Program Overview

Explore the role of visual culture today with the Bachelor of Arts in Visual Studies from the Tyler School of Art and Architecture at Temple University. Visual Studies is a contemporary interdisciplinary field of inquiry grounded in analyzing the methods and effects of visuality, vision, and visual culture. This 122-credit undergraduate degree program trains students to understand and articulate the latter through both studio practice (making) and critical thinking (academic research and writing).

Students interrogate historical and contemporary understandings of the power of the image and its significance for the global community alongside Tyler’s faculty of award-winning multidisciplinary artists, art historians and designers as well as the broader Temple faculty.

They create and examine visual culture in each year of study through four major themes. These themes are identities, narratives, sites and global citizenship and act as the lenses through which students learn.

Your intellectual, creative and practical skills will mature in relationship to guiding questions such as the following.  

• What kind of image is most powerful in the 21st century?
• How do we visually communicate what we value?
• How can visual culture foster social justice?
• How can we be creative in ways that improve our own lives and the lives of others?

Visual Studies majors get the best of both worlds by earning half of their credits in Tyler’s studio art classes and half exploring a broad menu of courses in anthropology, art history, film and media studies, psychology, and more. The program’s culminating event is a semesterlong senior thesis research project (written or studio-based) that you’ll present in a public exhibition.  

The Visual Studies bachelor’s program teaches students how to be strong researchers and writers with an interdisciplinary perspective while supporting their growth as artists. The program is ideal for students who want to capitalize on the resources of both an excellent, intimate art school and a large research university to develop skills as makers and thinkers. Philadelphia’s vibrant arts scene serves as an extension of the classroom, where students can absorb the latest practices and innovations.