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Department of the History of Art

Welcome to the history of art department website, welcome to history of art.

Here you will find information about the people who comprise the Department – faculty and graduate students – with descriptions of our fields of research. Also featured are listings of many student- and faculty-organized events. We are an intellectual community committed to studying art made by all people in many media everywhere at all times. Central to all we do is a commitment to Diversity of people, ideas, and works of art. In April 2021, the Department’s faculty and graduate students voted to adopt a Diversity Statement that was jointly authored through a process of open collaboration between all members of the community. This dynamic statement reflects current thinking and initiatives and is revised and updated annually.

Graduate seminar in the Yale Center for British Art

Our Commitment to Diversity

The Department of the History of Art commits to building a diverse and welcoming community in which all members are valued and supported equally. We strive to cultivate mutual understanding within our community, as well as to support faculty and students who revitalize the Department by challenging the assumptions of our field and institution. We embrace diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) and anti-racism as core values of our practice, and we actively oppose all forms of discrimination.

Statement Continued…

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Loria Center, Rm. 251, 203.432.2668 http://arthistory.yale.edu M.A., M.Phil., Ph.D.

Chair Milette Gaifman (Loria 557, 203.432.2687, [email protected] )

Director of Graduate Studies Edward Cooke, Jr. [F] (Loria 654, 203.432.2724, [email protected] ) Nicola Suthor [Sp] (Loria 655, 203.432.7210, [email protected] )

Professors Carol Armstrong, Tim Barringer, Marisa Bass, Edward Cooke, Jr., Milette Gaifman, Jacqueline Jung, Pamela Lee, Kishwar Rizvi, Nicola Suthor, Mimi Hall Yiengpruksawan

Associate Professors Craig Buckley, Jennifer Raab

Assistant Professors Nana Adusei-Poku, Alexander Ekserdjian, Joanna Fiduccia, Morgan Ng, Quincy Ngan, Catalina Ospina

Fields of Study

African art; African American art; Byzantine art and architecture; Caribbean art; contemporary art; early modern art and architecture; East Asian art; eighteenth-century art; film and media; global modernisms; Greek and Roman art and architecture; history of photography; Indian Ocean art; Indigenous art; Islamic art and architecture; Italian Renaissance art and architecture; Latin American art; material culture and decorative arts; medieval European art and architecture; modern architecture; modern art; Netherlandish, Dutch, and Flemish art; nineteenth-century art; North American art; Northern Renaissance art; Precolumbian art; South Asian art and architecture; Southern Baroque.

Special Requirements for the Ph.D. Degree

All students must pass examinations in at least two languages pertinent to their field of study, to be determined and by agreement with the adviser and director of graduate studies (DGS). One examination must be passed during the first year of study, the other not later than the beginning of the third term. During the first two years of study, students typically take twelve term courses. In March of the second year, students submit a qualifying paper that should demonstrate the candidate’s ability successfully to complete a Ph.D. dissertation in art history. During the fall term of the third year, students are expected to take the qualifying examination. Candidates must demonstrate knowledge of their field and related areas, as well as a good grounding in method and bibliography. By the end of the second term of the third year, students are expected to have established a dissertation topic. A prospectus outlining the topic must be approved by a committee at a colloquium by the end of the third year. Students are admitted to candidacy for the Ph.D. upon completion of all predissertation requirements, including the prospectus and qualifying examination. Admission to candidacy must take place by the end of the third year.

The faculty considers teaching to be an important part of the professional preparation of graduate students. Students are required to complete four terms of teaching. This requirement is fulfilled in the second and third years. Students may also serve as a graduate research assistant at either the Yale University Art Gallery or the Yale Center for British Art. This can be accepted in lieu of one or two terms of teaching, but students may accept a graduate research assistant position at any time after the end of their first year. Application for these R.A. positions is competitive.

Combined Ph.D. Programs

History of art and african american studies.

The Department of the History of Art offers, in conjunction with the Department of African American Studies, a combined Ph.D. in History of Art and African American Studies. Students in the combined-degree program must take five courses in African American Studies as part of the required twelve courses and are subject to the language requirement for the Ph.D. in History of Art. The dissertation prospectus and the dissertation itself must be approved by both History of Art and African American Studies. For further details, see African American Studies .

History of Art and Early Modern Studies

The Department of the History of Art offers, in conjunction with the Early Modern Studies Program, a combined Ph.D. in the History of Art and Early Modern Studies. For further details, see Early Modern Studies .

History of Art and English

The Department of the History of Art also offers, in conjunction with the Department of English Language and Literature, a combined Ph.D. degree in History of Art and English Language and Literature. The requirements are designed to emphasize the interdisciplinarity of the combined degree program.

Coursework In years one and two, a student in the combined program will complete sixteen courses: ten seminars in English, including The Teaching of English ( ENGL 9090 ) and one course in at least three out of four designated historical periods (Medieval, Renaissance, eighteenth–nineteenth century, twentieth–twenty-first century), and six in history of art, including HSAR 500 and one course outside the student’s core area. Up to two cross-listed seminars may count toward the number in both units, reducing the total number of courses to fourteen.

Languages Two languages pertinent to the student’s field of study, to be determined and by agreement with the advisers and directors of graduate studies. Normally the language requirement will be satisfied by passing a translation exam administered by one of Yale’s language departments. One examination must be passed during the first year of study, the other by the end of the third year.

Qualifying Paper History of Art requires a qualifying paper in the spring term of the second year. The paper must demonstrate original research, a logical conceptual structure, stylistic lucidity, and the ability to successfully complete a Ph.D. dissertation. The qualifying paper will be evaluated by two professors from History of Art and one professor from English.

Qualifying Examination Written exam: addressing a question or questions having to do with a broad state-of-the-field or historiographic topic. Three hours, closed book, written by hand or on a non-networked computer. Oral exam: given one week after the written exam, covering four fields, including two in English (question periods of twenty-five minutes each, covering thirty texts each, representing two distinct fields of literary history) and two in history of art (twenty-five minutes each, fields to be agreed on in advance with advisers and DGS). Exam lists will be developed by the student in consultation with faculty examiners.

Teaching Two years of teaching—one course per term in years three and four—are required: two in English (up to two sections per course) and two in History of Art.

Prospectus The dissertation prospectus must be approved by both English and History of Art. The colloquium will take place in the spring term of the third year of study. The committee will include at least one faculty member from each department. As is implied by its title, the colloquium is not an examination, but a meeting during which the student can present ideas to a faculty committee and receive advice from its members. The colloquium should be jointly chaired by the directors of graduate studies of both departments.

First Chapter Reading Students will participate in a first chapter reading (also known as a first chapter conference) normally within a year of advancing to candidacy (spring term of year four). The dissertation committee, including faculty members from both programs, will discuss the progress of the student’s work in a seminar-style format.

Dissertation Defense The hour-long defense is a serious intellectual conversation between the student and the committee. Present at the defense will be the student’s advisers, committee, and the directors of graduate studies in both English and History of Art; others may be invited to comment after the committee’s questioning is completed.

History of Art and Film and Media Studies

The Department of the History of Art offers, in conjunction with the Film and Media Studies Program, a combined Ph.D. in the History of Art and Film and Media Studies. Students are required to meet all departmental requirements, but many courses may count toward completing both degrees at the discretion of the directors of graduate studies in History of Art and Film and Media Studies. For further details, see Film and Media Studies .

The Center for the Study of American Art and Material Culture

The Center for the Study of American Art and Material Culture provides a programmatic link among the Yale faculty, museum professionals, and graduate students who maintain a scholarly interest in the study, analysis, and interpretation of American art and material culture. It brings together colleagues from a variety of disciplines—from History of Art and American Studies to Anthropology, Archaeological Studies, and Earth and Planetary Sciences—and from some of Yale’s remarkable museum collections, from the Yale University Art Gallery and Peabody Museum to the Beinecke Library. Center activities will focus upon one particular theme each year and will include weekly lunch meetings in which a member makes a short presentation centered on an artifact or group of artifacts followed by lively discussion about methodology, interpretation, and context and an annual three-day Yale-Smithsonian Seminar on Material Culture.

Master’s Degrees

M.Phil. See Degree Requirements under Policies and Regulations .

M.A. Students who withdraw from the Ph.D. program may be eligible to receive the M.A. degree if they have met the requirements and have not already received the M.Phil. degree. For the M.A., students must successfully complete eight term courses and have proficiency in one required foreign language. Candidates in combined programs will be awarded the M.A. only when the master’s degree requirements for both programs have been met.

Program materials are available online at http://arthistory.yale.edu .

HSAR 500a, First-Year Colloquium Pamela Lee

The focus of the first-year colloquium is to analyze and critique the history of art history and its methodology from a variety of disciplinary perspectives. The seminar discusses foundational texts as well as new methods relevant to the study of the history of art and architecture today, notably those concerned with issues of race, gender, and representation. It also engages with debates about museums and the ethics of collecting and display. The seminar is structured around selected readings and includes workshops with guest speakers. It also includes an option to conduct in-person research in the Yale University Art Gallery. T 9:25am-11:15am

HSAR 506a, Teaching Art History Jacqueline Jung

Directed seminar on pedagogy focused on the genre of the introductory lecture course in the history of art. Topics include how to teach visual analysis and close looking, how to encourage participation, grading and giving written feedback, and addressing student concerns and contingencies. By invitation of the instructor only. M 1:30pm-3:20pm

HSAR 520a / EAST 512a / EMST 710a, Chinese Art Modernity Quincy Ngan

This seminar uses the visual and material cultures of China to examine the notion of “modernity” and the relations among the “medieval,” “early modern,” and “modern” periods. By comparing these concepts with the historiographical frameworks of “Song-Yuan-Ming transition” and “late imperial China,” we will become familiar with the methodological concerns and contradictions that complicate these relativized temporal frameworks. Works by Craig Clunas, Jonathan Hay, and Wu Hung, along with the insights from historians, inform our discussions of Chinese prints, paintings, ceramics, and other decorative objects in the long-term development of global art history. This class is most suitable for graduate students who have background in Asian art history, the history of China, East Asian studies, or early modern studies. Th 1:30pm-3:20pm

HSAR 529b / AMST 630b / RLST 819b, Museums and Religion: The Politics of Preservation and Display Sally Promey

This interdisciplinary seminar focuses on the tangled relations of religion and museums, historically and in the present. What does it mean to “exhibit religion” in the institutional context of the museum? What practices of display might one encounter for this subject? What kinds of museums most frequently invite religious display? How is religion suited (or not) for museum exhibition and museum education? Enrollment is by permission of the instructor; qualified undergraduates are not only welcome but also encouraged to join us. There are no set prerequisites, but, assuming available seats, permission is granted on the basis of response to three questions: Why do you wish to take this course? What relevant educational or professional background/experience do you bring to the course? How does the course help you to meet your own intellectual, artistic, or career aspirations? W 1:30pm-3:20pm

HSAR 540a, The Decorative Threat Joanna Fiduccia

“Decoration is the specter that haunts modern painting,” Clement Greenberg once claimed; it is modernism’s “symptomatic shadow,” wrote Peter Wollen. This course seeks to understand these statements by exploring the role of decoration in modernist aesthetics and modern ideology, in which the decorative was entangled with motifs of excess and desire, truth and deception, and gendered labor and space, along with Orientalist fantasies, bourgeois reveries, socialist aspirations, and metaphors for the interiority of the modern subject. Beginning with readings on the significance of ornamentation and decoration at the origins of modern art history, we examine the relationship between theories of modernism and the development of the decorative arts in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The course concludes by considering the cultural and political legacies of the decorative threat in art and art history today. Readings include Alois Riegl, John Ruskin, Gottfried Semper, Theodor Adorno, Joris-Karl Huysmans, Gertrude Stein, Clement Greenberg, Caroline Arscott, Gülru Necipoğlu, Oleg Grabar, Peter Wollen, Rae Beth Gordon, Partha Mitter, Whitney Davis, Nancy Troy, Tag Gronberg, Anne Cheng. Th 1:30pm-3:20pm

HSAR 564a / ANTH 531a / CLSS 815a / EALL 773a / HIST 502a / JDST 653a / NELC 533a / RLST 803a, Archaia Seminar: Law and Society in China and Rome Noel Lenski and Valerie Hansen

