Return to: Colleges & Schools

Emily Mattingly, Ph.D., School Director
emattingly@uarts.edu
215-717-6512

Contents

• Introduction to the School
• Learning Outcomes

Introduction to the School

The School of Critical Studies exists at the intersection of creative practice and critical reflection. This school offers a broad and interdisciplinary curriculum designed to put artistic practices into dialogues with larger intellectual, cultural, and creative contexts. We aim to develop and deepen students’ critical thinking skills, communication and research toolkits, and engagements with the history and criticism of creativity and its larger contexts. Our courses connect students from all fields of study to stage important discussions about how to engage artistic practices with greater critical rigor and creative insight. Our school is a common ground in the University of the Arts curriculum, offering students a unique forum for artistic exchange through a variety of critical perspectives and approaches.

School Objectives

• Think, read, and write from an informed, critical perspective 
• Apply the nature and procedures of the scientific method to case studies to the empirical world
• Understand the historical development of an artistic medium and how this informs one’s own creative practice
• Gather information from appropriate sources, print and digital, and assess its reliability and relevance
• Recognize the moral and ethical implications of research for issues in contemporary culture and society
• Explore a topic in culture and society through several critical lenses and come to a critical judgment about the issue

Programs

• BFA in Creative Writing

• Art History minor
• Creative Writing minor
• Film + Media Studies minor
• Philosophy + Religion minor

Return to: Colleges & Schools