6 PhD Programs in Arts in North America for 2024

The Ph.D. in Visual and Performing Arts degree program is designed primarily for individuals who wish to conduct advanced research and to teach at the college level and can lead to a wide variety of non-academic careers as well. Visual and Performing Arts is an interdisciplinary program of study, so students take the majority of their coursework in Visual and Performing Arts courses, but must also take two seminars each in both History of Ideas and Literature.

The Ph.D. program in Arts, Technology, and Emerging Communication (A.T.E.C.) is designed for those who wish to engage in deep scholarship or to develop artistic, cultural, or commercial applications of digital technology and emerging media. With a diverse group of faculty and a curriculum that integrates scholarly study with creative practice, A.T.E.C. cultivates creative scholars, scholarly practitioners, and interdisciplinary researchers.

The PhD in Design, Environment and the Arts Program in the Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts has an explicit mission: to prepare students to become public intellectuals and transformative practitioners in shaping the environment at all scales – from the design of cities, buildings, and landscapes, to interiors, products and graphics.

As a decentralized and indeed deterritorialized institution, IDSVA offers a low-residency, distance-learning PhD program that allows working professionals to keep their faculty posts and curatorial positions and allows them to maintain their family and community obligations.

In keeping with Harrison Middleton University's commitment to promote excellence in education and its desire to create highly trained scholars and professionals who have a broad, intellectual perspective in the humanities, the university offers a Doctor of Arts program.

The Inter-institutional Doctorate in Art and Culture (DIAC) is the result of the conjunction of academic efforts of the Public Universities of the Central West Region of the ANUIES in which the following universities participate: Autónoma de Aguascalientes; from Guadalajara; of Guanajuato and the Michoacana of San Nicolás de Hidalgo. It has been created for the training of specialists duly trained in the analysis, research and dissemination of culture and art, from the local and regional spheres of Mexico to the appropriate and necessary reflection on these issues in a global dimension. Although Latin American culture and art is proposed as a fundamental object of study, the links that this geographical area has with other cultural systems are not excluded in any way.