Penn State’s interdisciplinary Visual Studies dual-title Ph.D. program brings together faculty and students from the College of Arts and Architecture, the College of Communications, and the College of the Liberal Arts. Faculty teaching in Visual Studies come from a wide range of fields, including Art History, Comparative Literature, English, French, German, Spanish, and Media Studies.
The program comprises two dedicated introductory courses, offered in alternating years: VSTUD 501, focused on approaches to visual culture in a variety of historical and geographical contexts; and VSTUD 502 on issues of digitality in relation to the visual. In addition, students enroll in three elective seminars, at least one of which must be in a department other than their home department. The student’s exam and dissertation committees must include a member of the Visual Studies faculty, and the dissertation must include a substantial visual component. Enabled by our curriculum, Visual Studies graduates pursue a variety of careers inside and outside academia, as detailed here.
Enrollment in the Visual Studies dual-title program is open to students already enrolled, but prior to Ph.D. candidacy, in the Ph.D. programs of the Department of Art History, the Comparative Literature Department, the English Department, the Department of French and Francophone Studies, the Department of Germanic and Slavic languages, and the Department of Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese.
Ph.D. students in other departments may apply to pursue a Graduate Minor in Visual Studies. Pursuant to the requirements for Graduate Minors. The requirements for the Minor are VSTUD 501, VSTUD 502 and three elective seminars, all of which must be in a department other than the student’s home department.
Students applying for admission to participating graduate programs may make their interest in the Visual Studies degree known in their application and should describe their visual interests in their personal statements. Details about the program, including the admissions process, are in the Graduate Bulletin.
Students in participating graduate programs who are interested in the Visual Studies dual title should alert their Director of Graduate Studies, and plan to be able to begin coursework in Visual Studies before admission to the PhD stage of their graduate career.
For questions and further information about Penn State’s dual-title Visual Studies Ph.D. program, please contact Daniel Purdy, Professor of German Studies, and Christopher Reed, Distinguished Professor of English and Visual Culture.
Courses
VSTUD REQUIRED COURSES SPRING 2026 VSTUD 502 “Visual Studies in Digitality” Professor: Elizabeth Mansfield FALL 2025 VSTUD 501 “Visual [...]
Faculty
The Academic Advisory Committee for the Visual Studies dual-title PhD program consists of Daniel Purdy and Christopher Reed (co-directors), [...]
Current Students and Graduates
Current Visual Studies Dual-Title Students Shelby Civils, German, horror and Dark Romantic film genres, landscape art Sara Arribas Colmena [...]
Art History
Art history attends to the social context in which works of art and architecture are created and received as well as to their material speci [...]
Comparative Literature
From avant-garde cinema and graffiti culture to book history, word-image relations, and the visualization of violence, the Department of Com [...]
English
The English Department, a longstanding leader in Anglophone cultural studies, offers a wide range of courses in Visual Studies across every [...]
French
The Department of French and Francophone Studies offers students the theoretical tools and wide-ranging knowledge necessary to tackle a plur [...]
German
We live in a society saturated with images. We communicate through pictures. We rely on them to understand ourselves. While technologies con [...]
Spanish
The Dual-Title Ph.D. in Spanish and Visual Studies offers students the opportunity to pursue coursework and research on images, word-image r [...]