An introduction to the legal systems of the Roman and post-Roman states and Han- and Tang-dynasty China. Emphasis on developing collaborative partnerships that foster comparative history research. Readings in surviving law codes (in the original or English translation) and secondary studies on topics including slavery, trade, crime, and family. This course serves as an Archaia Core Seminar. It is connected with Archaia's Ancient Societies Workshop (ASW), which runs a series of events throughout the academic year related to the theme of the seminar. Students enrolled in the seminar must attend all ASW events during the semester in which the seminar is offered. M 1:30pm-3:20pm

HSAR 593b / MDVL 593b, The Body in Medieval Art Jacqueline Jung

This seminar explores the manifold approaches to the human body in the art and culture of medieval Europe (from ca. 500–ca. 1500 CE, though with an emphasis on the later end of the period). Through close consideration of works in various media—mediated to us through readings, digital images/renderings, and at least one excursion to a museum—we consider both the role represented bodies played in the social life and religious imagination of medieval communities and the implications such representations had for beholders’ sense of their own embodied status. Reading knowledge of French and German is highly recommended but not required. Th 1:30pm-3:20pm

HSAR 605a, Russian Realist Literature and Painting Molly Brunson

An interdisciplinary examination of the development of nineteenth-century Russian realism in literature and the visual arts. Topics include the Natural School and the formulation of a realist aesthetic; the artistic strategies and polemics of critical realism; narrative, genre, and the rise of the novel; the Wanderers and the articulation of a Russian school of painting; realism, modernism, and the challenges of periodization. Readings include novels, short stories, and critical works by Dostoevsky, Turgenev, Goncharov, Tolstoy, Chekhov, and others. Painters of focus include Fedotov, Perov, Shishkin, Repin, and Kramskoy. Special attention is given to the particular methodological demands of inter-art analysis. W 9:25am-11:15am

HSAR 613a / ARCH 3110a, Architecture and Print: Techniques, Formats, Methods Craig Buckley

Architectural culture is unthinkable without the medium of print. Indeed, today architecture is printed in more and different ways than ever before. At the same time, we live at a moment when the demise of print is routinely proclaimed. Against the grain of such claims, this seminar highlights the specificity of print within the broad and multimodal communication landscape in which architects have operated. This research seminar introduces students to some of the key formats and techniques operative across 250 years of architectural publishing, beginning in the eighteenth century and continuing to the 1970s. The seminar investigates various approaches to the relationship between print history and architectural culture and asks students to develop their own approaches through the close examination of printed matter. The goal is to think critically about what role changing techniques and formats of printing played in the emergence of new concepts within architectural culture and new publics concerned with the built environment. The seminar also invites students to consider how the study of printed media might open new conceptual and material approaches to design culture today, together with new methodologies for engaging architectural history. The seminar is conducted as a semester-long course using special collections at the Beinecke Library, the Yale Center for British Art, and the Haas Library, among others. Due to collections usage, this class is capped at ten students. Priority is given to students in Ph.D. programs in the History of Art and the School of Architecture. Th 9:25am-11:15am

HSAR 615a / EAST 514a, Mapping and Translating Spaces, Cultures, and Languages (1500–1700) Angelo Cattaneo

This course combines the methods of history with those of linguistics and translation studies to promote an innovative interdisciplinary analysis of the processes of cultural (mis)communication and (mis)translation among communities across the Iberian Empires and Royal Patronages between 1500 and 1700. This course has three main objectives: 1) mapping the emergence of multilingual communities in early modernity involving cultures and languages that were previously unknown in Europe; (2) drawing up a comprehensive typological catalogue of overlooked, dispersed metalinguistic and multilingual sources (reports, letters, Christian doctrines, maps, word lists, lexicons, grammars, visual material which described linguistic practices and\or display bilingual or three-lingual evidence) produced mostly in missionary contexts; and (3) within this broad “horizontal” survey, highlighting specific area studies to carry out an in-depth “vertical” comparative analysis of cultural-linguistic contacts and translations in America, Sub-Saharan Africa, and Asia, specifically chosen because they were paradigmatic, coeval, and sometimes antithetical cases detailing the different shades of cultural translations in colonial, imperial, and missionary contexts. The integration of two working strategies—the extensive typological mapping of intercultural multilingual sources and the analysis of case studies—allows us to undertake a comparative analysis of the processes related to the learning, imposing or rejection of cultures and languages in the “troubled pasts” of missionary and colonial contexts. The course aims to document the largest possible corpora of translations in early modernity and offers new ideas on the relevance of linguistic and cultural interactions and on our multicultural and multilingual “troubled present.” Participants also have the opportunity to analyze a selection of historical multilingual and metalinguistic documents (dictionaries, grammars, doctrines, maps) in the John Carter Brown Library collections, in Providence, RI, to discover how these documents have variously embodied cultural lenses, religious beliefs, and political concerns. W 3:30pm-5:20pm

HSAR 620a / EMST 720a, The Mind of the Book Marisa Bass

This seminar offers an art-historical approach to the early modern book from the dawn of the printing press through the seventeenth century. We cover the interrelation of manuscript and print, collaborations among publishers, authors, and artists, and major early modern genres of visual and intellectual production (such as emblem books, natural history treatises, and cartographic atlases). Topics include the role of frontispieces, paratexts, illustration, annotation, and the idea of the book as a “body” of thought. All meetings are in Beinecke Library and centered on close firsthand study of the books themselves. The focus is on early modern Europe, but students are welcome to pursue research topics on early modern books from any cultural sphere. T 1:30pm-3:20pm

HSAR 639a / CLSS 846a, Approaching Sacred Space: Places, Buildings, and Bodies in Ancient Italy Alexander Ekserdjian

This graduate-level seminar approaches sacred space in ancient Italy (ca. 500 BCE–100 CE) from several evidential and methodological perspectives. The class probes how different kinds of sacred artifacts (places, buildings, and bodies) textured ritual space, forming its recognizable character then and now. While assessing the available evidence (material, literary, epigraphic) for each of these categories, we devote time to untangling the ways that modern scholars and Roman authors have written about ancient holy places. The emphasis on “approach” also provides an avenue to begin to reconstruct the lived experiences of sacred space, moving from the realia of locations, structures, and objects to the possible responses of ancient people. Th 9:25am-11:15am

HSAR 660a, Writing the Object, Writing the World Jennifer Raab

What does it look like to place an object at the center of inquiry, to develop modes of narration that revolve around and evolve with that object, to write history from a visual and material nexus? This course explores the paradigm and possibilities of crafting a text focused on a single object. We spend the first part of the course reading such texts (books, essays, articles) to think about method, voice, and structure. We consider ekphrasis and description, archives and ghosts, fabulation and biography, history and ethics. The second part of the course is devoted to developing student projects, research practices, and object-centered writing, with workshops of paper proposals and drafts, as well as final presentations, enabling ample feedback and emphasizing constructive, collaborative discussion and critique. This course is open to all humanities Ph.D. students whose work foregrounds objects, whether in history of art or in allied fields. Those who are already undertaking dissertation work (and are still in residence) are also considered. Instructor permission required. W 1:30pm-3:20pm

HSAR 668b / ENGL 979b / FREN 668b, Ekphrasis and Art Criticism Carol Armstrong

Ekphrasis in its ancient Greek sense refers to the vivid description of an object, animal, person, place, scene, or event undertaken as an exercise in oral rhetoric. In that original context, the practice of ekphrasis was meant to “paint” a picture in the mind of the listener, and thus pointed to both the imagistic capacities of verbal language, and the integral link between the image and the imagination. In the twentieth century, ekphrasis acquired a narrower meaning: poetry addressed to or modeled on works of visual art. While informed by both of those understandings, this seminar considers ekphrasis both more broadly, in terms of genre, and more narrowly, in relation to a partial history of art criticism as a modern form of writing in the anglophone and European worlds, with a focus on the eighteenth through the twentieth century. It treats the different writerly modes now understood to be embraced by the term ekphrasis: not only poetry, but also the prose poem and the novel, as well as the Salon and art review. It also touches on such issues as the Renaissance inversion of the phrase ut pictura poesis; the competition between the arts of word and image; the presence or absence of illustrations; the modern relations between genres and mediums and the question of mediation; and the address of the different arts to the subjectivity of the reader/spectator. In addition to weekly presentations, a short preliminary paper, and a final research paper, students organize and contribute to a workshop on ekphrasis based on their own ekphrastic exercises, undertaken in the Yale Art Gallery. (Some class time is devoted to those exercises.) This seminar is the second of two (the first is HSAR 667 ); our hope is that students from both seminars will collaborate on this final event. W 1:30pm-3:20pm

HSAR 670a, Karkhana: Process and Collaboration Kishwar Rizvi

Karkhana, or workshop, is a collaborative seminar that considers how we think, write, and make in community. As we study historical and theoretical texts on drawings and buildings, as well as sketching and maintaining a palimpsest drawing over the course of the semester, the aim of the course is to consider how embodied practice affects cultural production. A second aim is to consider how the collaborative process may render new explorations in how one writes/makes and for whom. W 1:30pm-3:20pm

HSAR 714a, Globalization of Modern Craft Edward Cooke

This seminar explores the development of self-conscious craft in the condition of modernity. Emerging from the work of the English designer-writer William Morris, modern craft has been intertwined with issues of identity (national and personal), class, and politics. Its intellectual foundation in the writings of Morris has also permitted modern craft to spread throughout the globe, taking root in different ways and at different times. The seminar investigates this geographic and temporal spread in a comparative fashion. W 9:25am-11:15am

HSAR 720a / AMST 805a / RLST 699a / WGSS 779a, Sensational Materialities: Sensory Cultures in History, Theory, and Method Sally Promey

This interdisciplinary seminar explores the sensory and material histories of (often religious) images, objects, buildings, and performances as well as the potential for the senses to spark contention in material practice. With a focus on American things and religions, the course also considers broader geographical and categorical parameters so as to invite intellectual engagement with the most challenging and decisive developments in relevant fields, including recent literatures on material agencies. The goal is to investigate possibilities for scholarly examination of a robust human sensorium of sound, taste, touch, scent, and sight—and even “sixth senses”—the points where the senses meet material things (and vice versa) in life and practice. Topics include the cultural construction of the senses and sensory hierarchies; investigation of the sensory capacities of things; and specific episodes of sensory contention in and among various religious traditions. In addition, the course invites thinking beyond the “Western” five senses to other locations and historical possibilities for identifying the dynamics of sensing human bodies in religious practices, experience, and ideas. The Sensory Cultures of Religion Research Group meets approximately once per month at 7 p.m. on Tuesdays; class participants are strongly encouraged, but not required, to attend. Enrollment is by permission of the instructor; qualified undergraduates are not only welcome but encouraged to join us. There are no set prerequisites, but, assuming available seats, permission will be granted on the basis of response to three questions: Why do you wish to take this course? What relevant educational or professional background/experience do you bring to the course? How does the course help you to meet your own intellectual, artistic, or career aspirations? W 1:30pm-3:20pm

HSAR 764a / EMST 744a, Advanced Topics in Italian Renaissance Art Morgan Ng

This seminar explores recent scholarship on Italian visual culture and architecture, c. 1400–1600. Potential themes include the relationship between art and the environment; transmedial approaches that exceed conventional definitions of painting, sculpture, and architecture; artistic production, patronage, and reception in relation to dynamics of gender, race, labor, and class; the movement of artists and materials; and expanding notions of artistic geography both within and beyond the peninsula. While sessions focus on secondary literature from recent decades, they also put newer scholarship in dialogue with longer historiographic traditions and primary sources. The course is a chance for graduate students not only to inform themselves about trends in the field but also to debate and situate their own voices in relation to them. F 1:30pm-3:20pm

HSAR 814b, Japan’s Global Baroque Mimi Yiengpruksawan

The intersection of art, science, and diplomacy at Kyoto and Nagasaki in the time of Japanese, Portuguese, Spanish, and Dutch cultural and mercantile interaction in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, with attention to the entangled political relations linking the shogun Toyotomi Hideyoshi, Philip II of Spain, Jesuit missionaries such as Alessandro Valignano, and the Christian daimyō of Kyushu and the Inland Sea. Focus on Japanese castle architecture, nanban screens, world maps, arte sacra, and tea ceremony practices as related to the importation of European arte sacra, prints and drawings, scientific instruments, and world atlases such as Theatrum Orbis Terrarum . Includes inquiry into back-formations such as “baroque” and “global” to describe and/or interpret sixteenth- and seventeenth-century cultural productions. W 9:25am-11:15am

HSAR 841a and HSAR 842b / ANTH 963a and ANTH 964b / HIST 963a and HIST 964b / HSHM 691a and HSHM 692b, Topics in the Environmental Humanities Staff

This is the required workshop for the Graduate Certificate in Environmental Humanities. The workshop meets six times per term to explore concepts, methods, and pedagogy in the environmental humanities, and to share student and faculty research. Each student pursuing the Graduate Certificate in Environmental Humanities must complete both a fall term and a spring term of the workshop, but the two terms of student participation need not be consecutive. The fall term each year emphasizes key concepts and major intellectual currents. The spring term each year emphasizes pedagogy, methods, and public practice. Specific topics vary each year. Students who have previously enrolled in the course may audit the course in a subsequent year. This course does not count toward the coursework requirement in history. Open only to students pursuing the Graduate Certificate in Environmental Humanities. ½ Course cr per term M 11:30am-1:20pm

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Early Modern Studies

You are here, history of art.

