Visual and Performing Arts, BA

The Visual and Performing Arts Department offers a cross-disciplinary degree that encourages innovative collaboration between disciplines. This focus integrates art history, dance, film studies, museum and gallery practice, music, theatre, and visual arts. Students complete this degree with a primary concentration in one area and develop a comprehensive knowledge in each of the major disciplines. Through studio arts, performance, theory, scholarship, and creative uses of media and technology, students will engage in an investigative approach to the arts, where the local and global converge; where cross-fertilization inspires critical thinking, dialogue and improvisation; and where diversity of thought is intrinsic to artistic process and practice. When students complete this degree, they will have the skills and knowledge to enter graduate school or a variety of careers in the arts.

The Gallery of Contemporary Art, the Heller Center for Arts & Humanities, THEATREWORKS, and the Visual Resource Center offer students opportunities and venues for professional practice and interactions with visiting artists and scholars.

Departmental Policies

Arts Fees

A program fee of $40 per semester will be assessed to all students enrolled in Visual and Performing Arts courses. In addition, students enrolled in certain courses will be assessed fees to help defray the cost of supplies. Course fees range from $10-$30 per class per semester with a $40 maximum total fee per semester. There is a full refund of the deposit for courses dropped the first two weeks of the term.

Departmental Goals

• Students are members of a departmental campus culture with shared interests in the exchange of ideas about arts scholarship and performance by attending a variety of university and local performances and art events.

Learning Outcomes, Visual and Performing Arts, BA

Comprehension and development: perceptions concerning changes in attitude toward certain areas of performance vis-à-vis understanding and greater tolerance for innovation and experimentation.

• Ability to recognize and comprehend aesthetic criteria, artistic genres, and the intention of a variety of performative acts in different contexts
• Understand fundamental characteristics of performance and artistic expressiveness and their application cross-culturally and across disciplinary practices
• Ability to critique direct outcomes of art and performance (e.g., symbolism, metaphoric content, tropes such as parody and satire, cultural representation, improvisatory interaction, subversive intent, etc.)
• Ability to use the full range of resources to understand the complexity of any given arts-related topic, and to generate the requisite knowledge and evidence to create a compelling and coherent research project
• Ability to work collaboratively in groups across the arts disciplines

Visual and Performing Arts BA Options

• Art History Option
• Film Studies Option
• Music Options
• Theatre Option
• Visual Art Option

These options are described below. In addition, each Option offers a minor. See that department’s page for more information.