Schools, Labs and Centers

School of the Arts

We are a community of artists, professionals, and scholars committed to educating students to bring vision, commitment, sophistication, and courage to their crafts.

By training students in theory, practice, and the intellectual and artistic traditions that inform both, the School's departments help their students become thinkers, makers, and citizens of a complex world. Our internationally recognized faculty members give their students a sense of ownership of their education.

Our students learn to accept stylistic and ethical responsibility for their work, and to place their work in the context of diverse intellectual and cultural traditions. As they embrace that responsibility, and envision their own work evolving in such contexts, students gain the confidence to speak with the authority of the master artists, professionals, and scholars they aspire to be.

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At a Glance

  • 15

    Programs of study offered across 3 academic departments—not including those at the graduate level

  • 12

    Minors that explore countless mediums

  • 6

    Performance stages for events large and small

Our Departments

Writing, Literature & Publishing

The integrated relationship between writing, publishing, and the study of literature becomes a shared experience of finding one’s voice, refining one’s talent, and gaining the skills and knowledge needed to succeed in today’s evolving literary landscape.

Visual & Media Arts

Emerson’s Department of Visual and Media Arts is all about learning by doing. Whatever your passion, our department offers unlimited opportunities to grow, collaborate, and thrive—plus access to sophisticated, state-of-the-art equipment and facilities that help your creativity take flight.

Performing Arts

Theatre is more than a craft: it’s a way of connecting with others, of approaching challenges, and engaging the world. As a theatre artist in Emerson’s Department of Performing Arts, you will receive the necessary tools to focus your creative talents towards a fulfilling career—and life—in the theatre.

Comedic Arts

Emerson's Center for Comedic Arts offers the first BFA of its kind in the country. It integrates writing, performance, and production with courses that examine comedy from a variety of perspectives.

Programs & Highlights

Engagement Lab

The Engagement Lab at Emerson College is an applied research and design lab that investigates and creates media and technology to reduce disparities in civic participation.

Emerson Contemporary

Emerson Contemporary is a public visual art program that focuses on performance and media arts. Consisting of the Media Art Gallery, the Paramount Urban Screen, the Huret & Spector Gallery, and temporary public art projects, Emerson Contemporary features new media, film, video, and performance art. These venues and programs realize Emerson’s mission as an institution of higher learning committed to communication and the arts.

Performance Venues & Other Spaces

We offer a variety of stages, labs, and studios for our students to use in their creative work inside and outside the classroom.

Featured Alumni

After they leave Emerson, our alumni venture into a wide variety of fields and take on enterprises of their own, from directing films to acting on Broadway to writing award-winning poetry. They put the skills they have learned here into practice and have their hand in shaping the world through their art.