The Center for Afroamerican and African Studies, the Center for Middle Eastern and North African Studies, and the Center for South and Southeast Asian Studies likewise help to attract prominent faculty and ensure superb library and language training resources in these fields, as well as opportunities for student support. Through these organizations, lively contacts are forged with colleagues from departments such as history, anthropology, or languages and literatures, among others. The Program in Women's Studies has strong ties with History of Art and plays an important role in the educational lives of many of our students. History of Art faculty and students are also active participants in the programs of the Institute for the Humanities,a unit dedicated to cross-disciplinary dialogue. So, too, the Schools of Art and of Architecture and Urban Planning and the Program in Film and Video Studies are among the major sources of collaborative research and learning involvements on campus, particularly for our students of early modern and modern art.
Ancient studies exemplifies the options in approach available at Michigan.
The Department offers a Ph.D. in History of Art with a strong emphasis on a specialty in an ancient area within the context of theoretical discourses and a wider range of historical arenas of art history as represented by the expertise of current Michigan faculty. Here, ancient language study is designed with each student on an individual basis. The History of Art Ph.D. tends,rather, to attract students who are interested in courses of study that find their breadth in synchronic and cross-cultural explorations. D.prepare students for somewhat different professional engagements. But the lines are not rigid.