Coursework: History of Art students in the combined program take the same number of courses as those on the regular History of Art track. In years one and two, a student in the combined program will complete ten seminars in the History of Art, including the First Year Seminar (HSAR 500) and three seminars on early modern topics, as well as the Workshop in Early Modern Studies (EMST 700/701). Students will also participate in the Early Modern Studies Colloquium (EMST 800/801).

Languages The language requirement will follow the History of Art department requirements.

Second Year Paper Requirement: The Qualifying Paper is to be submitted for consideration according to the policies of the Department of the History of Art, typically in the second semester of the second year.

Qualifying examination: Students will follow the usual procedures for oral qualifying exams in History of Art, with the additional requirement that three of their four lists must concentrate on early modern texts and topics (between 1350 and 1800).

Prospectus: Third-year students in the combined program will enroll in the Professional Skills Workshop (EMST 900) during the spring of the third year, in support of their development of the dissertation prospectus.

Dissertation Committee: At least one faculty member affiliated with the Program in Early Modern Studies must be on the committee. The chair of the committee will be in the History of Art, but students in the combined program are encouraged to include at least one faculty member from outside of History of Art on their committees.

Dates & Deadlines
PhD/Master's Application Process

Deadlines below are for degree-seeking (PhD or Master's) applicants. Please note that all deadlines are subject to change at any time.

Summer-Fall 2024

Applicants should schedule any necessary standardized tests no later than November, in order to allow time for official scores to reach the Graduate School before the program application deadline.

December 1, 2024

Application deadline for:

Biological and Biomedical Sciences (BBS)
Computational Biology and Biomedical Informatics (MS)
Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
English Language and Literature*
History of Art*
History of Science and Medicine
Linguistics
Psychology*
Statistics and Data Science (MS)

December 15, 2024

African American Studies*
American Studies*
Anthropology*
Applied Physics
Biomedical Engineering
Chemical and Environmental Engineering
Comparative Literature*
Computer Science (PhD)
Electrical & Computer Engineering
Film and Media Studies*
Germanic Languages and Literatures*
Mathematics
Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science
Personalized Medicine and Applied Engineering
Political Science*
Public Health
Religious Studies*
Slavic and Eurasian Literatures and Cultures*
Statistics and Data Science* (PhD)
Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies*

January 2, 2025

Deadline for fee waiver requests .

African Studies
Applied Mathematics
Archaeological Studies
Architecture
Computer Science (MS)
Earth and Planetary Sciences
East Asian Languages and Literatures*
East Asian Studies
Environment*
European and Russian Studies
International Development and Economics
Investigative Medicine
Italian Studies*
Medieval Studies
Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations
Philosophy*
Spanish and Portuguese*

*Note regarding combined programs: The deadline to submit an application to a combined program is always the earlier deadline of the two individual programs, or December 15, whichever comes first.

Letters of recommendation do not need to be received before you will be able to submit your application, and there is no specific deadline for letters of recommendation. However, since programs begin reviewing applications shortly after the respective application deadline, please be sure that your letters of recommendation are submitted promptly.

All application deadlines are as of 11:59 pm Eastern time.

December 2024-March 2025

Applications are reviewed by departments and programs after the respective application deadline passes.

February-March 2025

Applicants are notified as admissions decisions become available.

April 15, 2025

The reply deadline for most offers of admission for fall 2025.

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ENTRANCE REQUIREMENTS

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Admission GUIDELINES

Students are admitted to Yale’s MFA for the Fall semester of each year only. Applicants are notified of the admission committee’s decisions on preliminary selections in February, and final decisions in early March. No information about decisions will be given over the phone or advance of the batch written release to all finalists.

To apply for more than one area of concentration, separate applications and supporting documentation must be submitted. The work submitted should be representative of the applicant’s experience in that particular field. Applying to more than one program does not increase an applicant’s chances of selection.

Please note: Yale School of Art does not practice admission deferment; An offer of admission is valid only for enrollment for that year regardless of the in-residence conditions of the Yale campus at that time. Applicants who are offered admission but choose not to enroll are welcome to reapply to the School in a future cycle.

APPLICATION DEADLINE: Online applications for programs beginning in the 2025–2026 academic year will open in October 2024.

Please expect that when many applicants are uploading simultaneously near the deadline, longer processing times will be experienced. To avoid this, please consider submitting prior to the deadline.

Admission Procedures for Preliminary Selection

Instructions for All Applicants

An application to the School of Art requires forethought and planning. It is important to read all of the application instructions carefully. Following these instructions will ensure that your application is viewed to best advantage.

The Yale School of Art application for the 2024–2025 academic year will be available October 2023. The information that follows will assist you in filing the application online. For an explanation of specific requirements for each area of study, please refer to the departmental sections that follow.

Application materials:

The following materials are required for consideration of your application for admission:

Submit the online application . The application portal opens in early October 2024 and may be worked on until early January 2025. As it generally takes several weeks to complete an application, it is strongly recommended that applicants prepare their materials early to ensure completion by the deadline.

Please note that the School of Art is NOT part of the Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, and it is not possible to apply by using application materials found on the Graduate School’s Web site.

Nonrefundable application fee of $100 . Please follow payment instructions at https://apply.art.yale.edu/apply/ . Forms of payment include credit card and checking account.

Yale School of Art practices “need blind admission,” meaning that candidate financial need or ability is never disclosed to the admission committee during review of MFA applications. For this reason, and because the processing and careful review of each individual application demands great time, human resources graduate fee waivers are not available.

**Beginning in January 2022, the application fee may be waived only for applicants with primary citizenship in those countries with the lowest US exchange rates: Venezuela, Iran, Vietnam, Indonesia, Uzbekistan, Sierra Leone, Laos, Guinea, Paraguay, and Cambodia

A one-page statement that addresses influences, interests, current work direction, brief life history (as it relates to art/design practice), and reasons for applying to graduate school at this time. Statements should be limited to one page or no more than 500 words.

Applicants to the Painting/Printmaking program should make reference in their statements to the “representative work” in the portfolio; this is not critical for the other programs.

References from three persons, either practicing/teaching in the field in which application is made, or who knows the applicant’s practice well and can attest to their ability, competency, potential, etc. in Yale’s MFA program.

NOTE: The admissions committee reviews applications shortly after the deadline. While it is not uncommon for letters of recommendation to come in past the deadline, please impress upon on those who will be writing on your behalf that late submission of supporting documentation may risk exclusion from the review. Applicants can always view the receipt status of reference requests on the application status page.

Transcripts of academic record for the bachelor’s degree and/or professional art schools attended. Student/unofficial copies may be uploaded to the application for the preliminary jury. Official transcripts will ONLY be required for applicants invited to interview. If invited to interview, official transcripts should be mailed to: Yale School of Art Admissions, POB 208339, New Haven, CT 06520-8339. Neither junior college transcripts nor Graduate Record Examination (GRE) scores are required.

Portfolio of work. Applicants who fail to upload a portfolio as outlined by the stated deadline will NOT be considered. The portfolio should represent images of your best work, indicate your current direction, and demonstrate your ability. At least half of the images should represent work done within the last twelve months, and all should be from within the last three years. Chronological order of year is embedded in our system, and you will not be able to override it. Yale School of Art uses an application system that requires you to designate one image from the portfolio as a “representative work.” This selection is simply the default image for the cover page of each application file. As such, applicants have historically selected the piece which most strongly represents ideas central to their current body of work.

Do not include more than one image on the screen, nor embed other pages of a publication or video within the images you place in your portfolio. Do not include detail photos of work in your portfolio unless you consider them absolutely necessary. Under no circumstances should more than two detail shots be included. Portfolio requirements differ depending upon area of concentration; be sure to follow the instructions for the area to which you are applying. We strongly recommend that you review your images on a Mac OS to be certain that they are accurately represented.

NOTE: All supporting documents that are submitted as a requirement for admission become a part of the official file and cannot be returned to the applicant or forwarded to another institution either in copy or original form.

FIND THE PORTFOLIO REQUIREMENTS FOR THE AREA OF STUDY YOU ARE INTERESTED IN HERE >>

The SoA wiki admission pages provide extensive information about applying to Yale’s MFA program. Use this as your resource while preparing an application.

Applicants SHOULD NOT CONTACT Yale School of Art faculty and/or current students seeking program information, application and/or portfolio advisement. Please respect the personal/private spaces (such as email, social media, direct message, etc.) and time of our community by utilizing the wiki and, when necessary, directing your inquiries appropriately to those whose job it is to assist you.

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INTERNATIONAL STUDENTS

International students MUST use their passport name on all application materials.

English Proficiency Requirements In order to undertake graduate study, all international students and others for whom English is not their first language must present evidence of competence in the use of the English language. Although we have no official score cut-off, you will have difficulty in an intensive program such as ours without a level of language proficiency appropriate for graduate study.

Yale School of Art accepts the following English Proficiency exams to fulfill this requirement. Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL iBT), The International English Language Testing System (IELTS), and The Duolingo English Test.

TOEFL Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL iBT), which is administered by the Educational Testing Service, www.ets.org . The TOEFL code number for the Yale School of Art is 3982 . Candidates for admission generally achieve a composite Internet-based test score of at least 100, or a computer-based score of at least 250, with speaking and listening scores of at least 28.

If the TOEFL iBT is not available in your area, you are required to complete the TOEFL that is available plus you are required to take the Test of Spoken English (TSE). A minimum TOEFL score of 550 is generally achieved for the pbt.

IELTS IELTS test scores may be accepted with a minimum score of 7. Your ability to listen, read, write and speak in English will be assessed during the test. IELTS is graded on a scale of 1-9. www.ielts.org IELTS is jointly owned by the British Council, IDP: IELTS Australia and Cambridge Assessment English.

Duolingo English Test The Duolingo English Test is an online English proficiency test that can be taken online, on-demand, in under an hour. The test is taken via a computer with a camera and includes a proficiency score, video interview, and writing sample which are shared with [institution name] when you send your results. Certified results are available within 48 hours of the test session. Students generally receive a score of 120. englishtest.duolingo.com/applicants

* The English Proficiency test may be waived if the undergraduate degree has been obtained from a four-year, English-speaking institution. When completing your application please submit without confirming your scores. Our faculty reviewers know to verify your language proficiency via transcripts. *

Visa Information: In order to receive visa documentation, admitted international students must submit proof that income from all sources will be sufficient to meet expenses for two years of study. The full cost of attendance expenses for the current academic year, 2020-21 (including tuition) is $64,297 for a single student. Evidence of funds may come from the following sources:

Affidavit from a bank; Copy of an award letter stating that financial assistance has been offered; Certification by parents of their ability and intention to provide the necessary funds; Certification by employer of anticipated income.

All international students who wish to be appointed as teaching assistants during their second year must obtain a United States Social Security number in order to be paid.

