phd yale art

• Skip to Content
• Catalog Home
• Institution Home

Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Programs and Policies 2023–2024

• Yale University Publications /
• Graduate School of Arts and Sciences /
• Degree-Granting Departments and Programs /

History of Art

Current edition: graduate archive . click to change..

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. (Loria 654, 203.432.2724, [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, Cécile Fromont, Jennifer Raab

Assistant Professors Joanna Fiduccia, Subhashini Kaligotla, Morgan Ng, Quincy Ngan

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.

Course work 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 990 ) and one course in each of four 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 six fields, including three in English (question periods of twenty minutes each, covering thirty texts each, representing three distinct fields of literary history) and three 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 Art Gallery and Peabody Museum to Beinecke Library. Center activities will focus upon one particular theme each year and will include hosting one or more visiting American Art and Material Culture Fellows to teach a course each term and interact with Yale colleagues; 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   Cecile Fromont

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. M 1:30pm-3:20pm

HSAR 529a / AMST 630a / RLST 819a, 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? Permission of the instructor required; qualified undergraduates are welcome.   W 1:30pm-3:20pm

HSAR 536a, Scale   Joanna Fiduccia

Art history has conventionally maintained a curious “scale blindness”—a cultivated insensibility to the influence of scale on the operations of perception and the work of interpretation. We are often similarly blind when it comes to scaling technologies woven into art history’s basic practices, from the slide lecture to the textbook’s reproductions. This course brings the subject into focus by examining theories of scale alongside recent art historical writing. We ask: Is an artwork’s relation to scale different from other objects’? How have technologies of scaling, from photography to GIS mapping, confronted the materiality of artworks? How have theories of scale in other disciplines informed our descriptions of the scale of artworks? And how does the attempt to conduct art history at a “global scale” expose the cultural and ideological specificity of scale? Th 1:30pm-3:20pm

HSAR 542b, Global Materiality of Color   Quincy Ngan

This seminar explores a global phenomenon wherein color makes meaning beyond sheer coloration and complements the function and meaning of artworks, inseparable from their conceptual properties. The seminar has two fundamentally different but reciprocal inquiries. The first is to study how pigments and dyes entangle with the wider world, reconstructing the history of their production and circulation along with the worldview of minerals and dyes in a given civilization. This inquiry leads to a better understanding of the history of trade, economy, science, medicine, chemistry, technology, and culture. The second inquiry, which fundamentally concerns art historians, studies how the production and circulation of pigments and dyes, as well as views on the material, permeate the conceptual property of artworks, such as paintings and murals, and colored objects, such as textiles and sculptures. Together, we explore the multivalent significance of colors—cochineal, indigo, Maya blue, malachite, azurite, lapis lazuli, and gold—across cultures. For the final paper, students write about the materiality of color in their own field. Major texts include Pigments and Power in the Andes (2011), Colors Between Two Worlds (2011), The Materiality of Color (2012), Colour, Art, and Empire (2013), A Red Like No Other (2015), Color in Ancient and Medieval East Asia (2015), Color in the Age of Impressionism (2017), and Colour and Light in Ancient and Medieval Art (2018). W 1:30pm-3:20pm

HSAR 551b, Art. Race. Violence.   Cecile Fromont

This seminar investigates the many entanglements between art, race, and violence in the early modern Atlantic world and the long shadow these entanglements have cast on the contemporary era. Readings, class discussions, assignments, and invited speakers address topics such as racial construction in colonial Latin America; the visual culture of slavery; race and the advent of photography; the memorialization of slavery and colonialism; and race, piety, and aesthetics. M 9:25am-11:15am

HSAR 553a, Embodied Artisanal Knowledge   Edward Cooke

The development and transmission of knowledge during the early modern European world has lately been a dynamic subject of scholarly inquiry. Much of this work has focused upon the work of royal academies’ explorations of natural philosophy and the mechanical arts. This seminar seeks to move beyond that narrow geographic focus and descriptive taxonomies to consider embodied artisanal knowledge throughout the world in the period from 1500 to 1800. As Tim Ingold reminds us, embodied knowledge is a skilled, socially generated practice distinct from the innate talents of mechanical execution. It is a cognitive skill that prizes resourcefulness; efficiency of effort; and informed, intensive use of tools. This tacit knowledge, the intellect of the hand, is experienced and felt rather than written about and illustrated. Making things depends upon constant attention to the transmission of ideas from brain to hand and from tool to material, with feedback channeled back through the tool to the body and mind of the maker. This seminar  combines reading, object-driven inquiry, and hands-on exercises to explore the role of materials, techniques, and human agency in the making of objects. Students expand their own approaches to the study of artisans and objects from many periods and places. W 9:25am-11:15am

HSAR 584a / MDVL 955a, The Cult of Saints in Early Christianity and the Middle Ages   Vasileios Marinis and Felicity Harley

For all its reputed (and professed) disdain of the corporeal and earthly, Christianity lavished considerable attention and wealth on the material dimension of sainthood and the “holy” during its formative periods in late antiquity and the Middle Ages. Already in the second century Christian communities accorded special status to a select few “friends of God,” primarily martyrs put to death during Roman persecutions. Subsequently the public and private veneration of saints and their earthly remains proliferated, intensified, and became an intrinsic aspect of Christian spirituality and life in both East and West until the Reformation. To do so, it had to gradually develop a theology to accommodate everything from fingers of saints to controversial and miracle-working images. This course investigates the theology, origins, and development of the cult of saints in early Christianity and the Middle Ages with special attention to its material manifestations. The class combines the examination of thematic issues, such as pilgrimage and the use and function of reliquaries (both portable and architectural), with a focus on such specific cases as the evolution of the cult of the Virgin Mary. T 1:30pm-3:20pm

