Master of Fine Arts in Mass Communication and Media Arts

The M.F.A. program in Mass Communication and Media Arts at Southern Illinois University Carbondale immerses students in a three-year program of advanced practice and study. We believe that the arts are both fundamental and transformative. As active stewards of a dynamic terminal degree program, graduate students and faculty work to enliven and uphold a culture of shared values that support artistic practices that are situated in the intersection of experimental approaches, interdisciplinary, research-based inquiry, and critical study.We are committed to fostering a vibrant, inclusive learning environment nurturing innovative interdisciplinary paths of exploration, and diversity in ways of knowing, all within an atmosphere that embraces experimentation and improvisation.Through individual and collaborative work, dialogue with other artists, critical engagement with art history, and contemporary practices, artists enrolled in our program can expect to develop a practice focused on self-expression and creative risk-taking through engagement with varied forms and materials.Artists who create in our program wrestle with difficult questions, initiate change, reveal hidden histories, and cultivate alternative ways of listening, seeing and bringing about joy.With this in mind, we commit to creating a safe space for such challenging and deep work, one based on empathy and compassion through the co-creation of a radically welcoming learning community. We acknowledge our complicity in problems embedded in academic structures and elsewhere. We believe inclusivity is process-oriented. To that end, we commit to challenge acts of racism, classism, sexism, heterosexism, homophobia, transphobia, ableism, xenophobia, or other social pathologies. Additionally, in light of the current climate crisis and other critical envi