Next Steps After Applying

Once an application has been submitted applicants should familiarize themselves with their Yale admission status page (accessed by logging into the application system). This portal allows applicants to track the status of their application and the receipt of required supporting materials (such as recommendations) online. Applicants are encouraged to check the status of their application materials and follow up as necessary. Receipt of items submitted by digital upload is updated in real time on the application status page checklist. Due to the high volume of incoming applications and processing steps our office is unable to provide application status checks or confirm the receipt of items by phone or by email.

References and supporting documents: While references and English language test scores (if applicable) may continue to be received after the deadline, review of applications begins soon thereafter. Applicants are thus urged to impress upon those writing reference letters, or submitting items on their behalf, that the timely submission of such documents is critical to guarantee inclusion in the admission committee’s review.

The non-refundable fee to apply is $100. Please note that Yale School or Art practices need-blind admission.

Admission Decision Notification: First-round admission decisions, which include interview invitations as well as denials, will be sent in early February.

Final Selection Applicants who have passed the Preliminary Selection Jury will be notified in early February. At this time, applicants invited to interview are required to submit official transcripts to the School. Candidates are asked to prepare supplemental portfolio materials to be presented digitally during interview. Detailed instructions will be included in the invitation to interview. Individual interviews will be scheduled for mid-late February, depending on the program. The interview is an important component of the final selection process.

GUIDELINES FOR INTERVIEW

Applicants in Graphic Design should prepare a portfolio of their work in any or all of these areas: graphic design print work, environmental design, broadcast/video graphics, letterform design, interactive media, and other related projects in the visual arts. Applicants are encouraged to present bodies of work that demonstrate special areas of interest. Academic or research papers may also be submitted in support of the application. For two year program applicants at least 12 examples of work and for the preliminary program at least 10 examples of work will be presented at interview. Detailed instructions will be included in the invitation to interview.

Applicants in Painting/Printmaking should submit no more than four artworks and four drawings, studies, graphic works, or videos (these are not required to be pieces that were in your application portfolio). For 2023 applicants should prepare a PDF of these works and provide them to the admissions committee. Detailed instructions will be included in the invitation to interview.

Applicants in Photography prepare a portfolio of no more than 20 images to present and discuss during the interview. Detailed instructions will be included in the invitation to interview.

Applicants in Sculpture prepare digital files that document the individual’s latest work as well as additional images representing earlier work. Additional documentation to the work in your preliminary portfolio may be presented during your interview. Detailed instructions will be included in the invitation to interview.

All Applicants For the 2024 admissions cycle no physical work is to be sent to the School.

Final notification of admission will be e-mailed in early March. Offers of admission are good only for the year in which they are made. We do not practice deferred admission. The Financial Aid Award letter will be e-mailed shortly after notification of admission. No decisions will be given in person or over the telephone.

An individual’s acceptance of admission to the School of Art must be received by April 15 . All matriculating students must submit a transcript that certifies their undergraduate degree. Admission is not binding unless this certification is received.

YALE UNIVERSITY’S NONDISCRIMINATION/TITLE IX STATEMENTS

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Art History

PhD application thread Fall 2023

By aik257 November 9, 2022 in Art History

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Replies 123
Created 1 yr
Last Reply 1 yr

PhDApplicant23

I applied to 12 schools, and the Art History programs I applied to were MIT, Yale, Stanford, UCSD, and WashU in St. Louis. I also applied to the AFVS program at Harvard which is really a film studies department but advises on/around contemporary art a lot.

On 1/1/2023 at 4:13 PM, SydneyS22 said: Has anyone heard about interviews at all? I'm not sure what to expect, I've heard from some friends that their program didn't have interviews, but reading through last years thread- seems like quite a few have! I've applied to 3 PhD programs. The wait is the worst!

I have an interview (?) or at least a meeting with a faculty member from Princeton Art & Archaeology tomorrow.

AnxiousAwaiter

9 hours ago, opsophagos said: I have an interview (?) or at least a meeting with a faculty member from Princeton Art & Archaeology tomorrow.

That's great! What's your field?

6 hours ago, AnxiousAwaiter said: That's great! What's your field?

10 hours ago, opsophagos said: Ancient Greek Art

I should have known based on your username, lol.

How did the interview/conversation go? Did they give you a sense as to what the process/timing is like?

2 weeks later...
anonymous_crazy_cat-lady

I am applying for the art history MA/PhD programs this cycle too, my first time and I am so nervous!

I imagine this thread will pick up towards the end of the month?

6 hours ago, PhDApplicant23 said: 6 hours ago, PhDApplicant23 said: I imagine this thread will pick up towards the end of the month?

Probably! I’ve noticed some pickup with the results page with interviews etc…

prettylittlekarl

Anyone invited to Duke's graduate student symposium?

Congrats to the Princeton poster on the interview! anyone else get any interview requests yet?

Anyone hear anything from Berkeley regarding interviews?

Peter Kandinsky

19 hours ago, anonymous_crazy_cat-lady said: Anyone hear anything from Berkeley regarding interviews?

I applied there and have not heard anything. It seems like they sent them out around this time last year...

Has anyone heard from Hopkins? I had a long convo with my POI back in November that covered basically everything I've been asked in proper interviews, so wondering if they'll ask for a more formal interview soon.

surreal_realist

Has anyone heard from Yale or know when they usually send out interviews/acceptances/rejections? It was definitely a reach for me but I'd like to know one way or another.

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Applications are open to become an ISM student

Master of arts in religion.

The comprehensive M.A.R. program consists of a study of the various theological disciplines, including biblical studies, systematic theology, liturgics, and historical Christianity, with electives drawn from courses which deal with Christianity in the larger context of culture. Students are encouraged to take relevant courses in other professional schools or departments of the University.

Students declare their concentration at the time of application. Courses are taken principally from faculty in the Divinity School and Institute of Sacred Music, who teach subjects ranging from introductions to Christian art and architecture and the history of sacred music to digital media, liturgy, and theology; and advanced seminars in religious iconography and writing workshops in poetry or fiction. Electives are taken elsewhere in the University, for instance in the Graduate School (the departments of English, Comparative Literature, Music, American Studies, and History of Art) or in the schools of Art and Architecture. Students are encouraged to attain reading proficiency in a second language relevant to their field of study.

M.A.R. students prepare themselves for a variety of careers: teaching, work in arts-related organizations, or other kinds of lay ministries. Many also go on for further doctoral work in music, art history, literature, or liturgical studies.

Master’s degree students may pursue the broad-based Comprehensive M.A.R. in religion and the arts. Alternatively, they may be admitted to a concentration in one of the following:

Liturgical Studies
Religion and Literature
Religion and Music
Visual Arts and Material Culture

The program offers a broad-ranging education in historical, theological, and pastoral aspects of liturgical studies and worship practice. Rich interdisciplinary electives supplement core courses, ensuring that students not only gain a broad understanding of worship and of approaches to its study but also encounter the diversity of liturgical patterns across Christian and other traditions. The faculty emphasizes connections with history as well as theology, contemporary liturgical practice, and the practice of sacred music and other art forms. This concentration prepares students for doctoral work and for ministerial vocations, lay or ordained, especially parish ministers and church musicians.

The program in liturgical studies seeks to serve students who are preparing for doctoral work and those with ministerial vocations, lay or ordained, especially parish ministers and church musicians.

This concentration emphasizes the close reading of texts, an awareness of historical context, and a wide variety of interpretive approaches. What distinguishes it from other master’s programs in literature, however, is its focus on the religious dimension of literary works and the theological ramifications of their study—for communities as well as for individual readers. Students are helped to make connections between theological content and literary form (e.g., narrative, poetry, memoir, epistle, fragment, and song); to increase understanding of how the arts give voice to theological ideas; and to develop creative as well as critical writing skills in articulating theology. In addition to literary study, students take courses in Bible, theology, and history. Because of the interdisciplinary nature of the ISM, moreover, literature is always brought into conversation with worship and the other arts. Graduates of the program may go on to doctoral work in a variety of disciplines.

Graduates of the program typically go on to doctoral work, to college and secondary school teaching positions, or to publishing.

Sample Courses

Dante’s Journey to God
Religious Themes in Contemporary American Short Fiction
The Psalms in Scripture, Literature, and Music
The Religious Lyric in Britain
Genesis and its Afterlife
The Passion of Christ in Literature and the Visual Arts

This concentration aims to familiarize students with broad areas of sacred music and their theological, philosophical, and ritual contexts. The program is open to students wanting to focus on historical musicology, ethnomusicology, or the theological study of music. Students will work within the methodological and theoretical framework of their subdiscipline, but they are also expected to cross the boundaries into the other musicological disciplines. In addition, students are encouraged to consider music within an interdisciplinary network: visual arts, poetry, literature, etc. After graduation from the program, many students pursue doctoral degrees in music history or ethnomusicology, or they pursue theological studies with a particular focus on music and ritual.

After graduation from the program many students pursue doctoral degrees in music history or ethnomusicology.

This concentration aims to provide students with a robust scholarly background in relations between religion and visual and material arts/cultures. It encourages interdisciplinary conversation across the various arts represented in the ISM curriculum (literature, music, liturgy, and ritual studies). The program invites students to take advantage of the abundant resources of Yale University in the visual arts and cultures of religion. After graduation from the program, many students pursue doctoral degrees in history of art or religious studies

After graduation from the program many student pursue doctoral degrees in departments of history of art or religious studies.

Faculty and Affiliates

Vasileios Marinis, program coordinator
Sally M. Promey
Felicity Harley
Orgu Dalgic

Courses may include

Visual Fluencies: Material Arts and Western Visual Cultures of Religion
The Cult of Saints in Early Christianity and the Middle Ages
Religion and the Performance of Space
Christian Pilgrimage: Narratives, Materialities, Rituals
Visual Controversies: Religion and the Politics of Vision
Witnessing, Remembrance, Commemoration
Material Sensations

Campus resources include

The Institute for the Study of Material and Visual Cultures of Religion (MAVCOR) mavcor.yale.edu, and the Yale collections and galleries.

Course Listing and Curriculum

More detailed information about the degree requirements is in the Yale Bulletin for the ISM.

Our Partners

ISM partners prepare students for careers in church music and other sacred music.

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Classics and Philosophy Combined Ph.D. Program

The Classics and Philosophy Program is a combined Ph.D. program, offered by the departments of Philosophy and of Classics at Yale, for students wishing to pursue graduate study in ancient Greek and Roman philosophy. Suitably qualified students may apply for entry to the program either through the Philosophy Department for the Philosophy Track, details of which are given below, or through the Classics Department for the Classics Track.

Applicants for the Philosophy track of the combined program must satisfy the general requirements for admission to the Philosophy graduate program, in addition to the requirements of the Philosophy track of the combined program. Applicants for the Classics track of the combined program must satisfy the general requirements for admission to the Classics graduate program, in addition to the requirements of the Classics track of the combined program. Applicants to the combined program are strongly encouraged to submit a writing sample on a topic in ancient philosophy. Applicants interested in the combined program should indicate this at the time of application; admission to the program cannot normally be considered after an offer of admission is made.

The program is overseen by an interdepartmental committee consisting of professors Tim Clarke, Verity Harte, and Brad Inwood, as well as the Director of Graduate Studies for Classics and the Director of Graduate Studies for Philosophy.

Requirements of the Philosophy Track of the Classics and Philosophy Program

Entry language requirements.

It is recommended that applicants to the program possess a basic knowledge of Greek, up to the level of being able comfortably to read Plato’s Socratic dialogues and/or comparable abilities in Latin. While this level of proficiency is recommended, the minimum requirement for entry to the Philosophy Track is intermediate proficiency in at least one of Greek and Latin (where such proficiency standards could be met by attendance at an intensive summer school, such as the CUNY course, in which the course covers the ground typically covered by both a beginners and an intermediate course, in the summer prior to entry). Students who satisfy only the minimal level requirement in Greek and Latin must, in addition, have demonstrable proficiency in one of the Modern Languages: French, German or Italian. Such students should make clear in their applications their current level of language attainment and their plans to meet the minimum language requirement. On completion of the program, graduates will have proficiency in Greek and Latin and a reading knowledge of two of the following languages; French, German, or Italian. These will be established and assisted by diagnostic tests as follows:

Greek and Latin Proficiency Tests in Greek and/or Latin

Diagnostic sight translations in Greek and Latin will be given to assess the student’s progress in the Classical languages and to assist with placement into classes. These exams are offered at the beginning of the first and third semesters of registration. Diagnostics must be taken in at least one of Greek and Latin at the beginning of the first semester and repeated in the third. Diagnostics in the second language must be taken no later than the third semester. Depending on the student’s progress, additional diagnostic testing may be required in consultation with the program committee.