HSAR 646a, Readings in Art and Empire   Tim Barringer

This course encourages students to engage with recent thinking on questions of art and empire and to mobilize decolonial methodologies in a research project relating to a specific object in Yale’s collections. The first half of the term is spent discussing key texts, beginning with Ariella Aïsha Azoulay’s Potential History (2019), John Giblin et al “Dismantling the Master’s House” (2019), and “Decolonizing Art and Empire” by Charlene Villaseñor Black and Tim Barringer (2022). It looks at the possibilities for new studies of art and empire that undermine, rather than replicating imperial structures of power and knowledge. Issues under discussion include slavery and representation, indigeneity and art history, orientalism, theories of hybridity, the colonial uncanny, the representation of landscape and the body in the colony, and science and visual representation. Particular attention is paid to recent work on the British Empire as manifest in the collection of the Yale Center for British Art. The curriculum is shaped to accommodate the research interests of the seminar’s members (to include any and all empires across space and time); in the second half of the term students develop a research paper, generating a methodological approach for the analysis of a single object in Yale’s collections. W 1:30pm-3:20pm

HSAR 678b / ENGL 830b, Portraiture and Character from Hogarth to Woolf   Ruth Yeazell

Case studies in the visual and verbal representation of persons in Anglo-American painting and fiction, with particular attention to novels that themselves include portraits or address relations between the two media. Novelists tentatively include Henry Fielding, Jane Austen, Henry James, Edith Wharton, Oscar Wilde, and Virginia Woolf. Painters include William Hogarth, Joshua Reynolds, Thomas Lawrence, James McNeill Whistler, John Singer Sargent, and Vanessa Bell. Selected readings in recent theories of fictional character and in the history and theory of portraiture. Whenever possible, we draw on paintings in Yale’s collections. T 1:30pm-3:20pm

HSAR 716b / AMST 716b / ANTH 769b / ARCG 769b, Landscapes of Meaning: Museums and Their Objects   Anne Underhill

This seminar explores how museums convey various meanings about ethnographic, art, and archaeological objects through the processes of collecting, preparing exhibitions, and conducting research. Participants also discuss broader theoretical and methodological issues such as the roles of museums in society, relationships with source communities, management of cultural heritage, and various specializations valuable for careers in art, natural history, anthropology, history, and other museums. W 1:30pm-3:20pm

HSAR 746a, Research Seminar in the Art of the Americas   Allison Caplan

This graduate seminar provides a forum for participants to workshop issues surrounding research and publishing, particularly as they relate to art historical research on the Americas. Topics covered are shaped by participants’ specific interests but may include archival and museum-based research, early modern paleography, and approaches to publishing scholarly articles and books. T 9:25am-11:15am

HSAR 783a / EMST 748a, Circa 1600   Kishwar Rizvi

This seminar focuses on the art , architecture, and urbanism of early modern empires across West, Central and South Asia, namely, the Ottoman, Safavid, Mughal, and Shibanid, and their political and economic ties across the world. The year 1600 is an important temporal hinge, at the height of socio-political migrations and before the realization of full-scale European colonial ambitions. It is also the period of absolutism and millenarian activity, of slavery and the novel, and the institution of new religious and ethnic allegiances. In this manner art and architectural history served at the nexus of commensurability and competition, where artists, merchants, and missionaries crossed geographic and disciplinary borders in order to imagine a new world and their place within it. T 1:30pm-3:20pm

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   Paul Sabin and Sunil Amrith

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 T 5:30pm-7:20pm

Print Options

Send Page to Printer

Print this page.

Download Page (PDF)

The PDF will include all information unique to this page.

Download 2022-2023 Graduate PDF

This website exists as an ongoing collaborative experiment in digital publishing and information sharing. Because this website functions as a wiki, all members of the School of Art community—graduate students, faculty, staff, and alums—have the ability to add new content and pages, and to edit most of the site’s existing content.

Content is the property of its various authors. When you contribute to this site, you agree to abide by Yale University academic and network use policy, and to act as a responsible member of our community.

Page last changed by: Julian Bittiner

Graphic Design

Graphic design (mfa).

Program overview The graphic design program focuses on the development of a cohesive, investigative body of work, also known as the student’s thesis. At Yale, the graphic design thesis is conceived as a loose framework within which each student’s visual method is deployed across many diverse projects during the two-year course of study. While every thesis project is unique, there are several common features: a focus on methodology, the application of a visual method to studio work, and the organization of the work in a thoughtfully argued written document and “Thesis Book.”

The individual collection of graphic design work by each student is supported on several levels simultaneously: studio work led by faculty meeting weekly; small six-person thesis groups meeting biweekly; individual sessions with writing and editing tutors; and lectures, presentations, and workshops.

Facilities The School of Art provides digital lab facilities however all graphic design students are expected to have their own personal computer. Each student has a designated work space in the design studio loft and has access to equipment including bookbinding materials, wide format printers, a RISO duplicator, Vandercook press, and work spaces in the School of Art buildings. More resources supporting interdisciplinary projects including motion capture and VR is available at the nearby Center for Collaborative Arts and Media. In addition, students draw on the extraordinary resources of Yale University courses, conferences, films, lectures, and museums, and especially the extensive research and rare book collections of Sterling, Haas, and Beinecke libraries.

Two-year and preliminary-year programs Each year, up to ten students are admitted into the two-year graphic design program, and up to eight students are admitted into the preliminary-year program. Two-year program students typically have a BFA in Graphic Design and are expected to have substantial and distinguished professional experience. Students applying to the preliminary-year program typically have relevant experience in a field of study outside design and demonstrate evidence of strong visual acuity. After successful completion of the preliminary year, these students automatically continue on in the two-year M.F.A. program.

Last edited by: Taryn Wolf

Edit access: Everybody

Credit Requirements

Last edited by: Julian Bittiner

Typical Plan of Study

Preliminary-Year The preliminary year has a required studio course sequence and additional electives are not recommended.

Fall Art 710a, Preliminary Studio: 6 credits Art 264a2, Typography: 3 credits Art 370a, Designing with Time, Motion and Sound: 3 credits Art 468a, Advanced Graphic Design: Series and Systems: 3 credits

Total minimum credits for fall term: 15

Spring Art 711b, Preliminary Studio: 6 credits Art 265b, Expression, Structure, and Sequence: Typography: 3 credits Art 369b, Interactive Design and the Internet: 3 credits Art 469b, Advanced Graphic Design: History, Editing, and Interpretation: 3 credits

Total minimum credits for spring term: 15

First year There are 3 required courses in the first year of the two-year program, totaling 15 credits. The remaining 15 credit requirements for the year must be fulfilled through a combination of studio and/or academic electives.

