Visual Arts & Design

Art History majors have a wealth of additional opportunities for competency development and relevant experiences in the discipline:

• Students have the opportunity to contribute to faculty research projects as well as to pursue individual interests through individual study (Special Problems) courses.
• Faculty-led study abroad courses are regularly available, and students are encouraged to pursue foreign study even when CVAD is not the sponsor.
• Students have ample opportunity to intern and volunteer at local museums and galleries are encouraged to do so, and these experiences can be used for academic credit.
• Faculty present students with calls for papers, and several have presented conference papers, and even published, under the mentorship of faculty members.
• Art History students are encouraged to submit papers to the annual Art History Writing Competition. The presentation of the winning papers, which is organized and hosted by the CVAD Art History Society, forms the culminating event of the annual Art History Lecture Series. The Society is a faculty-sponsored, student-operated group that helps students better engage in the program and the discipline. The Art History Society both organizes has held its own Visual Culture Symposium, has assisted with the annual North Texas Medieval Graduate Student Symposium, and organizes museum excursions that expose members to the rich museum resources of the DFW metroplex.

Art History Lecture Series

Reflecting the objectives of the Art History Program within the Department of Art Education and Art History in the College of Visual Arts & Design at the University of North Texas, the Annual Art History Lecture Series is designed to expose the UNT and CVAD families to the dynamic professional work of the Art History faculty, to broaden the educational opportunities of CVAD’s Art History majors, and to develop a supportive bridge between the Art History Program and the greater Metroplex community. This series spans the academic calendar year and features lectures by international and national scholars; a lecture delivered by an art history faculty member based on their research; and concludes with papers selected from the annual refereed Art and Visual Culture Writing Competition, co-sponsored by CVAD’s Art History Society.

Recent speakers have included Amy Herman, President of The Art of Perception and Saloni Mathur, Art History faculty member at UCLA and co-editor of No Touching, No Spitting, No Praying: Modalities of the Museum in South Asia (Routledge, forthcoming 2014).

For updates on upcoming lectures, follow the Department of Art Education and Art History on Facebook.

North Texas Medieval Graduate Student Symposium

The North Texas Medieval Graduate Student Symposium was initiated in 2005. It is an annual 2-day event comprised of 2 Keynote Addresses delivered by renowned professors of Medieval Studies, followed by 20-25 medieval graduate student research papers with an audience of approximately 100 people. The student papers are professionally reviewed and are chosen on the merit of the originality of their thesis, validity of their argument, and relevancy to the year's theme. The 8-10 medieval faculty representing Art History, English, History, World Languages, Music, Philosophy and Religion at the University of North Texas join our guest Keynotes in fostering a pedagogically rich atmosphere of collegial discussion and critical analysis meant to facilitate a community network of graduate student interaction. For more info, please visit the Medieval Graduate Symposium website.

Contemporary Arab and Muslim Cultural Studies Initiative

The Contemporary Arab and Muslim Cultural Studies Institute (CAMCSI) is an interdisciplinary initiative composed of faculty drawn from the visual arts, social sciences and humanities at the University of North Texas. CAMCSI serves UNT as the coordinating body and the primary source of support for the various courses and academic programs that cover the Arab and Muslim worlds, which include the Arab states, Iran, Turkey, central and south Asia and other parts of the world with Muslim communities.

The Initiative was established in 2008, with a research and service mission, to respond to the critical need for the understanding and further the interdisciplinary studies of the contemporary Arab and Muslim worlds at UNT. An Institute focusing specifically on contemporary cultural issues fosters a mutual appreciation, both within the United States and elsewhere in the world, of the richness and the complexities that unite as well as divide the many communities that make up the populations and geographic regions of the Arab and Muslim worlds.

Art History Society

The purpose of the Art History Society at the University of North Texas is to foster the appreciation of artworks and art criticism. The Society extends membership to all currently enrolled UNT students and encourages scholars of all disciplines. The Society meets for group discussions, museum field trips and art lectures. To find out more about them, and to follow their blog and eJournal, please visit the Art History Society website.