Master of Fine Arts in Experimental and Documentary Arts

The Master of Fine Arts in Experimental and Documentary Arts is a terminal degree offered jointly by three academic units: the Department of Art, Art History, and Visual Studies, the Center for Documentary Studies, and the Program in the Arts of the Moving Image. The MFA brings together two forms of artistic activity—the documentary approach and experimental production in analog, digital, and computational media—in a unique program that will foster collaborations across disciplines and media as it trains sophisticated, creative art practitioners. The ideal candidate has a well-established practice in documentary arts, film/video and new media, or experimental technology, and seeks a program with a pioneering focus on stimulating aesthetic production outside of traditional contexts. The philosophy of the program is guided by a belief in the intersection of personal artistic work with interpretive knowledge and of the relevance of the individual documentary/experimental artist within the cultural history and life of communities. A key component to the program is the notion of creative engagement through the arts and the role of the artist in society. Graduates are expected to generate work that has impact both within and outside the academy. Students will enter the program with training in and proclivities toward certain types of production or approach — experimental or documentary — and certain mediums: photography, film, video, audio, or computational media. The goal of the program is to train students to build on their strengths, to draw inspiration from a broad range of production courses in various media, and to produce innovative, hybrid, and imaginative works of experimental and documentary art.