Modern Languages

Departmental language exam in German, French, or Italian by the beginning of the second year (early September). Native speakers are excused. Students have up to two attempts to pass.
Departmental language exam in a second language of German, French, or Italian by the beginning of the third year (early September). Native speakers are excused. Students have up to two attempts to pass.
Students with sufficient language proficiency may take the tests in two languages in the first year.

First-year seminar in Philosophy

The First Year Seminar, Philosophy 705, must be taken by all students in their first year. This course counts towards the 5 courses to be taken in Philosophy but does not count toward any of the distribution groups.
At least 4 should be in ancient philosophy, including at least two involving original language work.
Of 5 in Philosophy, one should be in history of philosophy other than ancient philosophy, at least one should be in Metaphysics, Epistemology, Philosophy of Mind and/or Philosophy of Language, and at least one should be in ethics and value theory. Students must satisfy the Logic requirement as per the general Philosophy PhD program.
In recognition of previous graduate-level work done at Yale or elsewhere, the Program Committee in consultation with the two Directors of Graduate Studies may recommend waiving a maximum of three courses of the requirement (including logic), not more than two of which may be counted against Philosophy graduate courses and not more than one of which may be counted against Classics graduate courses at Yale. Graduate students must take at least one class in two of the three categories listed in the Yale Philosophy department, not counting classes in ancient philosophy. Credit for course work done elsewhere does not reduce the tuition or residency requirement of the Graduate School. Whether a waiver is granted is ultimately be decided by the Graduate School.

Qualifying Exams and Papers

Translation examinations in Greek and Latin, based on the Philosophy Track Reading List , by the beginning of the 6th term in residence.
An oral examination in Greek and Latin based on the Philosophy Track Reading List, by the end of the 6th term in residence.
Two qualifying papers, one of which must be in ancient philosophy and one of which must be on a philosophical topic other than ancient philosophy, by the end of the 5th term in residence.

Dissertation Prospectus

A Dissertation Prospectus must be complete by the end of the 7th term in residence.

Philosophy Department work-in-progress seminar

The Philosophy Department has a work-in-progress seminar once or twice a year where students present their work-in-progress (qualifying papers, chapters of the thesis, or other publications) and discuss other students’ work. We strongly encourage those who are advanced to candidacy to take this seminar.

Dissertation

Timing Candidates should expect to complete their dissertations within 6 years of entering the program.

Adviser Registered doctoral candidates must have a principal adviser with an appointment on the Graduate School faculty. The Graduate School requires that each dissertation be read by at least three people but not more than five, at least two of whom hold faculty appointments in the Graduate School. All readers must hold the Ph.D. degree as well as a faculty position or be considered otherwise qualified to evaluate the dissertation

Length It is recommended that the dissertation not exceed 75,000 words.

Joint work Dissertations that rely on joint work must include in their Preface a detailed description of which parts of the thesis are the result of joint work and what the candidate’s contribution was to the joint work. The primary advisor must verify the description in a message sent to all readers of the dissertation. We leave it to the readers to factor this information into their judgment about the merit of the dissertation.

No dissertation should be submitted to the Graduate School until a PDF copy has been seen by the dissertation committee. (See Submission Procedures for Dissertation (opens in a new window/tab) available from the Graduate School Registrar’s Office. This document also includes format instructions for dissertations). An oral defense of the thesis is required.

Archaeological Anthropology

Graduate training in archaeology and prehistory is offered by a core group of faculty whose specialties include areal foci on Mesoamerica and South America, the Near East, Inner Asia, China, and Africa. Theory interests include the development of complex societies and alternative understandings of complexity; ancient religion and ritual practice; ideology and political organization; writing systems; trade and exchange; craft specialization; and diverse forms of urbanism. The Department has laboratory facilities for archaeological research, as well as access to major collections held by the Peabody Museum. Training is available in field and analytical methods with emphasis on ceramic and lithic analysis, geophysical remote sensing, faunal analysis, archaeomagnetic methods and dating, pXRF compositional analysis, archaeometallurgy, satellite image analysis and GIS (Geographic Information Systems). In addition to offering a Ph.D. in Anthropology, faculty in Archaeological Studies contribute to Yale’s M.A. Program in Archaeological Studies.

Resources and Common Connections:

Council on Archaeological Studies

Yale Peabody Museum

Yale University Art Gallery

Department of Classics

Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations

Department of the History of Art

Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences

Institute for the Preservation of Cultural Heritage

MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies

Yale Quantum Institute

Opportunity: $1,500 grant to develop yale stem course with yale art gallery artworks.

Through a partnership between the Yale University Art Gallery and Yale’s Poorvu Center for Teaching and Learning and with the support of the Provost’s Office, Yale Instructors (Faculty, Lecturers, Postdoctoral Associates/Fellow, Graduate students TAs) in STEM fields are invited to apply for curriculum development grants of $1,500 (awarded as research funds) to develop at least one Gallery-based curricular session which focuses on cultivating advanced critical observational skills (the ability to recognize, analyze and interpret the complex ways in which images convey meaning) or other skills or topics related to the faculty member’s teaching practice or discipline.

The goal of the grant program is to introduce instructors to the museum as a unique, multidisciplinary learning environment and equip them with visual-analytical tools and innovative pedagogies to apply in their own teaching and research. To this end, grant recipients will be required to:

1) attend a two-hour pedagogy workshop at the Gallery in October 2024 (date TBD)

2) to develop in consultation with Gallery staff a one-page lesson plan that is both specific to the Gallery visit (including a small selection of art works and activities/questions for in-gallery engagement and discussion) and can be applied more broadly (emphasizing the development of disciplinary skills or habits of mind such as critical observation skills, pattern recognition, emotional recognition, and empathy) across courses and can be utilized by other faculty

3) based on the developed lesson plan, lead on their own a museum session for a course they are offering in the 2024–25 academic year

Grant recipients will have the option to request an observation with feedback of their museum session.

More info and application here .

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New ‘pathways’: yale’s vast art, humanities assets opened to local students.

James Vanderberg examining 18th century comics with three Pathways to Arts and Humanities Summer Scholars.

Yale’s Pathways to Arts and Humanities summer program gives high school students access to the university’s extensive resources, like the collections at the Yale Center for British Art (YCBA). (Photo by Dan Renzetti)

The Yale Center for British Art (YCBA) is currently closed for renovations, but one morning this month, about a dozen high school students were granted special access to the museum’s Study Room.

There they hovered over the richly detailed satirical etchings of the 18 th -century English artist William Hogarth. One four-panel series laid out on the table, “ The Four Stages of Cruelty ,” tells the story of a poor orphan who commits escalating acts of cruelty throughout his life until meeting his own cruel end. Hogarth, explained YCBA educator James Vanderberg, excelled at using intricately drawn comic art to “shed light on the ills of society.”

After getting a glimpse of Hogarth, whom Vanderberg, a comic artist himself, called “the great-great-grandfather of the comic narrative style,” they returned to their classroom at the Yale School of Art to work on drawing their own comic tales.

These students were taking a week-long workshop on British comic art taught by Vanderberg as part of Yale’s new Pathways to Arts and Humanities Summer Scholars Program , which just concluded its second year. The initiative is modeled after the Pathways to Science program, which since 2012 has invited students interested in careers in science, technology, engineering, and math to explore Yale’s vast STEM resources.

James Vanderberg pointing at a printed comic.

Eshal Anwer, 16, said she signed up for the workshop on comic art because she loves comics – graphic novels were her introduction to reading. During the session, Vanderberg taught students to tell a story through comic drawings, like Hogarth did, but also to let go of the idea that it must be a work of art.

Anwer found this approach freeing.

“ I feel like I’m a perfectionist, but comics aren’t supposed to be perfect,” said Anwer. “It’s nice we can just go with the pen.”

Katrina Reyes, 17, who returned to Pathways this year after attending last summer, had a similar revelation.

“ Comics don’t have to be really elaborate,” she said. “They can be really simple and you can still get your story across.”

Like the Pathways to Science program, Pathways to Arts and Humanities offers high school students from New Haven, West Haven, and Orange access to the university’s vast array of resources, all at no charge. This year’s program, held in one two-week session in July and August, attracted 59 students to 11 different workshops, as well as shorter enrichment sessions, offered in partnership with the YCBA, Yale School of Art, and the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library.

They used Adobe Photoshop to create digital collages, practiced foundational painting techniques, and sampled the works of poets old and new. They scoured old maps for details of the history of New Haven and tapped primary sources at the Beinecke to learn about African Americans who went to the United Kingdom during the 19 th century to build support for abolition.

The overall goal of the program is to provide local high school students “with a similar learning experience to the one that Yale students have been able to have for over 300 years,” said Maria Parente, associate director of public-school partnerships in Yale’s Office of New Haven Affairs, which hosts Pathways.

“ The summer workshops give students 10 full days to immerse themselves in an area they already knew they liked, or to discover a whole new area that they had no idea existed,” she said, “and to be in community with like-minded students from high schools across the city.”

‘ Pathways is a win-win’

The Pathways programs are two of more than 200 programs offered at Yale annually for Greater New Haven students. Pathways to Science, which is much larger and operates year-round, invites middle school and high school students to explore STEM subjects on campus through demonstrations, lectures, and laboratory visits. More than 1,900 students currently participate, and more than 1,000 alumni are currently enrolled in college.

The Office of New Haven Affairs, with strong support from the Beinecke Library and special collections, began exploring the idea of a summer program for Pathways in the arts and humanities in 2022. That summer, they conducted a beta test, in which 17 high school students attended a color theory workshop taught by a School of Art graduate student. Kymberly Pinder, the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Dean of the School of Art, was an early and enthusiastic supporter, as she has long been a believer in getting art students out into the community.

“ Art students should learn about practices outside of their studios,” Pinder said. “Our Yale artists are very engaged in New Haven and many are interested in teaching, so Pathways is a win-win for the high school students and our students.”

The program officially opened in the summer of 2023 with 55 students and nine workshops. The daily schedule goes like this: every morning the students meet at the Office of New Haven Affairs’ summer home base on Hillhouse Avenue and then walk with their assigned undergraduate teaching assistant to their first 90-minute workshop. After that, the TA takes them to an hour-long enrichment session (which varies daily). Next comes lunch at Morse Dining Hall, and then a second 90-minute workshop.

Rachel Gain, a Yale Ph.D. student in music theory, led students in a tap practice session as part of an enrichment program in th

Parente said they hope to increase the program to 100 students next summer. They recently hired a new full-time program coordinator, who will help build out the program to operate much like Pathways to Science, expanding the year-round offerings and bringing on a new cohort of students each year.

“ The idea is to expose students to a wide variety of subjects and if they find an area of interest, offer them a chance to go incrementally deeper over time,” she said.

A space for storytelling

The timing of the rollout of the new Pathways program, officials say, was perfect for the YCBA, which was looking for ways to expand its public outreach and maintain an active presence while the building is closed for renovations. (The museum anticipates reopening in early spring of next year.)

Vanderberg, who taught high school and university-level art for 10 years before coming to YCBA in 2020 to work in community engagement, said he was immediately excited about Pathways when Parente approached him about it. He hit upon the idea of tapping into the YCBA’s extensive collection of British satire and caricature work from the 18 th and 19 th centuries to create a workshop on comic art, as a way to “give students space to tell their own stories.”

A student examining an 18th-century comic with a magnifying glass

“ I think they often have a preconceived notion of what comics are — it’s either the Sunday funnies or superheroes — and there’s a whole other range of independent and alternative personal narratives,” Vanderberg said. “There are all these different avenues they can take once they understand the structure of the medium.”

Nour Biada, 16, expected to enjoy the comic art workshop — she is an artist herself — but she didn’t expect to be so engaged by the history of tap, one of the rotating enrichment sessions held in between workshops.

