G-AHV-AM - Digital Art History/Computational Media - Master's

Two specialties are offered: a track in digital art history and a track in computational media. Both are eighteen-month to two-year programs. The digital art history track integrates historical disciplines and the study of cultural artifacts with digital visualization techniques for the analysis and presentation of research. The computational media track focuses instead on new approaches to computational processes, and forms of interpreting quantitative and qualitative data. Both programs build on courses and well-developed strengths at Duke University and require ten (10) courses over three semesters in addition to summer research. Students affiliate with an existing faculty research initiative, from which they develop their own independent research project for the MA thesis.

The digital art history track prepares students for future work in fields such as graduate study in Art History and Archaeology, public history, city planning and architectural design, cultural heritage, museum exhibition design, and visualization-based journalism, and provides a springboard for more advanced study in art history, archaeology, architectural history, and visual or media studies. The ideal candidate seeks engagement with the digital humanities, digital art and architectural history, or digital archaeology; this student can conceptualize digital visualization as a part of the research process and for the publication or presentation of scholarship. Common themes that unite the various projects are the visualization of process, the representation of change over time, the recontextualization of displaced objects, and the biographies of objects. The digital art history track encourages applicants from across the Humanities and Social Sciences, whether from established disciplines, such as history, archaeology, and art history, or emerging fields of study, such as spatial history, media arts & sciences, and cultural geography.

The computational media track explores research and presentation strategies enabled by the information sciences, new approaches to computational processes, and new forms of interpreting quantitative and qualitative data. The goals of the program are for students to understand the critical affordances and potential of digital media, to develop competencies in data-driven and computational approaches to knowledge production, and to develop a hybrid theory-practice MA thesis that demonstrates their expertise in action around a particular subject. Students in this track affiliate with an interdisciplinary Lab focused on digital archeology, generative media arts, art history, law, and markets, digital humanities, physical computing, or information science and studies as a way to learn new technologies and situate their work within a specific research domain. The program’s skills-centered instruction, combined with the requirement for lab affiliation and collaborative research and the emphasis on theoretical analysis, will produce graduates who not only have hands-on know-how and technical skills but who have developed a sophisticated understanding of informational globalization and a rapidly changing world.

For more information, visit the Department of Art, Art History and Visual Studies graduate web page: aahvs.duke.edu/graduate/degree-programs.