Material Culture and Public Humanities Graduate Certificate

This is a cross-disciplinary graduate certificate that provides opportunities for students in other graduate programs to take advantage of key courses in the MA program on Material Culture and Public Humanities. Material culture is the study of material or physical objects, as well as the placement of those objects in critical, theoretical and historical perspectives as the products of distinct cultures. Public humanities bridges the divide between academia and the public by encouraging dialogue between scholars and communities on cultural and social issues.

• This is a cross-disciplinary graduate certificate that provides opportunities for students in other graduate programs to take advantage of key courses in the MA program on Material Culture and Public Humanities.
• The certificate enables graduate students in the target population of architecture, interior design, history, communication, rhetoric, sociology, STS, and ASPECT become more competitive applicants for jobs in museums, historical societies, and community and cultural organizations.
• Courses in this graduate certificate program offer students the opportunity to interpret material culture (e.g., physical objects; historical artifacts) within informed historical / cultural frameworks and articulate their significance to the public.  

• Our students participate in creative alliances with non-profit cultural institutions such as the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities, the Southwest Virginia Cultural Heritage Foundation (overseeing ‘Round the Mountain’ and ‘The Crooked Road’), Historic Smithfield, the Virginia Museum of Transportation, the Montgomery Museum, the Science Museum of Western Virginia, the Taubman Museum of Art, the O. Winston Link Museum, the History Museum of Western Virginia, and the Harrison Museum of African American Culture.