Media Studies, MA

Connect to a uniquely vibrant community within an art, design, and architecture school centered in Brooklyn as you explore the ways media shape our views on culture, society, and politics. Blend critical theory with practical skills to examine media’s effects on power dynamics, inequality, and diversity locally and globally.

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Type: Graduate, MA
Department: Humanities and Media Studies
School: School of Liberal Arts and Sciences
Credits: 30
Duration: 2 Years

Courses Plan of Study

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Media Studies at Pratt

Combining critical theory and creative practices, your education in media studies will enable you to understand how media influence the way we perceive and interpret the world. We approach media not only as technologies of creating and sharing information but as productive spaces within which power, identity and differences are articulated, negotiated, and challenged. In our Graduate Program in Media Studies, you’ll develop analytical and practical skills in and outside of the studio environment to address media’s impact on race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, and social change. Our small classes allow you to work closely with diverse faculty who are experts in areas such as digital media, global communication culture, film, performance, music, and sound.

Student Work

Take a look at recent examples of work by our students in our media studies courses.

The Experience

Three students sit in front their respective desktop computers. They are all facing away from the camera. The appear to be discussing amongst themselves. They are in a well lit room. — Pratt Campus and Classroom photos.

If you are interested in both media theory and critical practice, and want to pursue a graduate media studies program in an art environment, Media Studies at Pratt is the right place. Offered at the Brooklyn campus, our program is connected to a larger community of critics, artists and designers on and beyond our campus who engage in and create the very media we study.

Internships & Electives

The program offers a range of internships and electives within media studies. You can develop particular areas of concentration, first through coursework and then in one-to-one work with thesis advisers. In elective seminars, you’ll join small discussions focused on individual or team presentations on the analysis of texts, films, objects, themes, and theories, engaging the interface between the theorization and production of media objects.

Professional Outcomes

With an MA in Media Studies form Pratt, graduates are able to:

work as media professionals
work across media platforms dedicated to promoting the arts, humanities, education, culture, and social justice
work as writers, curators, administrators, critics, or social media professionals
situate their creative practice within the contemporary media environment
pursue a PhD in a cinema, media, cultural studies, race and gender studies, queer studies, and more

Our Faculty

The creative professionals and scholars in Pratt’s Media Studies faculty share a common desire to develop each student’s potential and creativity to the fullest. Bringing different views, methods, and perspectives from their industries, they infuse cultural and professional expertise into the program which cultivates a rigorous educational model for our students.

Our core MA in Media Studies faculty include:

Professor

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Minh-Ha T. Pham look to the side of the camera with a slight smile. In the background you can see a white couch with a glass table with a plant in front of it.

Associate Professor

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Professor

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Faith Holland

Adjunct Assistant Professor

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Take graduate electives with our Performance/Performance Studies faculty:

Jennifer Miller

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Assistant Professor

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Julia Steinmetz

Adjunct Assistant Professor With CCE

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Adjunct Professor

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Our Alumni

Book cover with text reading Race, War, and the Cinematic Myth of America above film still of white hooded figures surrounding actor painted black

Pratt’s distinguished alumni are leading diverse and thriving careers, addressing critical challenges, and creating innovative work that reimagines our world.

Where They Work

Eric Trenkamp, GPMS ’20, author of Race, War, and the Cinematic Myth of America: Dust That Never Settles—book based on MA thesis project.
Keisha Nicole Knight, GPMS ’18 created Sentient.Art.Film, a creative distribution initiative for distributing experimental films.
Lauren La Melle, GPMS ’18 Office Manager at Aubin Pictures and creator of ScaryCrit — a podcast about horror films and Blackness.
Alexa McDougall, GPMS ’20 Project Manager at NBCUniversal Media.
Paige Polk, GPMS ’19 joined the Advancement Project National Office team in DC as Sr. Digital Campaigns Innovator, where she builds interactive digital projects related to their community organizing campaigns.

Success Stories

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Ready for More?

HERE’S HOW TO APPLY	OUR CAMPUS & BEYOND
Join us at Pratt. Learn more about admissions requirements, plan your visit, talk to a counselor, and start your application. Take the next step.	You’ll find yourself at home at Pratt. Learn more about our residence halls, student organizations, athletics, gallery exhibitions, events, the amazing City of New York and our Brooklyn neighborhood communities. Check us out.

