. The examination consists of three written exams of four hours each, one written exam for each area, and one oral exam ranging over all three areas.

In some cases, one of the three examination areas may be a field related to another research interest or to a teaching interest.

Advancement to Candidacy: Students advance to candidacy for the PhD degree after they have passed their comprehensive examination and after their dissertation prospectus has been approved. The prospectus should define the dissertation topic, its relationship to the state of the field, the methodology of the dissertation, and the student's plan of research. The purpose of the dissertation prospectus is to demonstrate that the student has covered the basic literature on the topic and is ready to undertake independent dissertation research and writing.

When the prospectus is submitted, the dissertation committee is enlarged to include one additional member from outside the Department of History of Art and Architecture, normally from a cognate discipline in which the student has worked. (The committee may be further reconstituted at this stage if so desired.) Each member of this expanded committee must approve the dissertation prospectus by signing the student's formal application to PhD candidacy. The signed application must be filed while the student is still registered and at least eight months before the dissertation defense.

Dissertation: The final requirement for the PhD degree is the dissertation itself. While writing the dissertation, the student should continue to work closely with the dissertation committee. All students, even those not in residence, are required to submit annual progress reports to their committee by September 1. When the student has completed a satisfactory draft of the dissertation, the student and his/her committee schedule a dissertation defense, which is conducted as an oral examination by the committee. The committee may accept the dissertation as written or may require revisions. Once the committee has accepted the dissertation, the student must file a copy with appropriate illustrations and captions in accordance with University regulations on format and materials.

Students who enter the PhD program from the MA program at the University of Pittsburgh have 10 calendar years from their first registration for graduate study in which to complete the PhD degree; students who enter the PhD program from another MA program have eight calendar years. Students who do not meet these deadlines must apply for an extension of their statute of limitations before their term expires; applications are evaluated by the University on a case-by-case basis. Students who do not complete the degree within 10 years after the comprehensive examination are required to retake the examination.

In recent years, students with the MA degree have competed successfully for a variety of museum positions in Pittsburgh and elsewhere, and have taught at colleges and universities.

PhD Program
The PhD program is designed to train students for serious scholarship in conjunction with academic and museum careers. Students concentrate in one of three fields: early modern art and architecture (medieval through 17th-century Baroque); modern and contemporary art and visual culture (late-18th century to the present); and East Asian art and archeology (China and Japan). For the most current information on the three program areas, consult our Web page.

Students in each field choose a research specialization (for example, late-medieval manuscripts or German expressionism) but at the same time train broadly in order to be able to teach across the entire field (for example, the medieval or modern field). Each field thus combines the traditional research focus of a PhD with a more broadly marketable knowledge and teaching ability. PhD students are expected to leave the program not only with an impressive dissertation but with a substantial teaching portfolio of courses both taught and envisioned.

Each of the three fields is supported by interdisciplinary certificate programs at the University. These include Medieval and Renaissance Studies, Cultural Studies, Women's Studies, and Area Studies programs coordinated through the University Center for International Studies (UCIS), specifically, East Asian Studies, Latin American Studies, Russian and East European Studies, and West European Studies. These opportunities for interdisciplinary study enhance the student's marketability.

Our PhD students have secured tenure-track teaching positions across the country and have also held positions as museum curators, editors, and professionals in cultural resource management.

Across the street from the Fine Arts Building is the Carnegie Museum of Art and Carnegie Library, both institutions with fine collections that complement the facilities of the department. Elsewhere in the area are high-quality museums, galleries, and important architectural and historic sites.

Graduate students have published articles on such topics as Renaissance portraiture, California architecture, and Chinese art and archeology. They have given papers at professional conferences in virtually every field represented by the department.

For current information on the research activities of faculty and students, consult our Web page.