Taught by Rachel Gain, a Yale Ph.D. student in music theory as well as a rhythm tap dancer, the session gave students an overview of the evolution of tap from its 1930s heyday at the Cotton Club in Harlem up through the present day (think Syncopated Ladies ), using a series of video clips to bring the dance to life. Then, students were invited to pull on tap shoes provided for them by Yale and take their places on square-shaped boards on the floor.

Following Gain’s lead at the front of the class, the students scuffed, knocked, brushed, and slapped their hearts out for the remainder of the session.

Changing out of her tap shoes, Biada said she found tapping so fun she was going to take her shoes home and continue practicing a little shuffle-ball-change on her own. While eager to keep the tap going herself, her parents might not be so thrilled, she joked, if her efforts result in “a scuffed floor.”

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We require a scanned copy of your transcripts from every college or university you have attended. Scanned copies must be clearly legible and sized to print on standard 8½-by-11-inch paper. Transcripts that do not show degrees awarded must also be accompanied by a scanned copy of the diploma or degree certificate. If your academic transcripts were issued in a language other than English, both the original documents and certified English translations are required.

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Most personal statements are two pages. Things to include: 1. What are the field or topics in art history that excite you and why? Which faculty members in our department do you see as potentially providing guidance in helping you pursue an M.A. in these fields. If you are applying for the museum studies concentration, also discuss what aspects of museums excite or motivate you and why. 2. What special skills, preparation or experiences do you bring to the program that will help you succeed here? Feel free to consider experiences beyond the academic realm, including your personal experiences, background and unique perspectives you may have to offer to the fields of art history and museums. 3. What are your goals and motivations (personal/professional) in applying to the M.A. program, and how would the degree assist you towards your long-term objectives (career, further education, personal)? 4. (optional) If you feel that your academic record and experience are not representative of your abilities and potential in graduate school, please let us know any details you wish to share.

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7 Moments In History That...

7 Moments in History That Shaped Yekaterinburg

The founders of the city of Yekaterinburg

A young city by Russian standards, Yekaterinburg grew from industrial beginnings into a modern city with a vibrant arts scene. On the cusp of both Europe and Asia, it was created for its closeness to one of Russia’s most prosperous mountain ranges. Its locality saw the city through World War II and took it into the tumultuous 90s, when the city became a hotbed for lawlessness as the Soviet Union transitioned into the Russia Federation. Discover the stories that defined the character of contemporary Yekaterinburg .

Natural wealth.

Market, Museum

End of an Empire

The Russian Revolution brought an ending to Imperial Russia. In 1918, the Romanov family (Tsar Nicholas, his wife Alexandrea and their children Olga, Tatiana, Maria, Anastasia, and Alexei) were executed by the Bolsheviks. Their bodies were then disposed of in an unused mine, just on the outskirts of Yekaterinburg. The death of the family herald a new era for the country and thrust Russia into the communist state that was only dismantled in 1991. In the city centre, not far from the Iset River, the Church upon the Blood stands on the family’s execution site. Likewise, a short trip out of town, the Ganina Yama Monastery has been built next to the old mine that pays homage to Russia’s last royal family.

Church upon the Blood, Ulitsa Tolmacheva 34, Yekaterinburg, Russia , +7 343 371-61-68

Ganina Yama Monastery, Ganina Yama, Yekaterinburg, Russia, +7 343 283-03-74

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World War II

The city changed its’s name to Sverdlovsk, in honour of the Bolshevik who was one of Stalin’s trusted confidants. Over 700 factories and state technical institutions relocated to the area from Western Russia in efforts to maintain production during WWII. Many factories and institutions stayed when WWII ended, further strengthening the city’s industrial importance and paving the way for further industrial development. During the war the Hermitage Museum collections were in part relocated to the city in 1941 and remained there until 1945.

A closed city

The rise of the new leader

Mafia warfare.

The collapse of the Soviet Union spun Russia into uncertain times. The initiation of perestroika , the restructuring of Russia’s economic and political system, saw unemployment rise and made the nation vulnerable to corruption as people tried to take advantage of a changing economic structure. During the volatile and unstable times of the 1990s Yekaterinburg was home to mafia turf wars between feuding gangs in pursuit of their own agendas. Chiefly the Uralmash Gang and the Central gang, whose warring turned Yekaterinburg into a bloody battle ground. The mafia buried their clan in cemeteries on the outskirts of the city, complete with ostentatious and gaudy tombstones.

Shirokorechenskoe Cemetery, Yekaterinburg, Russia

Shirokaya Rechka Cemetery, Yekaterinburg, Russia

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YEKATERINBURG: FACTORIES, URAL SIGHTS, YELTSIN AND THE WHERE NICHOLAS II WAS KILLED

Sverdlovsk oblast.

Sverdlovsk Oblast is the largest region in the Urals; it lies in the foothills of mountains and contains a monument indicating the border between Europe and Asia. The region covers 194,800 square kilometers (75,200 square miles), is home to about 4.3 million people and has a population density of 22 people per square kilometer. About 83 percent of the population live in urban areas. Yekaterinburg is the capital and largest city, with 1.5 million people. For Russians, the Ural Mountains are closely associated with Pavel Bazhov's tales and known for folk crafts such as Kasli iron sculpture, Tagil painting, and copper embossing. Yekaterinburg is the birthplace of Russia’s iron and steel industry, taking advantage of the large iron deposits in the Ural mountains. The popular Silver Ring of the Urals tourist route starts here.

In the summer you can follow in the tracks of Yermak, climb relatively low Ural mountain peaks and look for boulders seemingly with human faces on them. You can head to the Gemstone Belt of the Ural mountains, which used to house emerald, amethyst and topaz mines. In the winter you can go ice fishing, ski and cross-country ski.

Sverdlovsk Oblast and Yekaterinburg are located near the center of Russia, at the crossroads between Europe and Asia and also the southern and northern parts of Russia. Winters are longer and colder than in western section of European Russia. Snowfalls can be heavy. Winter temperatures occasionally drop as low as - 40 degrees C (-40 degrees F) and the first snow usually falls in October. A heavy winter coat, long underwear and good boots are essential. Snow and ice make the sidewalks very slippery, so footwear with a good grip is important. Since the climate is very dry during the winter months, skin moisturizer plus lip balm are recommended. Be alert for mud on street surfaces when snow cover is melting (April-May). Patches of mud create slippery road conditions.

Yekaterinburg

Yekaterinburg (kilometer 1818 on the Trans-Siberian Railway) is the fourth largest city in Russia, with of 1.5 million and growth rate of about 12 percent, high for Russia. Located in the southern Ural mountains, it was founded by Peter the Great and named after his wife Catherine, it was used by the tsars as a summer retreat and is where tsar Nicholas II and his family were executed and President Boris Yeltsin lived most of his life and began his political career. The city is near the border between Europe and Asia.

Yekaterinburg (also spelled Ekaterinburg) is located on the eastern slope of the Ural Mountains in the headwaters of the Iset and Pyshma Rivers. The Iset runs through the city center. Three ponds — Verkh-Isetsky, Gorodskoy and Nizhne-Isetsky — were created on it. Yekaterinburg has traditionally been a city of mining and was once the center of the mining industry of the Urals and Siberia. Yekaterinburg remains a major center of the Russian armaments industry and is sometimes called the "Pittsburgh of Russia.". A few ornate, pastel mansions and wide boulevards are reminders of the tsarist era. The city is large enough that it has its own Metro system but is characterized mostly by blocky Soviet-era apartment buildings. The city has advanced under President Vladimir Putin and is now one of the fastest growing places in Russia, a country otherwise characterized by population declines

Yekaterinburg is technically an Asian city as it lies 32 kilometers east of the continental divide between Europe and Asia. The unofficial capital of the Urals, a key region in the Russian heartland, it is second only to Moscow in terms of industrial production and capital of Sverdlovsk oblast. Among the important industries are ferrous and non-ferrous metallurgy, machine building and metalworking, chemical and petrochemicals, construction materials and medical, light and food industries. On top of being home of numerous heavy industries and mining concerns, Yekaterinburg is also a major center for industrial research and development and power engineering as well as home to numerous institutes of higher education, technical training, and scientific research. In addition, Yekaterinburg is the largest railway junction in Russia: the Trans-Siberian Railway passes through it, the southern, northern, western and eastern routes merge in the city.

Accommodation: There are two good and affordable hotels — the 3-star Emerald and Parus hotels — located close to the city's most popular landmarks and main transport interchanges in the center of Yekaterinburg. Room prices start at RUB 1,800 per night.

History of Yekaterinburg

Yekaterinburg was founded in 1723 by Peter the Great and named after his wife Catherine I. It was used by the tsars as a summer retreat but was mainly developed as metalworking and manufacturing center to take advantage of the large deposits of iron and other minerals in the Ural mountains. It is best known to Americans as the place where the last Tsar and his family were murdered by the Bolsheviks in 1918 and near where American U-2 spy plane, piloted by Gary Powers, was shot down in 1960.

Peter the Great recognized the importance of the iron and copper-rich Urals region for Imperial Russia's industrial and military development. In November 1723, he ordered the construction of a fortress factory and an ironworks in the Iset River Valley, which required a dam for its operation. In its early years Yekaterinburg grew rich from gold and other minerals and later coal. The Yekaterinburg gold rush of 1745 created such a huge amount of wealth that one rich baron of that time hosted a wedding party that lasted a year. By the mid-18th century, metallurgical plants had sprung up across the Urals to cast cannons, swords, guns and other weapons to arm Russia’s expansionist ambitions. The Yekaterinburg mint produced most of Russia's coins. Explorations of the Trans-Baikal and Altai regions began here in the 18th century.

Iron, cast iron and copper were the main products. Even though Iron from the region went into the Eiffel Tower, the main plant in Yekaterinburg itself was shut down in 1808. The city still kept going through a mountain factory control system of the Urals. The first railway in the Urals was built here: in 1878, the Yekaterinburg-Perm railway branch connected the province's capital with the factories of the Middle Urals.

In the Soviet era the city was called Sverdlovsk (named after Yakov Sverdlov, the man who organized Nicholas II's execution). During the first five-year plans the city became industrial — old plants were reconstructed, new ones were built. The center of Yekaterinburg was formed to conform to the historical general plan of 1829 but was the layout was adjusted around plants and factories. In the Stalin era the city was a major gulag transhipment center. In World War II, many defense-related industries were moved here. It and the surrounding area were a center of the Soviet Union's military industrial complex. Soviet tanks, missiles and aircraft engines were made in the Urals. During the Cold War era, Yekaterinburg was a center of weapons-grade uranium enrichment and processing, warhead assembly and dismantlement. In 1979, 64 people died when anthrax leaked from a biological weapons facility. Yekaterinburg was a “Closed City” for 40 years during the Cold Soviet era and was not open to foreigners until 1991

In the early post-Soviet era, much like Pittsburgh in the 1970s, Yekaterinburg had a hard struggle d to cope with dramatic economic changes that have made its heavy industries uncompetitive on the world market. Huge defense plants struggled to survive and the city was notorious as an organized crime center in the 1990s, when its hometown boy Boris Yeltsin was President of Russia. By the 2000s, Yekaterinburg’s retail and service was taking off, the defense industry was reviving and it was attracting tech industries and investments related to the Urals’ natural resources. By the 2010s it was vying to host a world exhibition in 2020 (it lost, Dubai won) and it had McDonald’s, Subway, sushi restaurants, and Gucci, Chanel and Armani. There were Bentley and Ferrari dealerships but they closed down

Transportation in Yekaterinburg

Getting There: By Plane: Yekaterinburg is a three-hour flight from Moscow with prices starting at RUB 8,000, or a 3-hour flight from Saint Petersburg starting from RUB 9,422 (direct round-trip flight tickets for one adult passenger). There are also flights from Frankfurt, Istanbul, China and major cities in the former Soviet Union.

By Train: Yekaterinburg is a major stop on the Trans-Siberian Railway. Daily train service is available to Moscow and many other Russian cities.Yekaterinburg is a 32-hour train ride from Moscow (tickets RUB 8,380 and above) or a 36-hour train ride from Saint Petersburg (RUB 10,300 and above). The ticket prices are round trip for a berth in a sleeper compartment for one adult passenger). By Car: a car trip from Moscow to Yekateringburg is 1,787 kilometers long and takes about 18 hours. The road from Saint Petersburg is 2,294 kilometers and takes about 28 hours.

