Department of Visual and Performing Arts

Academics

Degree programs

Across six majors, students develop studio, technical, and performance skills alongside the historical and critical frameworks that give those skills context and direction.

Art history students visit the gallery of the exhibition, Fever Dreams, at the Worcester Art Museum,

Art History, B.A.

Study creative works in context, tracing the human experience across time, culture, and geographic location.

Sky Deitch ’23 working on their capstone project, The Lounge

Media, Culture, and the Arts, B.A.

Combine hands-on media production with the historical and theoretical study of media in all its forms.

Students playing violins in an orchestra performance at family weekend

Music, B.A.

Develop your practice across four tracks — performance, composition and theory, musicology, and technology — while making music.

Students adjusting their camera settings during an Intro to Digital Filmmaking class.

Screen Studies, B.A.

Study the history, theory, and aesthetics of film, television, and digital media, while making films in a professional production environment.

Theater Arts, B.A.

Train as a performer, designer, director, or playwright in a program that takes theatre seriously as both a craft and a form of critical inquiry.

A student, seen from behind parts a metallic mesh curtain to enter a gallery space at the Institute for Contemporary Art, Boston.

Visual Arts, B.A.

Build a studio practice across traditional and digital media, developing the technical range and conceptual depth to work across the contemporary creative landscape.

Minor requirements

Poetry and dance performance, Clark University

Dance minor

Explore movement

Signature experience

Visual and Performing Arts Capstone

Where four years of creative and critical work come together — in public, in community, and on your own terms.

Explore the capstone

Students explore a cobblestone street during a guided course that took students to cities across the Mediterranean

Study abroad

Students in the study abroad course, Medieval Mediterranean Cities, Urban Environments, and Cultural Heritage, examined how cities are built, rebuilt, photographed, mapped, and contested; how cultural heritage intersects with tourism, migration, climate change; and the trafficking of artifacts in conflict zones.

Study the arts abroad

Students went on walking tours and attended faculty presentations at the actual sites. The experience spanned three continents: Madrid, Toledo, Sevilla, Córdoba, Granada, and Cádiz in Spain; a crossing to North Africa at the Strait of Gibraltar; then Istanbul, ancient Troy, the Aegean island of Bozcaada, and the medieval cities of İznik and Bursa in Turkey.