M.A. Arts & Culture Concentration
Examine the arts from all angles.
Develop the habits of mind, skills and flexibility to be a culture reporter or critic in the fullest sense.
My time in the M.A. program radically altered the way I approach every story... Simply put, the program made me a better thinker and, by extension, a better journalist and human.
What You'll Study
M.A. students in the Arts & Culture concentration develop historical knowledge, contextual understanding and nimble thinking across a range of disciplines. Through reporting and writing assignments as well as extensive reading, case studies, visits to exhibits and performances, and collaborations with scholars and artists, students examine the emotional force of the arts as well as how they function in social and political contexts and as commodities in a global marketplace.
Alumni in Focus
'12 M.A. Arts and Culture
Chris is a senior producer at 99% Invisible, a podcast about design and architecture. His work has also appeared in Slate and CBC Radio.
'22 M.A. Arts and Culture
Francesca is a copy editor at The Guardian and has written for Financial Times and The Telegraph.
'10 M.A. Arts and Culture
He is a restaurant columnist for The Houston Chronicle. Previously, he worked at Eater New York and Time Out.
'19 M.A Arts and Culture
Hannah is a producer for The Guardian’s “Today in Focus” podcast.
Curriculum
In the fall semester, the Arts & Culture seminar engages many enduring questions that are foundational to this broad beat: What is art? What is culture? Who is an artist? What are cultural rights? What is creativity? How does critical theory help us understand cultural phenomena? Where do classifications often invoked in the arts come from and how are they useful? How do the arts themselves represent history and culture?
Experts from Columbia and elsewhere help guide us in our inquiries. Meanwhile, students cover an international fall arts festival in the city, write news features, reviews, and critical essays, develop a team podcast project, and work on a longform complex profile of an artist.
Thesis Feature
For her thesis, Hannah Moore, '19 M.A. Arts & Culture, explored a movement by the Kingston, Jamaica dancehall community to protect their work from appropriation by foreign pop artists. Read Dancehall Is Fighting to Protect – and Copyright – Its Dance Moves.
In the spring, without abandoning the aesthetic and theoretical concerns addressed in the fall, the course turns to more direct examinations of issues related to arts and culture policy, economics, and politics: art markets, public and private funding, creative economies, ownership questions, and the role of the arts in diplomacy, protest movements and state propaganda.
We look at various ways the arts are engaged for some kind of utilitarian purpose — from economic development to the social development of "at-risk youth," from heightening spiritual engagement to lowering blood pressure.
Students continue to work on their writing — with a special emphasis on critical writing this semester. They also team up for a group investigative cultural reporting project.
