Visual Studies Minor
The Interdisciplinary Visual Studies Minor invites students both to investigate their place in a global system of images and make images, objects, and digital artifacts with critical awareness. Additionally, the program trains students in interdisciplinary rigor and encourages them to examine the relationship between the visual and various structures of power.
Curriculum & Courses
The Visual Studies curriculum is organized to help students develop critical and creative engagement with visual experience across media, time, and cultures.
All students are required to take an introductory gateway course and a senior-level capstone course. The introductory course will cover a variety of disciplinary approaches to the field of Visual Studies, and will include guest lectures, field trips for hands-on learning, and an introduction to some form of making. The capstone course will consolidate a student experience of the interdisciplinary minor that integrates visual scholarship, making, and public engagement. Students will select their four elective courses from three categories: Visual Literacy, Labs/Studio Courses and The Ethics of the Visual.
Students interested in the Interdisciplinary Visual Studies Minor should plan their course schedule in consultation with the Director of Visual Studies and with their major advisor. Please note: currently no more than one of the six minor credits may count towards the student’s major.
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Minor
The minor will include six courses:
- The Introduction to Visual Studies gateway course, offered each fall (VIST H142)
- Four elective courses selected from three categories (please find a current list of approved courses on the Visual Studies website):
- Visual Literacy
Courses that encourage students to describe, analyze, and negotiate the visual and the impact of digital and/or material technologies on art, culture, science, commerce, policy, society, and the environment - Labs/Studio Courses
Courses that create curricular opportunities for students to make images, objects, films and digital artifacts and develop a critical awareness of the relationship between process, product, and reception - The Ethics of the Visual
Courses that invite students to examine the relationship between the visual and social structures of power, analyzing the role of images in making consumers and attending to the role that images play in constructing “others” through such categories as race, gender, or disability
- Visual Literacy
- A Capstone Seminar where students will work in small groups to research and propose a project that engages the larger campus community (VIST H399).
Both the Gateway and the Capstone courses must be taken at Haverford College. Additionally, at least two of the four elective courses must be taken at Haverford, Bryn Mawr, or Swarthmore in order to be counted for the Visual Studies Minor.
Research & Outreach
Spir hopes to attend graduate school and to become a professor, as well as to travel and do field research while working in non-profits.
Jauregui-Volpe's senior thesis centers on how hero-bandits are constructed through the corrido and epics genres.
Cohen's senior thesis consisted of visual essays that analyze four music videos of rapper Kendrick Lamar.
This visual studies course explores the specific mid-20th-century movement of “conceptual art,” as well as its progenitors and its progeny.
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You can find detailed instructions and information on the Application Instructions page. If you need to contact us directly, please send an email to admission@haverford.edu.
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