Visual Studies Celebrates 10 Years at Penn

“Every week I receive excited e-mail messages from prospective students all over the country who have discovered Penn’s Visual Studies Program,” says Professor of History of Art Michael Leja. Leja is the director of this undergraduate program, which is now celebrating its 10th year.

Visual Studies represents one of Penn’s unique interdisciplinary undergraduate offerings, sitting at the intersection of art and the science of vision and bridging divides between scientific and philosophical theories, historical and cultural thinking, and fine arts. Students in the major explore the science of vision and the workings of the brain, as well as the philosophical considerations of vision and the history of how humans have used vision for cultural expression. All visual studies majors must complete a senior project, which has both a written requirement and a visual component, called the “making,” which is displayed at the end of the year.

The program, according to Leja, continues to grow steadily. An architecture track is now available, and an active undergraduate advisory board hosts guest lectures and other events. He notes that prospective students say “They can’t find programs like it at other universities, and they wonder why. I can give them one good reason for the program’s rarity: It requires a particular configuration of faculty with intersecting specializations across five or six academic departments—psychologists, artists, philosophers, art historians, architects, cognitive scientists, and designers—all studying vision and images and wanting to do so collaboratively.”