MA in Critical Theory and Creative Research
Program Overview
PNCA’s Master of Arts in Critical Theory and Creative Research (CT+CR), the first of its kind in the U.S., is an accelerated (45-credit), seminar-based program that prepares students for opportunities at the intersection of art, theory, and research. Students admitted to the program work toward an MA (one year + summer intensive) or a joint MA/MFA (three years + summer intensive). Through rigorous training in critical theory, research design and methods, cultural and institutional critique, and ethics, students develop skills and modes of thinking that cross the boundaries between the visual and verbal, linear and nonlinear, digital and analog, theory and practice.
Located in the heart of Portland, a center of creative risk-taking and social experimentation, the program combines the study of critical theory as a mode of socio-political critique and creative research as a process-driven form of inquiry, pushing both theory and research in new directions within the context of a 21st-century art school. The program is devoted to people and ideas and to a rethinking of the present and future of cultural production; of arts-based research and research-based arts; of curatorial practice, documentary, and the Archive; and of social and political reconfiguration in relation to major sites of contemporary contestation. These sites range from social media to biotechnology, surveillance to sustainability, political terror to revolutionary social and economic practices.
The foundation of the program is a complex of seminars and roundtables on interlocking themes led by PNCA faculty as well as by visiting artists, designers, critics, theorists, poets, and filmmakers. Past visitors to the school include Jacques Rancière, W.J.T. Mitchell, Art Spiegelman, James Turrell, Heike Kuehn, Ellen Dissanayake, Sue Coe, Susan Szenasy, Joe Sacco, Laurie Anderson, Lewis Hyde, and Mel Chin.
New Possibilities at the Juncture of Art and Research
The program accepts applications from distinctive graduates in the arts, humanities, and sciences capable of thinking completely outside any box and interested in developing new combinations of art, theory, research, and critique. Ideal candidates include artists and designers who want to deepen their work conceptually and theoretically; writers interested in the relation of word and image; students of philosophy, theory, and criticism; journalists, documentarians, and filmmakers; sociologists, anthropologists, and scientists whose work intersects with the arts; and all those interested in combinations of aesthetic and socio-political critique and in new possibilities at the juncture of art and research.
CT+CR prepares students for careers in academia and emerging platforms for knowledge production and dissemination; curation of many different sorts; creative direction; research in museums, foundations, think tanks, and corporations; media and communications; reconfigurations of documentary, journalism, and nonfiction narrative; archival work; art criticism, cultural critique, and social analysis; socio-political aspects of community design and urban planning; public policy and political office, and new forms of public intellectual presence and intervention. The program offers competitive postgraduate teaching assistantships and internships.
Applying to the Program
Download an informational PDF about the program.
Download the program application. See below for more information on the required Supplemental Application procedure. If your computer does not support the use of the “fill in” PDF form, then please print the application form, complete in writing, and include that in your application package.
Now accepting applications for Fall 2012.
Supplemental Application Procedure
The supplemental portion of the application to the Master of Arts in Critical Theory and Creative Research at PNCA tests for creativity, critical thought, sense-based intelligence, ethical vision, and the ability to combine aesthetic and socio-political critique in innovative ways. Select two of the images below, static or moving, and submit a critique for each of them (links are provided below the image). One of the two must be written—150 words maximum—while the other can be written or take a visual form or a mixed visual-verbal form. Find links to the images/videos below. The full Application Set can be downloaded on the right-hand side of this page.
Row 1
Oliver Brodwolf and Florian Dombois, Sonification of Tohoku Earthquake, Japan
via YouTube
Christian Boltanski, No Man’s Land
via The New York Times
Guillermo Vargas Jiménez, Eres Lo Que Lees (You Are What You Read)
via Critical Frameworks
Row 2
Agnes Denes, Wheatfield-A Confrontation
via Greenmuseum
Keith Mayerson, Ode to Falling Man
via Eyes Towards the Dove
Invisible Octopus
via YouTube
Row 3
David Attenborough, Lyre Bird
via YouTube
Video of Bruce Nauman’s MAPPING THE STUDIO II (Fat Chance John Cage) at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago
via YouTube
Xu Zhen, The Starving of Sudan
via Art in America
Row 4
Atta Kim, ON-AIR Project/ “Eight Hours”
via Atta Kim
Patricia Piccinini, The Young Family
via Patricia Piccinini
Jake & Dinos Chapman, Insult to Injury
via The Guardian
The MA in Critical Theory and Creative Research is co-chaired by Anne Marie Oliver and Barry Sanders, two distinguished scholars and theorists who bring a combined 60+ years of iconoclastic research, writing, and teaching experience to the program. Photo: Emily Hyde ‘12
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