Fall Required courses: Art 720a, 1st-year Graduate Studio: 6 credits Art 949a, Critical Practice: 3 credits

6 credits from design elective sequence:

Design electives offered: Art 743a, Letterform Design: 3 credits Art 744a, Moving Image Methods: 3 credits Art 750a, Programming as Writing: 3 credits

Spring Required courses: Art 720b, 1st-year Graduate Studio: 6 credits

3 academic credits and 6 credits from design elective sequence:

Design electives offered: Art 742b, Networks & Transactions: 3 credits Art 743b, Letterform Design: 3 credits Art 745b, Total Typography: 3 credits

Second year minimum credits There are 4 required courses in the second year of the two-year program, totaling 18 credits. The remaining 12 credit requirements for the year must be fulfilled through a combination of studio and/or academic electives.

Fall Required courses: Art 720a, 2nd-year Graduate Studio: 6 credits Art 739a, Degree presentation: 3 credits

6 credits of academic and/or from design elective sequence:

Design electives offered: Art 740a, Intermediality: Topography: 3 credits Art 752a, Mobile Computing: 3 credits

Spring Required courses: Art 730b, 2nd-year Graduate Studio: 6 credits Art 739b, Degree presentation: 3 credits

Design electives offered: Art 752b, Print to Screen: 1.5 credits Art 762b, Exhibition Design: 3 credits

Yale GD MFA Alumni 1998–2023

It looks like you're trying to zoom in on this page. For best results: use the most recent version of your browser, disable your browser's 'zoom text only' setting, and use your browser's default font size settings.

To zoom in, use [Ctrl] + [+] in Windows, and [Cmd] + [+] on a Mac. To zoom out, use the keyboard shortcut [Ctrl] + [-] in Windows and [Cmd] + [-] on a Mac.

Yale University

Additional Navigation

Graduate & professional study.

Yale offers advanced degrees through its Graduate School of Arts & Sciences and 13 professional schools. Browse the organizations below for information on programs of study, academic requirements, and faculty research.

Graduate School of Arts & Sciences

Yale’s Graduate School of Arts & Sciences offers programs leading to M.A., M.S., M.Phil., and Ph.D. degrees in 73 departments and programs.

School of Architecture

The Yale School of Architecture’s mandate is for each student to understand architecture as a creative, productive, innovative, and responsible practice.

School of Art

The Yale School of Art has a long and distinguished history of training artists of the highest caliber.

Divinity School

Yale Divinity School educates the scholars, ministers, and spiritual leaders of the future.

David Geffen School of Drama

The David Geffen School of Drama graduates have raised the standards of professional practice around the world in every theatrical discipline, creating bold art that engages the mind and delights the senses.

School of Engineering & Applied Science

The Yale School of Engineering & Applied Science is at the cutting edge of research to develop technologies that address global societal problems.

School of the Environment

The School of the Environment is dedicated to sustaining and restoring the long-term health of the biosphere and the well-being of its people.

Jackson School of Global Affairs

The Jackson School of Global Affairs trains and equips a new generation of leaders to devise thoughtful, evidence-based solutions for challenging global problems.

Yale Law School hones the world’s finest legal minds in an environment that features world-renowned faculty, small classes, and countless opportunities for clinical training and public service.

School of Management

School of Management students, faculty, and alumni are committed to understanding the complex forces transforming global markets and building organizations that contribute lasting value to society.

School of Medicine

Yale School of Medicine graduates go on to become leaders in academic medicine and health care, and innovators in clinical practice, biotechnology, and public policy.

School of Music

The Yale School of Music is an international leader in educating the creative musicians and cultural leaders of tomorrow.

School of Nursing

The Yale School of Nursing community is deeply committed to the idea that access to high quality patient‐centered health care is a social right, not a privilege.

School of Public Health

The School of Public Health supports research and innovative programs that protect and improve the health of people around the globe.

Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS)

The Faculty of Arts and Sciences is composed of the departments and academic programs that provide instruction in Yale College and the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.

Centers & Institutes

A number of our centers and institutes offer additional opportunities for graduate and professional study.

Department of the History of Art

You are here, 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.

The Department has played a significant role in establishing art history as a discipline that explores all forms of art, inclluding visual and material culture, across the globe. Yale’s faculty members over decades have made field-changing contributions to the study the arts of the Americas (notably Pre-Columbian art and the full range of North American art and architecture from colonial to contemporary), African art and arts of the African Diaspora, Asian and Islamic Arts, and European art from ancient times to today. These fields, and more, are central to our current research and teaching.  We are particularly thrilled to welcome Nana Adusei-Poku and Allison Caplan, who joined our faculty in July 2023.

Among the greatest privileges of studying History of Art at Yale is the presence of some of the world’s greatest museum and library collections. The  Yale University Art Gallery , the oldest university art museum on this continent, is notable for collections in African, American, Asian and European arts from prehistoric to contemporary. The  Yale Center for British Art  is the most important collection of paintings, prints and drawings, and rare books relating to the art of Britain and the former British Empire outside of Britain. Much of the Department’s teaching is done in the galleries and in the  West Campus Collection  Studies Center, which houses off-site museum collections and the  Institute for the Preservation of Cultural Heritage . Students and faculty frequently collaborate with curators on exhibitions, programs and collection-based research. Details of the Graduate Student Assistant program, an important feature of the History of Art PhD, can be found on the  Graduate Study   page.

Milette Gaifman

• 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 2023

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, 2023

Application deadline for:

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

December 15, 2023

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

January 2, 2024

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. 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 2023-March 2024

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

February-March 2024

Applicants are notified as admissions decisions become available.

April 15, 2024

The reply deadline for most offers of admission for fall 2024.

