Art History PhD
Candidates for the PhD must hold a Master of Arts degree in Art History, and have demonstrated competence in a foreign language. All doctoral degree students are required to pass departmental exams in two languages.
Major and minor fields are selected from the following areas: Greek, Roman, Early Christian and Byzantine, Western Medieval, Northern European Art from 1300 to 1600, Italian Renaissance, Baroque and Rococo, European from ca.1750 to 1900, European from 1880 to the present, American, Latin American, African, and East Asian. Upon completing the required course work, PhD students take preliminary exams in their major and minor fields.
After passing the preliminary exams doctoral students focus on writing the dissertation. The PhD dissertation is an original piece of research that demonstrates the student's mastery of his or her topic, and that makes a significant contribution to the scholarship in this field.
Resources in Art History
Graduate students in art history can take advantage of many supplemental resources on campus. These include:
- The Illinois Program at The Phillips Collection Center for the Study of Modern Art, Washington, D.C., allows students to take courses in studio arts and modern art history at this museum of nineteenth and twentieth-century art.
- The University Library, the largest public university library in the U.S., includes many branch libraries in specific subjects such as History and Philosophy, Modern Languages, Education and Social Sciences.
- The Ricker Library of Art and Architecture is a branch of the University Library, and its collection includes more than 120,000 books, 33,000 serials, and a wide selection of videos.
- The Manuscript and Rare Book Collection, also part of the University Library, includes original illustrated books and rare artists' editions of books from the fifteenth through twentieth centuries.
- The Krannert Art Museum has a permanent collection of over 8,000 works of art from all areas of the world and hosts an ongoing schedule of rotating exhibitions.
- The Spurlock Museum is an ethnographic museum with a diverse array of functional and art objects that represent past and present cultures from around the globe.
