Master of Fine Arts in Interdisciplinary Arts

Self-Directed | Community-Engaged

In the 21st century, every community needs to be a center of creative transformation and aesthetic engagement. Our low-residency MFA in Interdisciplinary Arts (MFAIA) enables you to advance your creative practice, remaining embedded in the place where you live and work, while also participating in a supportive academic community.

Each semester begins with a focus on developing your academic plan, expanding your perspective, and learning within a community of artists. Informed by philosophies of participatory, democratic education, our educational approach not only accommodates the complexity of your life, but also expands the scope of your practice to include new colleagues, opportunities for showing work, and networks of practice across the world.

The MFAIA program is designed to help you articulate and engage with an original vision, discover new creative opportunities, and refine your critical and expressive skills. As you work to develop your personal practice, the program supports you in understanding a broad range of strategies and dialogues that inform contemporary art at this historic moment.

No two artists are alike and no other MFA program places you – the artist – truly at the center of your education. Based on your unique interests, intentions, and professional goals, you will design and pursue an individualized course of study, in dialogue with faculty advisors — themselves accomplished and evolving artists — who work with you one-to-one, challenging you to hone your vision while providing personalized feedback, guidance, and support. This mode of self-directed, dialogic learning and challenge to develop a constellation of lineages that your work engages instills a dedication in each artist.

The MFAIA views learning and artmaking as social processes, providing opportunities for peer-learning, collaborations, and projects. The dialogue that emerges with your advisor and peers, through collaborative learning opportunities, allows you to explore the creative possibility that exists between fields of knowledge and artistic traditions. Interdisciplinary work undertaken in the program, such as recent student projects that combine art and ecology, spiritual and aesthetic practices, and traditional artisan techniques with community development, not only introduce you to currents in contemporary art, but also provide examples of how the arts can be woven into public life. 

About Goddard

Education for real living, through the actual facing of real life problems

Learn more

The Goddard Difference

Our philosophy starts with the idea experience and education are intricately linked

Learn More

Transferring

Our credit transfer policy is generous and saves you time and money

Learn more

Degree Requirements

The low-residency MFA in Interdisciplinary Arts Program is a five-semester, 60-credit terminal degree program designed to facilitate students in articulating an original vision, refining expressive skills, and experimenting in new directions.

To earn the MFA in Interdisciplinary Arts degree, students must successfully fulfill the program’s Degree Requirements, which include:

  • Fulfillment of the Degree Criteria supports their holistic, integrated development of expressive, aesthetic, and process skills; critical exploration and articulation of their practice within historical, theoretical, cultural and other relevant contexts; and strategies for ethical engagement with audience, communities, and the world.
  • Practicum Project invites them to explore, through practical experience, the diversity of roles artists might play, and new possibilities for living and working in the world.
  • Culminating Degree Portfolio documents and synthesizes the essential character of their work, integrating practice, research and theory.
  • Final Presentations contribute the research, new knowledge, and evolving practice they have constructed while in the program back to the community.

Get Info

Learn more about the Individualized Bachelor of Arts program, and how Goddard College can help you meet your goals!

Loading…

Learn More

We can send you more information about your program of interest or if you're ready, start your application

Get Info Apply Now