• History, Facts & Figures
• YSM Dean & Deputy Deans
• YSM Administration
• Department Chairs
• YSM Executive Group
• YSM Board of Permanent Officers
• FAC Documents
• Current FAC Members
• Appointments & Promotions Committees
• Ad Hoc Committees and Working Groups
• Chair Searches
• Leadership Searches
• Organization Charts
• Faculty Demographic Data
• Professionalism Reporting Data
• 2022 Diversity Engagement Survey
• State of the School Archive
• Faculty Climate Survey: YSM Results
• Strategic Planning
• Mission Statement & Process
• Beyond Sterling Hall
• COVID-19 Series Workshops
• Previous Workshops
• Departments & Centers
• Find People
• Biomedical Data Science
• Health Equity
• Inflammation
• Neuroscience
• Global Health
• Diabetes and Metabolism
• Policies & Procedures
• Media Relations
• A to Z YSM Lab Websites
• A-Z Faculty List
• A-Z Staff List
• A to Z Abbreviations
• Dept. Diversity Vice Chairs & Champions
• Dean’s Advisory Council on Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer and Intersex Affairs Website
• Minority Organization for Retention and Expansion Website
• Office for Women in Medicine and Science
• Committee on the Status of Women in Medicine Website
• Director of Scientist Diversity and Inclusion
• Diversity Supplements
• Frequently Asked Questions
• Recruitment
• By Department & Program
• News & Events
• Executive Committee
• Aperture: Women in Medicine
• Self-Reflection
• Portraits of Strength
• Mindful: Mental Health Through Art
• Event Photo Galleries
• Additional Support
• MD-PhD Program
• PA Online Program
• Joint MD Programs
• How to Apply
• Advanced Health Sciences Research
• Clinical Informatics & Data Science
• Clinical Investigation
• Medical Education
• Visiting Student Programs
• Special Programs & Student Opportunities
• Residency & Fellowship Programs
• Center for Med Ed
• Organizational Chart
• Academic/Professional Development
• First Fridays
• Fund for Physician-Scientist Mentorship
• Grant Library
• Grant Writing Course
• Mock Study Section
• Research Paper Writing
• Funding Opportunities
• Join Our Voluntary Faculty
• Research by Keyword
• Research by Department
• Research by Global Location
• Translational Research
• Research Cores & Services
• Program for the Promotion of Interdisciplinary Team Science (POINTS)
• CEnR Steering Committee
• Experiential Learning Subcommittee
• Goals & Objectives
• Embryonic Stem Cell Research Oversight
• COVID-19 Vaccinations in CT
• COVID-19 in Connecticut Schools
• Connecticut Towns COVID-19 Impact Dashboard
• Connecticut Town 14-Day Cases Time Lapse
• CT Correctional Facilities with COVID Cases Dashboard
• Connecticut COVID Presence Map
• CT Nursing Homes with COVID-19 Cases
• U.S. COVID Presence Map
• COVID-19 Case Density by US County
• Global Cases Dashboard
• Time-Lapse of Global Spread
• US Racial and Ethnic Disparities in COVID-19 Mortality
• Childcare Survey and Data Display
• Risk of Complications Conditional on COVID-19 Infection
• Travel Time to COVID Testing Sites in Connecticut
• Travel Time to COVID Testing Sites in the US
• Project Team
• Issues List
• Print Magazine PDFs
• Print Newsletter PDFs
• YSM Events Newsletter
• Social Media
• Patient Care

INFORMATION FOR

• Residents & Fellows
• Researchers

Yale Psychiatry Announces 2024 Match Class

Yale psychiatry 2024 match class.

The Yale Department of Psychiatry on March 15 announced its 2024 Match Class for the Yale Psychiatry Residency Program.

The 20 new residents join the department from 15 medical schools. They hail from hometowns within 11 different states and five countries. Collectively they speak 12 languages. Ten have attained additional degrees, including master’s degrees of sciences, public health, business administration, and doctoral degrees.

Beyond these accomplishments, the incoming residents bring a broad range of hobbies, passions, and life experiences which include athletic pursuits (varsity swimming, circus fitness, competitive figure skating, scuba diving); innovative work within podcast production; entrepreneurship and business development; teaching and mentorship; enthusiasm for anime, crochet, building Lego, latte art, and cooking; and artistic talents within art, music, and dance including playing Setar, playing piano, and dancing ballet folklorico.

The new residents are:

Megan Aguilera, MD , University of Colorado School of Medicine

Shante Barnes, MD , Virginia Commonwealth University School of Medicine

Sanam Bhatia, MD , Weill Cornell Medicine

Kapil Chauhan, MD , Howard University College of Medicine

Rayne Dhana, MD, MBA , Morehouse School of Medicine

Samuel Dienel, MD, PhD , University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, (Neuroscience Research Training Program)

Eleni Friligkou, MD, MSc , Medical School Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (Neuroscience Research Training Program)

Clara Guo, MD, MBA , Yale School of Medicine

Rachel Hennein, MD, PhD , Yale School of Medicine (Solnit Integrated Training Program

Noa Katz Shroitman, MD , Sackler School of Medicine

Harun Khan, MBBS, MPH , Imperial College School of Medicine

Victoria Kozar, MD , University of Connecticut School of Medicine

Ariyaneh Nikbin, MD , Albert Einstein College of Medicine

Robert Palmer, MD , Yale School of Medicine (PGY-2)

Yasmin Rawlins, MD , Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons (PGY-2)

Alysha Rose, MD , Yale School of Medicine Yasna Rostam Abadi, MD, MPH , Tehran School of Medicine Sciences Joshua Tanner, MD , University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Medicine Hui Yang, MD, PhD , Albert Einstein College of Medicine (Neuroscience Research Training Program)

Eric Zheng, MD, PhD , Weill Cornell Medicine (Neuroscience Research Training Program)

Search form

Building on yale’s strength: adding new depth and breadth to the humanities.

Sunil Amrith, Yale’s Renu and Anand Dhawan Professor of History. (Photo by Dan Renzetti)

This story is the second in a series about Yale’s evolution under President Peter Salovey as he prepares to return to the faculty later this year.

