School of Critical Studies

The School of Critical Studies serves all CalArts students by incorporating intellectually rigorous methods of inquiry and reflection into the creative process. Our aim is to generate as much enthusiasm for reading, writing and critical thinking as for artmaking.

To meet these goals, we offer two graduate programs: the Master of Fine Arts (MFA) Writing Program and the Master of Arts (MA) Aesthetics and Politics Program. In addition, the School of Critical Studies provides a robust liberal arts education for every Bachelor of Fine Arts (BFA) candidate.

Our MFA Writing Program allows advanced writers to pursue a variety of traditional and new forms, ranging from narrative fiction to experimental criticism, from poetry to hypertext.

The new MA Aesthetics and Politics Program focuses on the relationships between contemporary artmaking and aesthetic, critical and political theory.

In both programs, the expertise of our faculty is complemented with an extensive series of readings, lectures, workshops and longer-term residencies by a diverse range of visiting writers, theorists and artists. Our graduate students also benefit greatly from the dynamic, highly multidisciplinary creative environment of CalArts, where different branches of the arts freely commingle.

School of Critical Studies Bulletin (Institute catalog)