Hone your craft while simultaneously developing critical and creative thinking skills when you major in visual and performing arts. You'll obtain an interdisciplinary education plus a specialization in music, dance, or visual art.
Majoring in visual and performing arts opens up worlds of unique ways to communicate through image, sound, and movement. At Widener, you'll receive an interdisciplinary education as you specialize in music, dance, or visual art.
You'll develop critical thinking and analytic skills through classroom discussions, scholarly essays and research papers, and formal presentations. Each semester, you'll put your work on display with formal performances created through collaboration with distinguished professional artists.
Your professors will become your mentors as they connect you with internship and civic engagement opportunities that enhance your creative work. A flexible curriculum means you'll also have the chance to study abroad and engage with new cultures.
Join faculty-coached performance ensembles to further build your creative community. Upon graduation, you'll have a diverse portfolio of work plus engaged learning experiences that will enhance any career path you choose.
Students may choose to concentrate in music, dance, visual art, or arts administration.
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Widener's pre-professional pathways give you the flexibility to follow your interests while preparing for a professional career.
Visual and performing arts majors can participate in the following pathways:
Arts Minor
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Dance Minor
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Music Minor
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Digital humanities is a rapidly growing, interdisciplinary field that incorporates new tools and methodologies for pursuing modes of inquiry and producing forms of scholarship and engagement in the humanities. It seeks to apply humanistic reasoning and research to important questions related to technology, such as social sustainability, big data, and privacy. Work in digital humanities includes public humanities, data mining/visualization, web design, textual analysis, educational technology, and ethics and technology. The concentration in digital humanities is open to all humanities majors.
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Communication studies is a natural pairing for visual & performing arts majors. This double major enables students to combine a love of visual art with graphic design.
Though you'll specialize in one creative field, you'll be exposed to all fine arts contextual courses like music and art history. These courses will inform the historical and cultural context of your creations and help you discover unexpected connections between various arts.
With Philadelphia just a short drive away, you'll have access to world-class museums and renowned music and dance performance groups. The city is an ever-evolving hub for artists so you'll feel like an insider with internship opportunities at institutions like the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Anthropology.
From day one, you'll gain mentors in the visual and performing arts faculty who seek to know you both personally and professionally as you receive individualized instruction. You'll be supported in your creative endeavors and make connections with internationally-recognized artists like painter Wendy Hatch, dancer Katherine Kiefer Stark, and jazz trumpeter John Vanore.
Beyond the classroom, you're encouraged to join music and dance performance groups on campus. Some groups like Chamber Ensemble are led by faculty; others are student-led, like the acapella group Keepin' It Trill and Widener Dance Company. You'll become a leader collaborating with your peers to put on spectacular performances each semester.
As a visual and performing arts major, you'll use your creative knowledge to explore and positively impact the world around you. Civic engagement opportunities like the Dance for Parkinson's program will engage you with your community and study abroad options to places like Greifswald, Germany will take you out of your comfort zone.
Our professors invest in your success through close mentoring and continual feedback. Get to know our visual and performing arts faculty.
"Art is about ideas! By studying art, we learn what it means to be human. Images reveal the fundamentals of any society; by using an historical lens, we can decipher complex content embedded in representation."
"The arts teach us that one can communicate both concretely, with words, and abstractly, with music, visual art, and dance. The arts teach us to see, listen, communicate and think."
Beyond continuing lessons, the band has created hybrid, virtual, and on-campus video performances, and four members were selected to take part in a video performance for the national college football championship game.
At Widener, students can combine academic programs to create the unique educational pathway that’s right for them and their career goals.
Artist and adjunct professor Sarah Heyward launched a community art project aimed at learning about Chester residents and Widener students – while helping them more deeply connect.
A visual and performing arts degree will prepare you for careers within the arts and beyond. Graduates hold meaningful jobs in diverse fields, using their creativity and problem-solving skills in a wide range of occupations.
Kapelski Learning Center, Room 305