The MFA curriculum allows candidates to select two to five courses outside of the Fine Arts department. Below are links to departments and courses that our students have pursued in recent years.
Lists of Outside Elective Courses
Art History Course List
Cinema Studies Course List
Architecture Course List
Landscape Architecture Course List
Historic Preservation Course List
City and Regional Planning Course List
African Studies Program Course List
Anthropology Course List
Comparative Literature Course List
English Course List
Philosophy Course List
School of Communications Course List
List of All University Courses
Outside Electives (examples)
African Studies Program
AFST 400 Seminar in African‐American Studies: Blacks in American Film & TV
AFST 530 20th century African‐American History
Anthropology
ANTH 354 African art & Culture
ANTH 415 Archaeology of Animals
ANTH 468 The Ancient Mayan
Architecture
ARCH 412 Poetics of Architecture
ARCH 712 Topics in Architectural History and Theory ii: Informal Cities
ARCH 712 Topics in Architecture History and Theory ii: Architecture & Race
ARCH 712 Topics in Arch History & Theory ii: Architecture and Geopolitics
ARCH 712 Topics in Architectural History & Theory: Contemporary Japanese Architecture
ARCH 741 Architectural Design Innovation
ARCH 743 Form and Algorithm
ARCH 744 Digital Fabrication ARCH
745 Nonlinear Systems Biology & Design
ARCH 811 Architectural Research: seminar‐ history and theory
Art History
ARTH 301 Architecture & Identity
ARTH 417 Islamic art & arch: later Islamic art and architecture
ARTH 586 20th century Theory and Criticism
ARTH 586 20th century art: contemporary currents-1970‐now
ARTH 640 Intro to Medieval Art
ARTH 641 byzantine art & architecture
ARTH 687 Contemporary Art: 1945‐Present
ARTH 691 The Road Movie
ARTH 762 Antwerp in the Age of Brueghel
ARTH 789 American Art
ARTH 842 The Filmic
Astronomy
ASTR 007 The Big Bang and Beyond
Cinema Studies
CINE 116 Screenwriting Workshop
CINE 150 Television Studies
CINE 170 History of Animation
CINE 225 Topics in Theater & Cinema: connecting from stage to screens to monitors
CINE 231 Anthropology & Cinema
CINE 252 Flemish/Dutch Fiction: experiments in modern Flemish & Dutch fiction & film
CINE 501 Topics in Cinema Studies: Film & Literature: Histories
CINE 515 Topics in Criticism and Theory: Auteurism: Theories and Practices
CINE 548 Italian Cinema: Futurism, Classicism, Fascism
CINE 591 Contemporary Theory: reading Gilles Deleuze
CINE 600 Cinema Studies Sseminar: Women's Cinema & WorldCinema
CINE 793 Film Studies: Feeling Modern
Comparative Literature
COML 186 Korean film and culture
COML 357 Myth in Society
COML 586 20th Century Criticism & Theory
COML 592 The Model
COML 595 Studies 20th century French literature: George Batille
COML After Postmodernism: Aesthetics & Politics in recent lit & art
Communications
COMM 639 Issues in Cultural Studies
COMM 644 Communication and Space
City Planning
CPLN 506 Special topics in urban studies: poverty, racism, and crime in Philadelphia
CPLN 671 Inner City Housing Markets
Eastern Asian languages and civilizations
EALC 515 Buddhist arts East Asia
EALC 516 East Asian gardens
EALC 592 Arts of Korea
English
ENGL 115 Creative Writing: fiction
ENGL 295 Tip of the Iceberg: what goes into the making of a work of art
ENGL 495 A History of Catastrophe
ENGL 583 19th century American Literature: the 'social self' in us literature 1880‐1920
ENGL 591 Modernisms: The Model
ENGL 768 Joyce: Joyce and Proust
ENGL 998 Independent Study: Experimental Writing
Folklore
FOLK 296 Jewish humor
FOLK 360 Native American folklore
FOLK 406 Folklore & Supernatural
FOLK 510 Ethnography of Belief
FOLK 533 Folk/Unorthodox Health
Gender, Culture, Society
GSOC 209 Topics in Women and Literature: Gender/ Sexuality in Literature
GSOC 572 Language & Gender Sexuality in Literature
History
HIST 122 Korean‐American History
HIST 442 American Revolution
History and Sociology
HSSC 312 Weapons of Mass Destruction
Italian
ITAL 204 Italian History on Screen
ITAL 120 Elementary Italian
Landscape Architecture
LARP 720 Topics in Representation:Landscape Drawing
LARP 760 Topics in Ecological Design: Large‐Scale Landscape Reclamation Projects
LARP 760 Topics in Ecological Design: Restoration Ecology
LARP 770 Topics in History & Theory: Sculpture parks & Sculpture in Parks
Management
MGMT 653 Field Application Project: Philadelphia Museum of Art
Music
MUSC 040 History of Symphony
MUSC 530 Electronic Music
MUSC 705 Seminar in Ethnomusicology
Philosophy
PHIL 423 Philosophy and Visual Perception
PHIL 999 Theory & Musicianship
Portuguese
PRTG 110 Elementary Portuguese I
Political science
|PSCI 435 Inside/Out: the politics of crime and punishment
Religious Studies
RELS 101 Religion and Science
Spanish
SPAN Latin/Amer film: Mexican film: 19th century to the present
SPAN 528 Modern Spanish & Hispanic American: Spanish and Latin American Cinema
Urban Studies
URBS 235 Film and the City
URBS 253 Cities, Suburbs, Regions