A few years ago, Sunil Amrith was a rising star at Harvard. A professor of history and South Asian studies, he’d already published two highly acclaimed books before he was 40, had been awarded a MacArthur “Genius” Grant, and was co-director of the university’s Joint Center for History and Economics.

Yet when, in 2020, he was offered a position at Yale, Amrith didn’t hesitate. 

“ I was excited by the opportunity to move to a university where the humanities are thriving in a way that is almost unique in the United States, and perhaps the world,” said Amrith, now Yale’s Renu and Anand Dhawan Professor of History. The strong support that President Peter Salovey and the leadership of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) have shown, he added, “is all too rare these days.”

Indeed, while academic institutions across the country are slashing funding for the humanities and even eliminating whole departments, Yale has doubled down on its investment in these disciplines. Faculty like Amrith find at Yale an environment supportive to authoring groundbreaking, award-winning scholarship.

“ Yale has long been recognized for its strength in the humanities,” said Salovey. “By continuing to build on that strength, we affirm the importance of these studies in facing global challenges — to understand the world and human experience in all its complexity, to bring together perspectives from across disciplines, and to explore ways to improve the future by comprehending the past.”

As part of that commitment, the university has dramatically expanded ladder faculty across the arts and humanities since Salovey began his tenure, in 2013, building on existing strengths and stretching into new areas of contemporary relevance.

“ In the past decade, the FAS has hired and invested in faculty whose work spans the humanities: classicists and critical theorists; scholars of the ancient world and analysts of contemporary popular culture; medievalists who are also experts in indigenous studies; specialists in enlightenment poetry, in digital data, and in art and performance,” said FAS Dean Tamar Gendler, the Vincent J. Scully Professor of Philosophy, and a professor of psychology and cognitive science.

“ In short, we’ve made a conscious effort to build a culture where foundational humanities scholarship  and  research in emerging fields can thrive together and inform each other.”

The history department, as one example, has hired nearly 30 new faculty members (including Amrith) over the past decade, and continues to maintain its position as the largest undergraduate major in the humanities. Its areas of study now cover more of the globe in more depth than ever before, said Alan Mikhail, the Chace Family Professor of History and chair of the department.

“ We’ve certainly deepened our work in African and South Asian history, as well as environmental and legal history,” Mikhail said.

The expansion has also presented new opportunities for collaboration, as many of the new hires play prominent roles outside of the department. Amrith, for example, whose main field of research is environmental history, has a secondary appointment as a professor at Yale School of the Environment and is the current chair of the Council on South Asian Studies at the MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies. 

“ Even as Yale has been making a strong push toward STEM disciplines [science, technology, engineering, and mathematics], President Salovey has understood that we can’t lose sight of what has made Yale great over the centuries and what makes it great in the present,” Mikhail said.

New spaces and resources

Yale’s commitment to the humanities extends beyond the expansion of faculty — perhaps most visibly in the newly renovated and expanded Humanities Quadrangle at 320 York Street. Formerly the Hall of Graduate Studies, the Gothic structure houses 15 previously scattered departments, inviting new connections and scholarship across disciplines.

“ Yale renovated an iconic building at the heart of its campus to support the future of humanities scholarship,” said Kathryn Lofton, the Lex Hixon Professor of Religious Studies and American Studies and FAS Dean of Humanities. “It was a monumental effort with a powerful symbolic effect. The study of language, literature, history, art, philosophy, and religion continue to evolve and flourish at this university.”

Other major projects, including some that are in the planning stages and others that are already underway, reflect a commitment to the humanities through teaching and public outreach, practice, and production.

A NEW HOME FOR THE HUMANITIES

The Yale Center for British Art is undergoing a comprehensive renovation, now in its final phase. Currently closed while its roof and domed skylights are being replaced, the museum will reopen in 2025. The Yale School of Music gained an important addition in 2017: the Adams Center for Musical Arts, which features a state-of-the-art orchestra rehearsal room. Renovations in Sterling Memorial Library introduced the Franke Family Digital Humanities Lab, where scholars can apply advanced computing to humanities-related data, while the wood-paneled Linonia and Brothers Reading Room, a much-loved place to read and study, will reopen this semester after upgrades to its mechanical systems.

Most recently, the university committed to developing a state-of-the-art theatrical arts building that will bring faculty, staff, students, and guest artists under one roof. The Dramatic Arts Building will be the home of the David Geffen School of Drama and the Yale Repertory Theatre, and the undergraduate Program in Theater, Dance, and Performance Studies. It will also provide dedicated space for the Yale Dramatic Association, the university’s oldest and largest undergraduate theater group.

This commitment follows a major gift from entertainment executive and philanthropist David Geffen that three years ago made Yale’s drama school the first institution of its kind to eliminate tuition.

“ That the David Geffen School of Drama will be tuition-free in perpetuity is the direct result of President Salovey’s unique ability to represent Yale in all of its dimensions and of his prodigious energy as Yale’s ambassador to all the principalities of philanthropy,” said James Bundy, Elizabeth Parker Ware Dean of the school and artistic director of Yale Repertory Theater. “His success certainly stems from his deep appreciation for the joy, empathy, and nuanced understanding that theater artists can inspire in audiences.”

Then there are the transformative changes that go beyond the bounds of physical spaces, and the campus itself. Last summer, for instance, Yale introduced a groundbreaking digital platform that has made the university’s unrivaled collections of artistic, cultural, and scientific objects accessible to researchers worldwide. The custom search tool known as LUX-Yale Collections Discovery , made possible through the support of the Mellon Foundation, enables anyone, anywhere to explore the more than 17 million items contained in the university’s museums, libraries, and archives.

Faculty in the humanities are also contributing to work being done across campus to grapple with the rapidly changing world of artificial intelligence (AI): examining AI’s ethical and social dimensions and exploring opportunities that AI tools present to revolutionize conservation and the arts and to improve teaching. 

