Liberal Arts & Sciences

In addition to your studio art curriculum, you’ll take courses that expose you to a range of non-studio offerings on the Medford/Somerville and Boston SMFA Campuses. These courses inform your understanding of the world in which you are making work. Your advisor will help you to select the liberal arts and sciences courses that best support your goals; whether you are a painter whose work is informed by political movements, or a papermaker who connects their way of working to environmental studies, you’ll find the breadth and depth of courses to foster those ideas.

At SMFA, our educational philosophy is based in the idea that interdisciplinarity is key to the development of a contemporary art practice, which is why the liberal arts and sciences are a central component of our BFA program. In addition to the studio art curriculum, students take several non-studio courses throughout a variety of distribution areas, including the Social Sciences, Humanities, and Art History. Students choose courses that support their intellectual endeavors in the studio from a wide array of offerings.

With the help of academic advisors, faculty mentors, and peers, students craft their own pathways through the extensive offerings available to all undergraduate Tufts students. During your time at SMFA at Tufts you will research and explore meaningful topics that will advance your studio practice.

For students who want to dive deeper into a subject, BFAs have the option of minoring in any minor available throughout the Schools of Arts, Science and Engineering (with the exception of Studio Art). 

Some examples of popular liberal arts and sciences courses that SMFA undergraduate students take include:

• Plants and Humanity
• Wanderers – Space Exploration and Discovery
• Love and Sexuality in World Literature
• Game Design
• American Sign Language
• Children and Mass Media
• Math for Social Change
• Costume Design
• Art Education and Human Development
• Grimms’ Fairy Tales
• Food Systems
• The Arts of Japan
• Intro to Media Culture and Theory
• TV in the Age of Change
• Aesthetics

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