Course Requirements

Students should consult the department's Ph.D. requirements, stipulated here, together with those of the Graduate School, outlined in the Graduate Handbook .

An M.A. degree with a major in art history is usually required for admission to the Ph.D. program. If the student has a Master's degree in an area other than art history, or if there is a question concerning the applicant's ability to pursue a doctoral program in art history, additional courses may be required. A student must complete all courses, the doctoral examination, and an approved dissertation proposal within five years of entering the Ph.D. program in order to be admitted to candidacy. Upon admission to candidacy, the student is required to complete and defend the dissertation within four years. Provisions for continuous registration are to be made during this time (see the Graduate Catalogue).

A student may proceed from the B.A. directly to the Ph.D., without acquiring an M.A. degree. With the support of the student's advisor, the student must submit an application to the graduate faculty for approval.

Course Requirements for the Ph.D.

A total of thirty-three credit hours, after the MA degree, is required for the PhD program. This involves seven courses (21 credit hours), including Methods of Research (ARTH 692); the final twelve credit hours will be Dissertation Research (ARTH 899). The UM Methods of Research course (ARTH 692) is required of all incoming graduate students. This course must be taken at UM even if the student already has taken a Methods course elsewhere.  For distributional requirements for the PhD, if the student enters from another institution, and has not already satisfactorily completed the equivalent of UMD distributional requirements, see Distributional Requirements for the MA. For the direct PhD--in which the MA degree is bypassed--the student must complete a total of fifty-seven credit hours, including Methods of Research (ARTH 692) and fourteen other courses, in at least five of the eleven areas specified above in the description of the Master's program; the final twelve credit hours will be Dissertation Research (ARTH 899).

Graduate courses in other departments of the University, or courses equivalent to our 600/700 level art history courses in the Washington Area Consortium, Johns Hopkins University, and the Folger Institute may be taken with the approval of the advisor and the Director of Graduate Studies. No more than two courses for the Ph.D. program (four courses for the direct Ph.D. program) may be taken outside the Department of Art History and Archaeology.

Directed Studies courses (ARTH 798) provide students at the M.A. and Ph.D. levels with the opportunity to work closely with individual faculty members within the Department on projects not normally included in the graduate curriculum. With the support of the supervising faculty member, the student should submit a one-page proposal to the Director of Graduate Studies. The proposal should describe the subject and objective of the project. The Director of Graduate Studies will present the proposal to the Graduate Faculty for its approval at the Graduate Review held at the end of each semester. Directed Studies courses do not satisfy required distribution courses at the M.A. level and are not counted as 700-level seminars.

A minimum grade of "B" is required for all courses approved for graduate credit. Two grades below "B" result in dismissal from the program. An "Incomplete" grade will be given in exceptional circumstances.

The Graduate Committee

The student's Graduate Committee will advise on the student's program and evaluate his/her progress. The Committee will comprise three members of the Graduate Faculty, including the student's advisor, who will serve as chair. Of the two remaining members, one will examine the student in the major field, and one in the minor. Composition of the committee will be determined by the advisor and the student.

The Academic Program

1) The major will represent a well defined, fairly broad geographical and chronological area of study.

2) One or more minors will be elected. Minor area(s) will be smaller than the major field and not overlap the major.

Ph.D. students are required to submit a formal request, addressed to the Department's Curriculum Committee, naming the proposed major-minor combination and briefly explaining the rationale for this choice. Under a new policy, the choice of contiguous fields for the major and minor is permissible. In the event that the committee has questions, it may request further consultation with the student, or may refer the proposal to the judgment of the whole faculty.

A written record of the major and minor fields, approved by the student and members of the committee, will be kept in the student's file. If the fields are modified the record must be amended and approved by the committee. It should be noted that the subject of the dissertation will normally fall within the student's major field of concentration and that it will be concerned with one problem within the broader area.

The Doctoral Examination

The doctoral examination will be in two parts, both of which are graded pass/fail. The examination may be taken only during the fall or spring academic terms. If the examination is failed, the student may attempt it once more. An unsuccessful second attempt will require the student to withdraw from the Ph.D. program.

The student's advisor will direct the student to take the Ph.D. examination in one of the department's two formats.

FORMAT A

Part I. The oral examination

A two-hour oral examination on the student's major and minor areas of study will be conducted by the student's Graduate Committee. Slides, photographs, and original works of art are frequently used during the examination. The Graduate Committee seeks to evaluate the student's control over factual information, specific works of art, bibliography, general concepts, as well as his/her ability to handle "unknown" material within the range of the proposed areas of interest.