To capitalize on the potential of these innovations — and to bridge the work happening across disciplines — the university recently created the Yale Task Force on Artificial Intelligence, which includes Laurie Paul, the Millstone Family Professor of Philosophy in FAS and professor of cognitive science, among its members. The newly established Digital Ethics Center, founded by philosopher Luciano Floridi , professor in the practice in the Cognitive Science Program, seeks to identify and address potential ethical issues with AI, both at the university and in the broader public sphere.

LUX, BY THE NUMBERS

The university has also examined new ways to educate the next generation of scholars. A working group convened to study humanities doctoral education issued a report in 2021 that outlines a series of recommendations that are guiding efforts for “pushing the frontiers of knowledge and fostering intellectual and pedagogical innovation.” Another FAS humanities working group reflected on how Yale can set the highest standards in its support for instructional faculty .

Expanding expertise

The field-changing expansion in faculty expertise extends to many of Yale’s professional schools, where additional humanities research takes place. For example, after more than 25 years at Princeton University, politics professor Keith Whittington recently joined Yale Law School as the David Boies Professor of Law and will launch a new center for the study of free speech and academic freedom.

For many departments in the Division of Humanities in FAS, the support for vigorous and strategic hiring has been transformative. The philosophy department, for example, has been able to target hires that further develop its depth in the history of philosophy, and expand its expertise to areas that impact contemporary life, such as the metaphysics of gender and algorithmic fairness, said chair Paul Franks, the Robert F. and Patricia Weis Professor of Philosophy and Judaic Studies and professor of religious studies.

Likewise, the department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, which covers ancient and pre-modern studies and modern languages, is now one of the strongest in the country because of the university’s support for hiring, said Shawkat M. Toorawa, a professor of Arabic and comparative literature who himself was hired in 2016. The department has lately added faculty in Egyptology (including Nadine Moeller, the current department chair), classical Arabic, and Assyriology.

“ We’ve had unfailing support and respect,” especially heartening given that the entire department is pre-modern in its focus, said Toorawa, who was chair from 2016 to 2023.

“ Often elsewhere when there is support it’s only for the modern,” he said. “But not at Yale. It’s an affirmation of the importance of the humanities, the premodern, and what we do and its importance for students.”

The department of African American Studies has seen rapid growth, making 12 new hires over the past decade, including senior scholars “at the top of their game” and junior faculty who promise to be leaders in African American and Caribbean literary studies, history of science and medicine, documentary film production, theater and performance studies, and Black diaspora visual art, said Jacqueline Goldsby, the Thomas E. Donnelly Professor of African American Studies and English, who chaired the department from 2014 to 2022.

The university has also emerged as a leading site for the study of the carceral state, a term for the criminal justice system’s institutions of confinement and the policing and ideological practices that help fill those institutions.  The university’s strength in this area — “one of the most pressing issues in public life” in Goldsby’s view — is signaled by its recruitment of two leaders in the field: Phillip Atiba Solomon, the Carl I. Hovland Professor of African American Studies and professor of psychology, and Elizabeth Hinton, professor of history, African American Studies, and law.

Overall, Goldsby finds the growth in faculty and areas of research across the humanities over the past decade nothing short of thrilling. Now, she said, it’s time to think about how to best foster collaboration across these robust units by making strategic use of their shared space in the Humanities Quadrangle. 

“ That’s an exciting prospect we can imagine and enact at Yale,” she said. “We’re at a new juncture of innovation in humanist research, and Yale’s poised to continue leading the way.”

• Opening doors and making room: ‘Yale was a possibility for me’
• Yale to move forward with new dramatic arts building
• Humanities Quadrangle: A cherished Yale icon reimagined

Arts & Humanities

Campus & Community

The economic consequences of climate change: A Q&A with William Nordhaus

Five things to know about colon cancer prevention and screening

Frahm named Musser Professor of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations

Winged reptile family nests in renewed Peabody Museum’s main lobby

• Show More Articles

• Share full article

Advertisement

Supported by

Charles M. Blow

The Potency of Trump’s ‘Lost Cause’ Mythmaking

By Charles M. Blow

Opinion Columnist

At an Ohio rally this month, Donald Trump saluted the insurrectionists who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, calling them “unbelievable patriots” and referring to those who’ve been locked up for their involvement on that terrible day as “hostages.”

This was a continuation of Trump’s “Lost Cause” mythmaking that began during his successful presidential campaign in 2016 and was ramped up in service of his efforts to remain in power despite his 2020 loss and the deadly riot that those efforts stoked.

More than 1,200 people have been charged related to Jan. 6. And though it shouldn’t have to be said, let’s be clear: Those who’ve been tried, convicted and imprisoned for storming the Capitol aren’t hostages, they’re criminals.

But Lost Cause narratives aren’t about truth. They’re about negating the truth.

Which is what happened when the Lost Cause mythology was constructed after the Civil War. The cause of the war was framed as “Northern aggression” rather than slavery. A lore about happy slaves and benevolent enslavers proliferated. The narrative valorized those who seceded from and fought against the United States.

And it has survived to some degree for over 150 years, tucked into the cracks of our body politic. It still surfaces in ways that may seem remote from the Confederate Lost Cause myth, but that definitely promote it.

It manifested itself last year when Florida changed its African American history standards to say that the enslaved “ in some instances ” benefited from their enslavement, and in Nikki Haley’s hesitance on the campaign trail to state the obvious, that slavery was the cause of the Civil War.

It manifested itself in the infamous torchlight march in Charlottesville and in the bitter resistance to removing Confederate monuments.

Trump has his own version of the Lost Cause, one that’s not completely untethered from the old one, but one that’s miniaturized, personal and petty.

The Confederate Lost Cause narrative came after enormous loss: Hundreds of thousands of soldiers had died, the South was decimated and its economy was hobbled. Trump’s Lost Cause, on the other hand, is about the grievances he promotes, his inability to accept losing to Joe Biden and his utter disregard for democratic norms.

Trump’s version grows out of a more recent vintage of the Lost Cause narrative, one that has been around at least since George Wallace’s first presidential campaign in the 1960s. One in which a sense of displacement and dispossession is driven by a lost cultural advantage.

