Undergraduate
HAA Major for Matriculated Students
The visual image has been an important vehicle for communication in many societies, and in today's
culture it increasingly displaces words and texts. In the department of HAA, students receive training in the critical analysis of images and monuments that have come to be defined as the monumental arts
of painting, sculpture, and architecture, and of those objects and monuments which have conventionally fallen outside
this monumental arts tradition, e.g. photography, mass media, popular culture, and their equivalents in non-western and pre-modern cultures and eras.
As students learn to look, read, and write critically, they are also introduced to the ways in which the arts and images of the past and present shape an individual sense of self and cultural identity. The history of image and monument making is a history of cultural "interconnectedness" between sacred and secular,
elite and popular, dominant and marginal.
Students who matriculated in Pitt prior to fall 2008 may earn the degree by completing the coursework formerly required by the department. Students should review the former standard major option and the intensive major option and see the undergraduate advisor with any questions.