91Ô­´´

Winterthur Collections Foundations Courses

Fellows sharpen their analytical skills during the first year in collections foundations classes, which are part of the core curriculum taught by Winterthur Museum faculty. The Museum grants fellows handling privileges to study design, materials, fabrication techniques, tool marks, structure, surface finishes, use, and condition using its object and library collections—things that range from everyday objects to masterworks. Fellows also have access to outstanding specialists in traditional crafts through field trips to historic sites, collections, and artisans’ shops. All core courses, including the connoisseurship courses, incorporate both hands-on and field-based learning.

91Ô­´´ Elective Courses

Fellows learn to think critically about objects through interdisciplinary coursework focused on historiography, theory, and historic context. Students select two University graduate seminars—usually in art history, English literature, history, or, with permission of the Director, other disciplines to fulfill the distribution requirement. The seminars must prioritize content, historiography, and interpretation. Fellows also select four elective courses based on career and intellectual goals. These courses may be in anthropology, art history, historic preservation, English, history, Africana studies, women and gender studies, museum studies, cultural geography, material culture studies, and other topics approved by the Director.

Thesis Requirement 
Fellows research a topic of their choice for the thesis requirement. This year-long project improves research and writing skills, critical thinking, digital scholarship, and content knowledge. The thesis can be a written document of 12-18K words or 40-60 pages (not including title pages, illustrations, notes, and bibliography). Alternatively, the thesis can be a hybrid product that combines a creative, material, exhibition, or digital project and a required companion paper of approximately 6K words or 20 pages (not including title pages, illustrations, notes, and bibliography). The paper introduces the thesis project and explains its argument(s), methodology, historiography, and scholarly contribution.