Material Culture and Public Humanities (M.A.)

Virginia Tech’s interdisciplinary M.A. Program in Material Culture and Public Humanities (MCPH) develops expertise in these fields and prepares graduates for careers in museums, historical societies, arts agencies, national parks, and other community and cultural organizations. Students participate in creative alliances with non-profit cultural institutions such as the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities, the Southwest Virginia Cultural Heritage Foundation etc.

• Our master's programs prepares you for careers in museums, historical societies, arts agencies, national parks, and other community and cultural organizations.
• You work on your own projects, in research teams, and with faculty mentors and present your own findings at professional conferences and in publications. 
• The Humanities (including the disciplines of art, history, literature, and music) investigate how people make sense of and communicate about their worlds. We regard public humanities as a mode in which academics work for and with people in knowledge- and culture-making spaces beyond the university.

• 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.