Regional Transport: The region's public transport includes buses and suburban electric trains. Regional trains provide transport to larger cities in the Ural region. Buses depart from Yekaterinburg’s two bus stations: the Southern Bus Station and the Northern Bus Station.

Regional Transport: According the to Association for Safe International Road Travel (ASIRT): “Public transportation is well developed. Overcrowding is common. Fares are low. Service is efficient. Buses are the main form of public transport. Tram network is extensive. Fares are reasonable; service is regular. Trams are heavily used by residents, overcrowding is common. Purchase ticket after boarding. Metro runs from city center to Uralmash, an industrial area south of the city. Metro ends near the main railway station. Fares are inexpensive.

“Traffic is congested in city center. Getting around by car can be difficult. Route taxis (minivans) provide the fastest transport. They generally run on specific routes, but do not have specific stops. Drivers stop where passengers request. Route taxis can be hailed. Travel by bus or trolleybuses may be slow in rush hour. Trams are less affected by traffic jams. Trolley buses (electric buses) cannot run when temperatures drop below freezing.”

Entertainment, Sports and Recreation in Yekaterinburg

The performing arts in Yekaterinburg are first rate. The city has an excellent symphony orchestra, opera and ballet theater, and many other performing arts venues. Tickets are inexpensive. The Yekaterinburg Opera and Ballet Theater is lavishly designed and richly decorated building in the city center of Yekaterinburg. The theater was established in 1912 and building was designed by architect Vladimir Semyonov and inspired by the Vienna Opera House and the Theater of Opera and Ballet in Odessa.

Vaynera Street is a pedestrian only shopping street in city center with restaurants, cafes and some bars. But otherwise Yekaterinburg's nightlife options are limited. There are a handful of expensive Western-style restaurants and bars, none of them that great. Nightclubs serve the city's nouveau riche clientele. Its casinos have closed down. Some of them had links with organized crime. New dance clubs have sprung up that are popular with Yekaterinburg's more affluent youth.

Yekaterinburg's most popular spectator sports are hockey, basketball, and soccer. There are stadiums and arenas that host all three that have fairly cheap tickets. There is an indoor water park and lots of parks and green spaces. The Urals have many lakes, forests and mountains are great for hiking, boating, berry and mushroom hunting, swimming and fishing. Winter sports include cross-country skiing and ice skating. Winter lasts about six months and there’s usually plenty of snow. The nearby Ural Mountains however are not very high and the downhill skiing opportunities are limited..

Sights in Yekaterinburg

Sights in Yekaterinburg include the Museum of City Architecture and Ural Industry, with an old water tower and mineral collection with emeralds. malachite, tourmaline, jasper and other precious stone; Geological Alley, a small park with labeled samples of minerals found in the Urals region; the Ural Geology Museum, which houses an extensive collection of stones, gold and gems from the Urals; a monument marking the border between Europe and Asia; a memorial for gulag victims; and a graveyard with outlandish memorials for slain mafia members.

The Military History Museum houses the remains of the U-2 spy plane shot down in 1960 and locally made tanks and rocket launchers. The fine arts museum contains paintings by some of Russia's 19th-century masters. Also worth a look are the History an Local Studies Museum; the Political History and Youth Museum; and the University and Arboretum. Old wooden houses can be seen around Zatoutstovsya ulitsa and ulitsa Belinskogo. Around the city are wooded parks, lakes and quarries used to harvest a variety of minerals. Weiner Street is the main street of Yekaterinburg. Along it are lovely sculptures and 19th century architecture. Take a walk around the unique Literary Quarter

Plotinka is a local meeting spot, where you will often find street musicians performing. Plotinka can be described as the center of the city's center. This is where Yekaterinburg holds its biggest events: festivals, seasonal fairs, regional holiday celebrations, carnivals and musical fountain shows. There are many museums and open-air exhibitions on Plotinka. Plotinka is named after an actual dam of the city pond located nearby (“plotinka” means “a small dam” in Russian).In November 1723, Peter the Great ordered the construction of an ironworks in the Iset River Valley, which required a dam for its operation. “Iset” can be translated from Finnish as “abundant with fish”. This name was given to the river by the Mansi — the Finno-Ugric people dwelling on the eastern slope of the Northern Urals.

Vysotsky and Iset are skyscrapers that are 188.3 meters and 209 meters high, respectively. Fifty-story-high Iset has been described by locals as the world’s northernmost skyscraper. Before the construction of Iset, Vysotsky was the tallest building of Yekaterinburg and Russia (excluding Moscow). A popular vote has decided to name the skyscraper after the famous Soviet songwriter, singer and actor Vladimir Vysotsky. and the building was opened on November 25, 2011. There is a lookout at the top of the building, and the Vysotsky museum on its second floor. The annual “Vysotsky climb” (1137 steps) is held there, with a prize of RUB 100,000. While Vysotsky serves as an office building, Iset, owned by the Ural Mining and Metallurgical Company, houses 225 premium residential apartments ranging from 80 to 490 square meters in size.

Boris Yeltsin Presidential Center

The Boris Yeltsin Presidential Center (in the city center: ul. Yeltsina, 3) is a non-governmental organization named after the first president of the Russian Federation. The Museum of the First President of Russia as well as his archives are located in the Center. There is also a library, educational and children's centers, and exposition halls. Yeltsin lived most of his life and began his political career in Yekaterinburg. He was born in Butka about 200 kilometers east of Yekaterinburg.

The core of the Center is the Museum. Modern multimedia technologies help animate the documents, photos from the archives, and artifacts. The Yeltsin Museum holds collections of: propaganda posters, leaflets, and photos of the first years of the Soviet regime; portraits and portrait sculptures of members of Politburo of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of various years; U.S.S.R. government bonds and other items of the Soviet era; a copy of “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” by Alexander Solzhenitsyn, published in the “Novy Mir” magazine (#11, 1962); perestroika-era editions of books by Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Vasily Grossman, and other authors; theater, concert, and cinema posters, programs, and tickets — in short, all of the artifacts of the perestroika era.

The Yeltsin Center opened in 2012. Inside you will also find an art gallery, a bookstore, a gift shop, a food court, concert stages and a theater. There are regular screenings of unique films that you will not find anywhere else. Also operating inside the center, is a scientific exploritorium for children. The center was designed by Boris Bernaskoni. Almost from the its very opening, the Yeltsin Center has been accused by members of different political entities of various ideological crimes. The museum is open Tuesday to Sunday, from 10:00am to 9:00pm.

Where Nicholas II was Executed

On July, 17, 1918, during this reign of terror of the Russian Civil War, former-tsar Nicholas II, his wife, five children (the 13-year-old Alexis, 22-year-old Olga, 19-year-old Maria and 17-year-old Anastasia)the family physician, the cook, maid, and valet were shot to death by a Red Army firing squad in the cellar of the house they were staying at in Yekaterinburg.

Ipatiev House (near Church on the Blood, Ulitsa Libknekhta) was a merchant's house where Nicholas II and his family were executed. The house was demolished in 1977, on the orders of an up and coming communist politician named Boris Yeltsin. Yeltsin later said that the destruction of the house was an "act of barbarism" and he had no choice because he had been ordered to do it by the Politburo,

The site is marked with s cross with the photos of the family members and cross bearing their names. A small wooden church was built at the site. It contains paintings of the family. For a while there were seven traditional wooden churches. Mass is given ay noon everyday in an open-air museum. The Church on the Blood — constructed to honor Nicholas II and his family — was built on the part of the site in 1991 and is now a major place of pilgrimage.

Nicholas and his family where killed during the Russian civil war. It is thought the Bolsheviks figured that Nicholas and his family gave the Whites figureheads to rally around and they were better of dead. Even though the death orders were signed Yakov Sverdlov, the assassination was personally ordered by Lenin, who wanted to get them out of sight and out of mind. Trotsky suggested a trial. Lenin nixed the idea, deciding something had to be done about the Romanovs before White troops approached Yekaterinburg. Trotsky later wrote: "The decision was not only expedient but necessary. The severity of he punishment showed everyone that we would continue to fight on mercilessly, stopping at nothing."

Ian Frazier wrote in The New Yorker: “Having read a lot about the end of Tsar Nicholas II and his family and servants, I wanted to see the place in Yekaterinburg where that event occurred. The gloomy quality of this quest depressed Sergei’s spirits, but he drove all over Yekaterinburg searching for the site nonetheless. Whenever he stopped and asked a pedestrian how to get to the house where Nicholas II was murdered, the reaction was a wince. Several people simply walked away. But eventually, after a lot of asking, Sergei found the location. It was on a low ridge near the edge of town, above railroad tracks and the Iset River. The house, known as the Ipatiev House, was no longer standing, and the basement where the actual killings happened had been filled in. I found the blankness of the place sinister and dizzying. It reminded me of an erasure done so determinedly that it had worn a hole through the page. [Source: Ian Frazier, The New Yorker, August 3, 2009, Frazier is author of “Travels in Siberia” (2010)]

“The street next to the site is called Karl Liebknecht Street. A building near where the house used to be had a large green advertisement that said, in English, “LG—Digitally Yours.” On an adjoining lot, a small chapel kept the memory of the Tsar and his family; beneath a pedestal holding an Orthodox cross, peonies and pansies grew. The inscription on the pedestal read, “We go down on our knees, Russia, at the foot of the tsarist cross.”

Books: The Romanovs: The Final Chapter by Robert K. Massie (Random House, 1995); The Fall of the Romanovs by Mark D. Steinberg and Vladimir Khrustalëv (Yale, 1995);

See Separate Article END OF NICHOLAS II factsanddetails.com

Execution of Nicholas II

According to Robert Massie K. Massie, author of Nicholas and Alexandra, Nicholas II and his family were awakened from their bedrooms around midnight and taken to the basement. They were told they were to going to take some photographs of them and were told to stand behind a row of chairs.

Suddenly, a group of 11 Russians and Latvians, each with a revolver, burst into the room with orders to kill a specific person. Yakob Yurovsky, a member of the Soviet executive committee, reportedly shouted "your relatives are continuing to attack the Soviet Union.” After firing, bullets bouncing off gemstones hidden in the corsets of Alexandra and her daughters ricocheted around the room like "a shower of hail," the soldiers said. Those that were still breathing were killed with point black shots to the head.

The three sisters and the maid survived the first round thanks to their gems. They were pressed up against a wall and killed with a second round of bullets. The maid was the only one that survived. She was pursued by the executioners who stabbed her more than 30 times with their bayonets. The still writhing body of Alexis was made still by a kick to the head and two bullets in the ear delivered by Yurovsky himself.

Yurovsky wrote: "When the party entered I told the Romanovs that in view of the fact their relatives continued their offensive against Soviet Russia, the Executive Committee of the Urals Soviet had decided to shoot them. Nicholas turned his back to the detachment and faced his family. Then, as if collecting himself, he turned around, asking, 'What? What?'"

"[I] ordered the detachment to prepare. Its members had been previously instructed whom to shoot and to am directly at the heart to avoid much blood and to end more quickly. Nicholas said no more. he turned again to his family. The others shouted some incoherent exclamations. All this lasted a few seconds. Then commenced the shooting, which went on for two or three minutes. [I] killed Nicholas on the spot."

Nicholas II’s Initial Burial Site in Yekaterinburg

Ganina Yama Monastery (near the village of Koptyaki, 15 kilometers northwest of Yekaterinburg) stands near the three-meter-deep pit where some the remains of Nicholas II and his family were initially buried. The second burial site — where most of the remains were — is in a field known as Porosyonkov (56.9113628°N 60.4954326°E), seven kilometers from Ganina Yama.

On visiting Ganina Yama Monastery, one person posted in Trip Advisor: “We visited this set of churches in a pretty park with Konstantin from Ekaterinburg Guide Centre. He really brought it to life with his extensive knowledge of the history of the events surrounding their terrible end. The story is so moving so unless you speak Russian, it is best to come here with a guide or else you will have no idea of what is what.”

