Book Arts, MFA

This is the first version of the 2025–26 General Catalog. Please check back regularly for changes. The final edition and the historical PDF will be published during the fall semester.

The MFA degree focuses on book arts as a hands-on practice, a creative medium, and a historical and cultural phenomenon. Its principal objectives are to provide aesthetic and scholarly contexts for the making of creative work and the study of book history, arts, and technologies. It also offers a structured program in book-related disciplines for graduate students interested in studio arts, librarianship, and literary and cultural history.

Learning Outcomes

Students will:

  • have a breadth of hands-on and contextual (studio, art historical, cultural) experience with art, craft, and design disciplines within the book arts;
  • deeply study one or more craft disciplines within the book arts;
  • demonstrate sustained, project-based problem-solving accomplished through art-making;
  • show proficiency in hand skills (scale: competence, proficiency, excellence/mastery);
  • experience an interdisciplinary synthesis of studio art, scholarly practice, and material analysis;
  • practice critical thinking within and across these book-based disciplines; and
  • gain professional development experience and exposure to career tracks.