David Goldfield, a historian at the University of North Carolina Charlotte and the author of “Still Fighting the Civil War: The American South and Southern History,” told me that many of Trump’s supporters feel that they’ve lost something similar to what white Southerners felt they had lost after the Civil War: “They were no longer relevant. They were no longer listened to. And on top of that, there were lots of other voices that were in play in public that were not there before.”

The Pulitzer Prize-winning Yale historian David Blight, who has written on several occasions about Trump’s Lost Cause, told me that Trump’s iteration has all the necessary elements: a story of loss, culprits, ready-made villains and “an enormous narrative of grievance.”

As Blight explained, Trump “feeds on this imagined tale of what could have been, should have been, might have been and once again can be retrieved; the glory can be retrieved.”

And Trump invokes his Lost Cause in combination with another false telling, one of unprecedented happiness and unity — in which all the glory belongs to him. As he told a crowd at Mar-a-Lago on Super Tuesday, “African American, Asian American, Hispanic American, women, men, people with diplomas from the best schools in the world and people that didn’t graduate from high school, every single group was doing better than ever before.” He continued, “Our country was coming together.”

What he ignores is that his presidency began with the Women’s March, the day after his inauguration, and ended not long after the 2020 summer of protests, driven by outrage over the murder of George Floyd. Trump didn’t bring the country together; he tore it further apart.

Unlike previous Lost Cause appeals, Trump’s has the advantage of a modern communications environment: 24-hour cable news, an internet replete with partisan news sites and social media — an octopean virtual world that reaches deep into the darkest places of our politics.

And Trump’s appeal is getting a do-over, a chance not to simply recast history — to win the narrative — but to win the actual contest and convert an electoral loss into an electoral victory.

In this election, disciples of the MAGA movement not only have an opportunity to enshrine Trump’s fallacies. MAGA also might rise again.

The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips . And here’s our email: [email protected] .

Follow the New York Times Opinion section on Facebook , Instagram , TikTok , WhatsApp , X and Threads .

Charles M. Blow is an Opinion columnist for The New York Times, writing about national politics, public opinion and social justice, with a focus on racial equality and L.G.B.T.Q. rights. @ CharlesMBlow • Facebook

• Articles   >

The Moscow Metro Museum of Art: 10 Must-See Stations

There are few times one can claim having been on the subway all afternoon and loving it, but the Moscow Metro provides just that opportunity.  While many cities boast famous public transport systems—New York’s subway, London’s underground, San Salvador’s chicken buses—few warrant hours of exploration.  Moscow is different: Take one ride on the Metro, and you’ll find out that this network of railways can be so much more than point A to B drudgery.

The Metro began operating in 1935 with just thirteen stations, covering less than seven miles, but it has since grown into the world’s third busiest transit system ( Tokyo is first ), spanning about 200 miles and offering over 180 stops along the way.  The construction of the Metro began under Joseph Stalin’s command, and being one of the USSR’s most ambitious building projects, the iron-fisted leader instructed designers to create a place full of svet (radiance) and svetloe budushchee (a radiant future), a palace for the people and a tribute to the Mother nation.

Consequently, the Metro is among the most memorable attractions in Moscow.  The stations provide a unique collection of public art, comparable to anything the city’s galleries have to offer and providing a sense of the Soviet era, which is absent from the State National History Museum.  Even better, touring the Metro delivers palpable, experiential moments, which many of us don’t get standing in front of painting or a case of coins.

Though tours are available , discovering the Moscow Metro on your own provides a much more comprehensive, truer experience, something much less sterile than following a guide.  What better place is there to see the “real” Moscow than on mass transit: A few hours will expose you to characters and caricatures you’ll be hard-pressed to find dining near the Bolshoi Theater.  You become part of the attraction, hear it in the screech of the train, feel it as hurried commuters brush by: The Metro sucks you beneath the city and churns you into the mix.

With the recommendations of our born-and-bred Muscovite students, my wife Emma and I have just taken a self-guided tour of what some locals consider the top ten stations of the Moscow Metro. What most satisfied me about our Metro tour was the sense of adventure .  I loved following our route on the maps of the wagon walls as we circled the city, plotting out the course to the subsequent stops; having the weird sensation of being underground for nearly four hours; and discovering the next cavern of treasures, playing Indiana Jones for the afternoon, piecing together fragments of Russia’s mysterious history.  It’s the ultimate interactive museum.

Top Ten Stations (In order of appearance)

Kievskaya station.

Kievskaya Station went public in March of 1937, the rails between it and Park Kultury Station being the first to cross the Moscow River.  Kievskaya is full of mosaics depicting aristocratic scenes of Russian life, with great cameo appearances by Lenin, Trotsky, and Stalin.  Each work has a Cyrillic title/explanation etched in the marble beneath it; however, if your Russian is rusty, you can just appreciate seeing familiar revolutionary dates like 1905 ( the Russian Revolution ) and 1917 ( the October Revolution ).

Mayakovskaya Station

Mayakovskaya Station ranks in my top three most notable Metro stations. Mayakovskaya just feels right, done Art Deco but no sense of gaudiness or pretention.  The arches are adorned with rounded chrome piping and create feeling of being in a jukebox, but the roof’s expansive mosaics of the sky are the real showstopper.  Subjects cleverly range from looking up at a high jumper, workers atop a building, spires of Orthodox cathedrals, to nimble aircraft humming by, a fleet of prop planes spelling out CCCP in the bluest of skies.

Novoslobodskaya Station

Novoslobodskaya is the Metro’s unique stained glass station.  Each column has its own distinctive panels of colorful glass, most of them with a floral theme, some of them capturing the odd sailor, musician, artist, gardener, or stenographer in action.  The glass is framed in Art Deco metalwork, and there is the lovely aspect of discovering panels in the less frequented haunches of the hall (on the trackside, between the incoming staircases).  Novosblod is, I’ve been told, the favorite amongst out-of-town visitors.