Part II. The written examination

This will normally take place during the week immediately following successfully passing Part I of the exam. The second part of the Ph.D. examination tests the student's ability to produce a compelling scholarly paper in a short time . The Graduate Committee may assign a topic or permit the student to choose from three or four topics. On an appointed day the student will pick up the topics from the Graduate Secretary in the Art History Office. Seven days later the student must submit copies of the completed paper to the Department. All members of the student's Graduate Committee will read the paper. The material will be presented in the form of a research paper, complete with footnotes and bibliography; good photocopied illustrations are acceptable. The paper should contain a formal presentation of a thesis and a rigorous conclusion and should give evidence of the student's methods and sources.


FORMAT B

Part I. The written examination.

The written examination will consist of three four-hour sessions, to be completed within a one-week period. At the start of each session, the student will be given a topic (some choice may be offered) on which to write for the entire session. Two sessions will treat the student's major field, and one will treat the minor. Topics may be focused on specific visual material, historiography, bibliography, or historical and theoretical problems in the field. During the examination sessions, the student may leave the examination room for short breaks but may not consult notes or any other sources. By the end of each four-hour session, the student will submit his/her essay to the Graduate Secretary, both as a printed document and as an electronic file. The student's Graduate Committee will meet in advance to agree upon the questions for the written examination. Afterwards, all members of the committee will read the student's responses, and the committee will then meet a second time to plan the oral examination, at least one day before it is to be administered.


Part II. The oral examination.

The Graduate Committee will administer a two-hour oral examination on the student's major and minor areas of study. Usually, this examination will take place within a week after the last of the written sessions, and it will include questions on the essays as well as on new topics. Questions may be broad or quite specific to particular works of art. In addition to being able to identify important works from the major and minor fields, the student may be asked to speak about works with which he/she is unfamiliar. The Committee will evaluate the student's skills in visual analysis as well as his/her knowledge of factual information, specific works of art, scholarly literature, and general concepts. Reproductions or original works of art may be used during the examination.

Doctoral Dissertation Proposal

After successfully completing the doctoral examination, the student will write a dissertation proposal. Students should be aware that the decision to supervise a dissertation rests with the individual faculty member, and that it is necessary to secure this consent before work on the dissertation proceeds. The proposal should usually include the following:

1) A statement of the problem that will be investigated or the hypothesis that will be argued; an explanation of the value the dissertation would have for the field of art history.

2) A statement of existing scholarship related to the thesis.

3) The primary sources consulted or to be consulted, their location, and their availability.

4) Secondary sources consulted or to be consulted, and their availability.

5) A work plan (an outline of the projected research, including travel) and the methodology to be used, followed by an example to demonstrate the plausibility of the method.

Within one year of successfully completing doctoral exams, the student will meet with his/her Graduate Committee to review and discuss the dissertation proposal, its scope and significance. (The membership of the Graduate Committee may be adjusted before this meeting, but it should comprise at least three members, at least two of whom will be full-time permanent Departmental faculty.) The timing of the interview, within this stated span, will be determined by agreement between graduate student and advisor. At the discretion of the advisor, and in consultation with the student, additional committee members (internal or external) may be invited to participate.

Upon acceptance of the dissertation proposal, the approved proposal will be signed by the committee and placed in the student's permanent file. At that time the student should apply to the Graduate School for admission to candidacy. The application requires the signature of the major advisor and the departmental Director of Graduate Studies.

Doctoral Dissertation

The dissertation is prepared under the direction of the student's advisor. After approval by the advisor, the student will prepare the paper according to Graduate School guidelines. The dissertation will then be submitted to the Dissertation Committee, which must include five faculty members, including a Dean's Representative (a faculty member from another program at the University). The Dissertation Committee must be approved by the Dean of the Graduate School .

The Dissertation Committee, which will have the student's advisor as chairperson, will be allowed a minimum of four weeks in which to read the thesis before the oral examination. In conformity with the Graduate School 's guidelines, this departmental policy (in relation to the time given to the Committee) supercedes all other policies.

The candidate will be given a final oral examination by the Committee on the dissertation and the areas it represents. The student then will have approximately two weeks in which to make the changes requested by the committee before the final copies are due to the Graduate School . One archival copy on paper (with the images gathered at the back) and one electronic copy (with the images excluded, for reasons of copyright) must be submitted. For electronic submission requirements, see http://dissertations.umi.com/umd . Please note: the student is responsible for meeting all deadlines of the Graduate School.