From the Catalog

The MA in Media Studies at Pratt, offered at the Brooklyn campus, is situated in the uniquely vibrant environment of an art, design, and architecture school. Students who value both media scholarship and media practices are encouraged to apply. Classes are small and students work closely with their professors.

Our program is connected to a larger community of artists and designers on and beyond our campus who are using and producing the very media we study. Creativity or the creation of ideas, worlds, and things is a central feature of our program. Our students engage “media” as more than a set of technologies with which to create and share information. “Media” encompasses an array of cultural, social, aesthetic, and economic processes, policies, and practices that shape the ways we experience and interpret the world. In other words, we understand media creation and media forms to be world-making projects that have histories and politics.

Students and faculty investigate the significant social, political, cultural, economic, and aesthetic questions of our time as we read contemporary theory, rethink media forms, and revisit relevant archives to consider the ways in which gender and sexuality, race, nation, and power as well as technology mediate our understandings and experiences of the world we inhabit. The coursework invites and requires students to practice both critical analysis of media and basic media production skills. Depending on their interests, the electives may focus more on scholarly practices or art practices. In all cases students in the Graduate Program in Media Studies at Pratt will gain a deeper knowledge of media theories, politics, and practices.

The Master of Arts in Media Studies graduate program consists of 30 credits, taken over three semesters, and a thesis, which is finished in the fourth.

The core sequence for the MA consists of Mediologies I and II (6 credits total) and Encounters I and II (2 credits total), elective seminars and project courses of which Experimental Media Lab and Methodologies Lab are strongly recommended (18 credits total), an internship course (optional), and a final thesis with a required Final Project/Thesis Workshop (4 credits total).

Mediologies courses (HMS-650A/HMS-650B) provide students with crucial critical and theoretical tools; students take this two-course introductory sequence during their first year. These courses are designed for students with substantial experience in media studies as well as students with less exposure.

Practices courses comprise a range of electives, including those taught in other programs, such as digital arts. These courses enable students to acquire basic competence in media aesthetics and production.

Encounters courses (HMS-549A/HMS-549B) enable students to engage directly with others working in media fields, and with timely issues and ideas, in an open-discussion “salon” environment.

The Final Project/Thesis Workshop (HMS-659A) offers an intensive, small support group in which students can develop and write their thesis, which they complete in the fourth semester by taking HMS-659B (Thesis in Progress).

Students may also choose to undertake an internship for academic credit (HMS-9700, HMS-9701, HMS-9702, HMS-9703) and professional enrichment.

In addition to the core courses described above, the program offers a range of electives in areas of specialization and interdisciplinary constellations within media studies, enabling students to develop particular areas of concentration, first through coursework and then in their one-to-one work with thesis advisers. Faculty represent areas that include new media; documentary studies; global media; media and the urban environment; media and performance; music/sound studies; media/attention economies; media ecology; archaeology of (new) media; and media, activism, and social change.

Elective seminars run in the format of small discussion courses focused on individual or team presentations on the analysis of texts, films, objects, themes, and theories. Elective project courses are semester-long laboratory/workshops in which students and one or more faculty members—in any one of several departments—engage a topic, idea, interface, space, or modality focusing on the interface between the theorization and production of media objects. Foci will vary based upon specific expertise and interests of involved faculty and students.

ADMISSIONS REQUIREMENTS

Applications for admission to the Master of Arts in Media Studies are due January 5 for the following fall; the program accepts fall entrants only. Applicants should have a BA, BS, or BFA from an accredited institution. Candidates must submit:

a statement of purpose in which they describe their interest in the program;
10–20 pages of relevant writing sample(s), with emphasis on analytical writing about media;
transcripts of undergraduate coursework; and
two letters of recommendation.

All applicants must follow the standard admissions process for graduate programs at Pratt. See www.pratt.edu/graduate-admissions/apply/.

Chair
Gina Marchetti
gmarchet@pratt.edu

Office
Tel: 718.636.3790
www.pratt.edu/programs/ma-media-studies/

Faculty Bios
www.pratt.edu/graduate-media-studies/core-faculty