June 21, 2008
US New Media Programs Enumerated
As part of his recent research, Edgar Huang of the Indiana University – Purdue University Indianapolis School of Informatics has posted a list of (currently) 170 new media programs in the US that offer a bachelor’s degree or higher. Any program that appeared to declare itself as a new media program was included. For whatever reason, I see that there are some interesting omissions, such as MIT’s Media Lab / Media Arts and Sciences Program and Brown’s Literary Arts program, with its fellowship each year for an electronic writer. (Additionally, in the MIT Program in Writing and Humanistic Studies, we have a digital media option for our undergraduate writing degree, which I suspect makes us a new media program, since a “BFA in Art with a Digital Art Concentration” warrants inclusion on the list.) But aside from the issue of omissions, which are inevitable in any large-scale attempt like this, it’s very interesting to see the range of programs represented, from those focusing on commercial multimedia production to performance-based programs and those growing from the visual arts. Even the term “computer science” makes appearances (two) on the list. Interestingly, given that Noah has spoken about this issue in years past, I can find only two program names on this list that refer to writing or the literary: Virginia Commonwealth University’s Media Art and Text Ph.D. Program, brought to you by VCU’s Department of English, and the Ph.D. in Communication, Rhetoric, & Digital Media from North Carolina State University.
June 21st, 2008 at 6:28 pm
I teach in the “New Media Journalism” program at Seton Hill University… surely that’s at least an oblique reference to writing. One of our recent graduates is interning at Salon now.
June 22nd, 2008 at 1:49 am
Ah yes – the journal is indeed a book of writing. There are several programs on the list based in journalism and communications departments; I was looking more specifically for the ones that took a largely English, literature, or creative writing approach. Of those, it seems that there may only be the two that I mentioned. Which means that I don’t see any on the list that are creative writing or literary art programs, even though there are a huge number that are based in visual arts programs.
July 17th, 2008 at 4:04 pm
It seems like the Interdisciplinary Computing and the Arts major at UC San Diego should be included, although the definition of New Media is surely debatable.
http://music.ucsd.edu/ugrad/icam.php