In 1991, the acid-burned remains of Nicholas II and his family were exhumed from a shallow roadside mass grave in a swampy area 12 miles northwest of Yekaterinburg. The remains had been found in 1979 by geologist and amateur archeologist Alexander Avdonin, who kept the location secret out of fear that they would be destroyed by Soviet authorities. The location was disclosed to a magazine by one his fellow discovers.

The original plan was to throw the Romanovs down a mine shaft and disposes of their remains with acid. They were thrown in a mine with some grenades but the mine didn't collapse. They were then carried by horse cart. The vats of acid fell off and broke. When the carriage carrying the bodies broke down it was decided the bury the bodies then and there. The remaining acid was poured on the bones, but most of it was soaked up the ground and the bones largely survived.

After this their pulses were then checked, their faces were crushed to make them unrecognizable and the bodies were wrapped in bed sheets loaded onto a truck. The "whole procedure," Yurovsky said took 20 minutes. One soldiers later bragged than he could "die in peace because he had squeezed the Empress's -------."

The bodies were taken to a forest and stripped, burned with acid and gasoline, and thrown into abandoned mine shafts and buried under railroad ties near a country road near the village of Koptyaki. "The bodies were put in the hole," Yurovsky wrote, "and the faces and all the bodies, generally doused with sulfuric acid, both so they couldn't be recognized and prevent a stink from them rotting...We scattered it with branches and lime, put boards on top and drove over it several times—no traces of the hole remained.

Shortly afterwards, the government in Moscow announced that Nicholas II had been shot because of "a counterrevolutionary conspiracy." There was no immediate word on the other members of the family which gave rise to rumors that other members of the family had escaped. Yekaterinburg was renamed Sverdlov in honor of the man who signed the death orders.

For seven years the remains of Nicholas II, Alexandra, three of their daughters and four servants were stored in polyethylene bags on shelves in the old criminal morgue in Yekaterunburg. On July 17, 1998, Nicholas II and his family and servants who were murdered with him were buried Peter and Paul Fortress in St. Petersburg along with the other Romanov tsars, who have been buried there starting with Peter the Great. Nicholas II had a side chapel built for himself at the fortress in 1913 but was buried in a new crypt.

Near Yekaterinburg

Factory-Museum of Iron and Steel Metallurgy (in Niznhy Tagil 80 kilometers north of Yekaterinburg) a museum with old mining equipment made at the site of huge abandoned iron and steel factory. Officially known as the Factory-Museum of the History of the Development of Iron and Steel Metallurgy, it covers an area of 30 hectares and contains a factory founded by the Demidov family in 1725 that specialized mainly in the production of high-quality cast iron and steel. Later, the foundry was renamed after Valerian Kuybyshev, a prominent figure of the Communist Party.

The first Russian factory museum, the unusual museum demonstrates all stages of metallurgy and metal working. There is even a blast furnace and an open-hearth furnace. The display of factory equipment includes bridge crane from 1892) and rolling stock equipment from the 19th-20th centuries. In Niznhy Tagil contains some huge blocks of malachite and

Nizhnyaya Sinyachikha (180 kilometers east-northeast of Yekaterinburg) has an open air architecture museum with log buildings, a stone church and other pre-revolutionary architecture. The village is the creation of Ivan Samoilov, a local activist who loved his village so much he dedicated 40 years of his life to recreating it as the open-air museum of wooden architecture.

The stone Savior Church, a good example of Siberian baroque architecture. The interior and exterior of the church are exhibition spaces of design. The houses are very colorful. In tsarist times, rich villagers hired serfs to paint the walls of their wooden izbas (houses) bright colors. Old neglected buildings from the 17th to 19th centuries have been brought to Nizhnyaya Sinyachikha from all over the Urals. You will see the interior design of the houses and hear stories about traditions and customs of the Ural farmers.

Verkhoturye (330 kilometers road from Yekaterinburg) is the home a 400-year-old monastery that served as 16th century capital of the Urals. Verkhoturye is a small town on the Tura River knows as the Jerusalem of the Urals for its many holy places, churches and monasteries. The town's main landmark is its Kremlin — the smallest in Russia. Pilgrims visit the St. Nicholas Monastery to see the remains of St. Simeon of Verkhoturye, the patron saint of fishermen.

Ural Mountains

Ural Mountains are the traditional dividing line between Europe and Asia and have been a crossroads of Russian history. Stretching from Kazakhstan to the fringes of the Arctic Kara Sea, the Urals lie almost exactly along the 60 degree meridian of longitude and extend for about 2,000 kilometers (1,300 miles) from north to south and varies in width from about 50 kilometers (30 miles) in the north and 160 kilometers (100 miles) the south. At kilometers 1777 on the Trans-Siberian Railway there is white obelisk with "Europe" carved in Russian on one side and "Asia" carved on the other.

The eastern side of the Urals contains a lot of granite and igneous rock. The western side is primarily sandstone and limestones. A number of precious stones can be found in the southern part of the Urals, including emeralds. malachite, tourmaline, jasper and aquamarines. The highest peaks are in the north. Mount Narodnaya is the highest of all but is only 1884 meters (6,184 feet) high. The northern Urals are covered in thick forests and home to relatively few people.

Like the Appalachian Mountains in the eastern United States, the Urals are very old mountains — with rocks and sediments that are hundreds of millions years old — that were one much taller than they are now and have been steadily eroded down over millions of years by weather and other natural processes to their current size. According to Encyclopedia Britannica: “The rock composition helps shape the topography: the high ranges and low, broad-topped ridges consist of quartzites, schists, and gabbro, all weather-resistant. Buttes are frequent, and there are north–south troughs of limestone, nearly all containing river valleys. Karst topography is highly developed on the western slopes of the Urals, with many caves, basins, and underground streams. The eastern slopes, on the other hand, have fewer karst formations; instead, rocky outliers rise above the flattened surfaces. Broad foothills, reduced to peneplain, adjoin the Central and Southern Urals on the east.

“The Urals date from the structural upheavals of the Hercynian orogeny (about 250 million years ago). About 280 million years ago there arose a high mountainous region, which was eroded to a peneplain. Alpine folding resulted in new mountains, the most marked upheaval being that of the Nether-Polar Urals...The western slope of the Urals is composed of middle Paleozoic sedimentary rocks (sandstones and limestones) that are about 350 million years old. In many places it descends in terraces to the Cis-Ural depression (west of the Urals), to which much of the eroded matter was carried during the late Paleozoic (about 300 million years ago). Found there are widespread karst (a starkly eroded limestone region) and gypsum, with large caverns and subterranean streams. On the eastern slope, volcanic layers alternate with sedimentary strata, all dating from middle Paleozoic times.”

Southern Urals

The southern Urals are characterized by grassy slopes and fertile valleys. The middle Urals are a rolling platform that barely rises above 300 meters (1,000 feet). This region is rich in minerals and has been heavily industrialized. This is where you can find Yekaterinburg (formally Sverdlovsk), the largest city in the Urals.

Most of the Southern Urals are is covered with forests, with 50 percent of that pine-woods, 44 percent birch woods, and the rest are deciduous aspen and alder forests. In the north, typical taiga forests are the norm. There are patches of herbal-poaceous steppes, northem sphagnous marshes and bushy steppes, light birch forests and shady riparian forests, tall-grass mountainous meadows, lowland ling marshes and stony placers with lichen stains. In some places there are no large areas of homogeneous forests, rather they are forests with numerous glades and meadows of different size.

In the Ilmensky Mountains Reserve in the Southern Urals, scientists counted 927 vascular plants (50 relicts, 23 endemic species), about 140 moss species, 483 algae species and 566 mushroom species. Among the species included into the Red Book of Russia are feather grass, downy-leaved feather grass, Zalessky feather grass, moccasin flower, ladies'-slipper, neottianthe cucullata, Baltic orchis, fen orchis, helmeted orchis, dark-winged orchis, Gelma sandwart, Krasheninnikov sandwart, Clare astragalus.

The fauna of the vertebrate animals in the Reserve includes 19 fish, 5 amphibian and 5 reptile. Among the 48 mammal species are elks, roe deer, boars, foxes, wolves, lynxes, badgers, common weasels, least weasels, forest ferrets, Siberian striped weasel, common marten, American mink. Squirrels, beavers, muskrats, hares, dibblers, moles, hedgehogs, voles are quite common, as well as chiropterans: pond bat, water bat, Brandt's bat, whiskered bat, northern bat, long-eared bat, parti-coloured bat, Nathusius' pipistrelle. The 174 bird bird species include white-tailed eagles, honey hawks, boreal owls, gnome owls, hawk owls, tawny owls, common scoters, cuckoos, wookcocks, common grouses, wood grouses, hazel grouses, common partridges, shrikes, goldenmountain thrushes, black- throated loons and others.

Activities and Places in the Ural Mountains

The Urals possess beautiful natural scenery that can be accessed from Yekaterinburg with a rent-a-car, hired taxi and tour. Travel agencies arrange rafting, kayaking and hiking trips. Hikes are available in the taiga forest and the Urals. Trips often include walks through the taiga to small lakes and hikes into the mountains and excursions to collect mushrooms and berries and climb in underground caves. Mellow rafting is offered in a relatively calm six kilometer section of the River Serga. In the winter visitor can enjoy cross-mountains skiing, downhill skiing, ice fishing, dog sledding, snow-shoeing and winter hiking through the forest to a cave covered with ice crystals.

Lake Shartash (10 kilometers from Yekaterinburg) is where the first Ural gold was found, setting in motion the Yekaterinburg gold rush of 1745, which created so much wealth one rich baron of that time hosted a wedding party that lasted a year. The area around Shartash Lake is a favorite picnic and barbecue spot of the locals. Getting There: by bus route No. 50, 054 or 54, with a transfer to suburban commuter bus route No. 112, 120 or 121 (the whole trip takes about an hour), or by car (10 kilometers drive from the city center, 40 minutes).

Revun Rapids (90 kilometers road from Yekaterinburg near Beklenishcheva village) is a popular white water rafting places On the nearby cliffs you can see the remains of a mysterious petroglyph from the Paleolithic period. Along the steep banks, you may notice the dark entrance of Smolinskaya Cave. There are legends of a sorceress who lived in there. The rocks at the riverside are suited for competitive rock climbers and beginners. Climbing hooks and rings are hammered into rocks. The most fun rafting is generally in May and June.

Olenii Ruchii National Park (100 kilometers west of Yekaterinburg) is the most popular nature park in Sverdlovsk Oblast and popular weekend getaway for Yekaterinburg residents. Visitors are attracted by the beautiful forests, the crystal clear Serga River and picturesque rocks caves. There are some easy hiking routes: the six-kilometer Lesser Ring and the 15-kilometer Greater Ring. Another route extends for 18 km and passes by the Mitkinsky Mine, which operated in the 18th-19th centuries. It's a kind of an open-air museum — you can still view mining an enrichment equipment here. There is also a genuine beaver dam nearby.

Among the other attractions at Olenii Ruchii are Druzhba (Friendship) Cave, with passages that extend for about 500 meters; Dyrovaty Kamen (Holed Stone), created over time by water of Serga River eroding rock; and Utoplennik (Drowned Man), where you can see “The Angel of Sole Hope”., created by the Swedish artist Lehna Edwall, who has placed seven angels figures in different parts of the world to “embrace the planet, protecting it from fear, despair, and disasters.”

Image Sources: Wikimedia Commons

Text Sources: Federal Agency for Tourism of the Russian Federation (official Russia tourism website russiatourism.ru ), Russian government websites, UNESCO, Wikipedia, Lonely Planet guides, New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, National Geographic, The New Yorker, Bloomberg, Reuters, Associated Press, AFP, Yomiuri Shimbun and various books and other publications.

Updated in September 2020

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Peter Kandinsky

surreal_realist

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Important Information

Applications are open to become an ISM student

Sample Courses

Faculty and Affiliates

Courses may include

Campus resources include

Course Listing and Curriculum

Our Partners

Classics and Philosophy Combined Ph.D. Program

Requirements of the Philosophy Track of the Classics and Philosophy Program

Greek and Latin Proficiency Tests in Greek and/or Latin

Modern Languages

First-year seminar in Philosophy

Qualifying Exams and Papers

Dissertation Prospectus

Philosophy Department work-in-progress seminar

Dissertation

Archaeological Anthropology

Resources and Common Connections:

Yale Quantum Institute

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