The MA in Art History and Visual Culture provides broad liberal arts training in the historical analysis of art and visual culture as well as discipline specific, career-enhancing competencies that can lead to study on the PhD level, and to careers in academia, in museums, archives and collections, as critics, in the art trade, in advertising, and in other visually oriented fields. Students learn to approach a range of visual material, including design, film, fine art and photography, with intellectual rigor, historical perspective, and theoretical insight. Courses explore issues in the production, reception, and theory of art and visual culture from antiquity to postmodernity. The curriculum is interdisciplinary, encouraging students to take courses not only in art history but also in Anthropology, Cinema & Photography, English, History, Mass Communication and Media Arts, Philosophy, and other related fields. Students are required to take 30 credit hours over the course of their study, with a minimum of 15 credits earned at the 500 level. 18 hours constitute the core requirement (a required course in methods and theory, and five distribution electives, to include courses in pre-1800, post-1800, and design history/theory), 9 hours constitute free electives, and 3 - 6 hours are applied to a Master's thesis or a comprehensive examination (the student's choice). During their course of study, students are required to pass a language examination in the reading of German, a Romance language, or an approved substitute (German and French-along with English-have long been the most important languages for scholarship in art history and in the art trade-but students with particular interest in, need for, or existing knowledge of another foreign language may substitute).