Komsomolskaya Station

Komsomolskaya Station is one of palatial grandeur.  It seems both magnificent and obligatory, like the presidential palace of a colonial city.  The yellow ceiling has leafy, white concrete garland and a series of golden military mosaics accenting the tile mosaics of glorified Russian life.  Switching lines here, the hallway has an Alice-in-Wonderland feel, impossibly long with decorative tile walls, culminating in a very old station left in a remarkable state of disrepair, offering a really tangible glimpse behind the palace walls.

Dostoevskaya Station

Dostoevskaya is a tribute to the late, great hero of Russian literature .  The station at first glance seems bare and unimpressive, a stark marble platform without a whiff of reassembled chips of tile.  However, two columns have eerie stone inlay collages of scenes from Dostoevsky’s work, including The Idiot , The Brothers Karamazov , and Crime and Punishment.   Then, standing at the center of the platform, the marble creates a kaleidoscope of reflections.  At the entrance, there is a large, inlay portrait of the author.

Chkalovskaya Station

Chkalovskaya does space Art Deco style (yet again).  Chrome borders all.  Passageways with curvy overhangs create the illusion of walking through the belly of a chic, new-age spacecraft.  There are two (kos)mosaics, one at each end, with planetary subjects.  Transferring here brings you above ground, where some rather elaborate metalwork is on display.  By name similarity only, I’d expected Komsolskaya Station to deliver some kosmonaut décor; instead, it was Chkalovskaya that took us up to the space station.

Elektrozavodskaya Station

Elektrozavodskaya is full of marble reliefs of workers, men and women, laboring through the different stages of industry.  The superhuman figures are round with muscles, Hollywood fit, and seemingly undeterred by each Herculean task they respectively perform.  The station is chocked with brass, from hammer and sickle light fixtures to beautiful, angular framework up the innards of the columns.  The station’s art pieces are less clever or extravagant than others, but identifying the different stages of industry is entertaining.

Baumanskaya Statio

Baumanskaya Station is the only stop that wasn’t suggested by the students.  Pulling in, the network of statues was just too enticing: Out of half-circle depressions in the platform’s columns, the USSR’s proud and powerful labor force again flaunts its success.  Pilots, blacksmiths, politicians, and artists have all congregated, posing amongst more Art Deco framing.  At the far end, a massive Soviet flag dons the face of Lenin and banners for ’05, ’17, and ‘45.  Standing in front of the flag, you can play with the echoing roof.

Ploshchad Revolutsii Station

Novokuznetskaya Station

Novokuznetskaya Station finishes off this tour, more or less, where it started: beautiful mosaics.  This station recalls the skyward-facing pieces from Mayakovskaya (Station #2), only with a little larger pictures in a more cramped, very trafficked area.  Due to a line of street lamps in the center of the platform, it has the atmosphere of a bustling market.  The more inventive sky scenes include a man on a ladder, women picking fruit, and a tank-dozer being craned in.  The station’s also has a handsome black-and-white stone mural.

Here is a map and a brief description of our route:

Start at (1)Kievskaya on the “ring line” (look for the squares at the bottom of the platform signs to help you navigate—the ring line is #5, brown line) and go north to Belorusskaya, make a quick switch to the Dark Green/#2 line, and go south one stop to (2)Mayakovskaya.  Backtrack to the ring line—Brown/#5—and continue north, getting off at (3)Novosblodskaya and (4)Komsolskaya.  At Komsolskaya Station, transfer to the Red/#1 line, go south for two stops to Chistye Prudy, and get on the Light Green/#10 line going north.  Take a look at (5)Dostoevskaya Station on the northern segment of Light Green/#10 line then change directions and head south to (6)Chkalovskaya, which offers a transfer to the Dark Blue/#3 line, going west, away from the city center.  Have a look (7)Elektroskaya Station before backtracking into the center of Moscow, stopping off at (8)Baumskaya, getting off the Dark Blue/#3 line at (9)Ploschad Revolyutsii.  Change to the Dark Green/#2 line and go south one stop to see (10)Novokuznetskaya Station.

Check out our new Moscow Indie Travel Guide , book a flight to Moscow and read 10 Bars with Views Worth Blowing the Budget For

Jonathon Engels, formerly a patron saint of misadventure, has been stumbling his way across cultural borders since 2005 and is currently volunteering in the mountains outside of Antigua, Guatemala.  For more of his work, visit his website and blog .

Photo credits:   SergeyRod , all others courtesy of the author and may not be used without permission

30 Best universities for Mechanical Engineering in Moscow, Russia

Updated: February 29, 2024

• Art & Design
• Computer Science
• Engineering
• Environmental Science
• Liberal Arts & Social Sciences
• Mathematics

Below is a list of best universities in Moscow ranked based on their research performance in Mechanical Engineering. A graph of 269K citations received by 45.8K academic papers made by 30 universities in Moscow was used to calculate publications' ratings, which then were adjusted for release dates and added to final scores.

We don't distinguish between undergraduate and graduate programs nor do we adjust for current majors offered. You can find information about granted degrees on a university page but always double-check with the university website.

1. Moscow State University

For Mechanical Engineering

2. Bauman Moscow State Technical University

3. National Research University Higher School of Economics

4. Moscow Aviation Institute

5. N.R.U. Moscow Power Engineering Institute

6. National Research Nuclear University MEPI

7. National University of Science and Technology "MISIS"

8. Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology

9. Moscow State Technological University "Stankin"

10. RUDN University

11. Moscow Polytech

12. Moscow State University of Railway Engineering

13. Finance Academy under the Government of the Russian Federation

14. Moscow Medical Academy

15. Russian State University of Oil and Gas

16. mendeleev university of chemical technology of russia.

17. Russian National Research Medical University

18. Plekhanov Russian University of Economics

19. National Research University of Electronic Technology

20. Moscow State Pedagogical University

21. Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration

22. State University of Management

23. Moscow State Institute of International Relations

24. Russian State Geological Prospecting University

25. russian state agricultural university.

26. New Economic School

27. Moscow State Technical University of Civil Aviation

28. Russian State University for the Humanities

29. Russian State Social University

30. Moscow State Linguistic University

Universities for Mechanical Engineering near Moscow

Engineering subfields in moscow.