MFA Outside Electives

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