D Building, Porter College
(831) 459-4940
arts.ucsc.edu

The Division of the Arts offers technical training and historical, theoretical, and critical studies in art, art history (visual culture), dance, drama (acting, directing, and playwriting), design and technology, film and digital media, and music to all UCSC undergraduates, as well as to those undergraduate and graduate students majoring in the arts. The mission of the arts in education derives from their special contributions to human experience and achievement. The arts involve unique ways of knowing, understanding, feeling, communicating, and creating. In education, and at this university, the arts complement humanistic and scientific thought, and students and faculty in the arts are frequently involved in collaborations with colleagues in humanities and science disciplines.

The Division of the Arts provides students with access to excellent state-of-the-art facilities, including recently constructed and equipped music recital halls and practice rooms, an electronic music studio, several theaters, drama and dance studios, painting and printmaking studios, a foundry, film and video editing rooms, a photography laboratory, multimedia computing laboratories, and specialized lecture and seminar classrooms.

Among the division’s many performing and fine arts programs, Shakespeare Santa Cruz, an internationally recognized professional repertory company, exemplifies our goal of combining scholarship with the performance and practice of the arts.

The departments and majors in the Division of the Arts are listed in detail under Art, Film and Digital Media, History of Art and Visual Culture, Music, and Theater Arts.

Digital Arts and New Media MFA Program

Authorization to confer the degree of master of fine arts in digital arts and new media is pending as this publication goes to press. It is anticipated that the program will be inaugurated and students admitted in the fall quarter of 2004. The program will explore the theory, history, and practice of digital and electronic art media, with an emphasis on collaborative work in project teams. The curriculum is interdisciplinary involving faculty from the Art, History of Art and Visual Culture, Film and Digital Media, Music, and Theater Arts Departments as well as from the Baskin School of Engineering, the Division of Physical and Biological Sciences, and the Division of Social Sciences. A minimum of two years will be required in order to complete the program. Further information regarding the program, its admission criteria, and the application process can be found at http://digitalarts.ucsc.edu.