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Graduate

The Graduate Program in Art History offers a full-time Ph.D. that is designed to prepare our graduates for academic research and teaching, work in museums and beyond, and other careers in the visual arts. Areas in which we currently offer coursework and advising are: Global Modern and Contemporary, African American and African Diaspora, Caribbean, Early Modern, Asian, and Ancient and Medieval.

We are a mid-size department, with ten full-time faculty members,1 full-time Weinberg College Fellow, several visiting lecturers who expand the department's disciplinary offerings, and several affiliated faculty. Our Department's comparative and cross-disciplinary orientation offers ample opportunity for interdisciplinary work, which is amplified by programs and clusters across Weinberg College and within The Graduate School.

Our highly ranked program is intellectually rigorous and committed to supporting students throughout their training. Roughly 35 graduate students enjoy close interaction with faculty members of worldwide renown who maintain active research and publishing profiles. Our curriculum is designed to make the most of our local resources, from courses at the University of Chicago to holdings at the Newberry Library. Our graduate students also have the opportunity to garner experience working within departments at the Art Institute of Chicago, the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, and our own Block Museum of Art.

Generously supported by The Graduate School and the Weinberg College, the department provides its Ph.D. students with full financial aid for five years as well as travel grants for conference presentations and archival research. In addition, the summer before the beginning of their second year, graduates in our program travel abroad—Beijing, Beirut, and Madrid have been recent destinations—for an intensive two-week faculty-led seminar. Such experiences are one part of the extensive scholarly training, mentorship, pedagogical guidance, and assistance on the job market that we provide for our graduate students. We are proud of our placement record and of our record of national and international fellowships for predoctoral study.

The graduate pages of this website provide a wealth of resources—administrative and academic—for current students and alumni. The Graduate Student Program Handbook covers a wealth of information about the department.  They are also intended to introduce prospectives to our doctoral program, provide faculty profiles, departmental philosophy, and application requirements. Potential applicants are advised to fully acquaint themselves with these materials and to contact our department at art-history@northwestern.edu, with any questions not answered in these pages.