Graduate Overview

"Image of video installation, Liquid is Light, 2016, © Kalpana Subramanian" photo by Yvette Granata.

"Image of video installation, Liquid is Light, 2016, © Kalpana Subramanian" photo by Yvette Granata

The Department of Media Study at the University at Buffalo is a leading program in innovative media production, theory and practice-led research. The department’s focus areas are experimental and radical uses of media in the arts and in society at large. The faculty’s methods are diverse: historical, theoretical, practice-led and practice-based. DMS is renowned for its pioneering contributions to experimental film and video, and today the department adds digital, computational, and interactive media to these existing strengths. DMS provides a community where graduate students can develop their own voices as media makers and researchers. DMS’s objective is to prepare students not just to thrive in a media-saturated world, but to shape it. The department offers courses in film and video production, interactive media, digital media, physical computing, media networks and web-based media.

Degree Options

  • Interdisciplinary MA in Humanities
    1/29/25
    MA in Humanities students design individual programs combining course work in arts and humanities, or choose to integrate one of the above disciplines with a Social or Natural Science.
  • MFA in Media Arts Production
    9/26/25
    Appropriate for students whose primary focus is media art making with a secondary focus on media history and theory or a critical examination of how their own work is situated within the field.
  • MS in Media Arts and Sciences
    9/26/25
    The Master of Science in Media Arts and Sciences (MS) program is ideal for students who wish to explore the intersection of the quantitative procedures of STEM fields (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) and the qualitative practices of art and design.
  • PhD in Media Study
    9/15/25
    The Department of Media Study’s PhD is one of a small set of doctoral programs in experimental media theory and practice-led research in the United States. This program responds to the rapid development and transformation of media due to advances in digital technologies and to the growing number of artist-scholar-researchers working in technology-based art forms. This program caters to artists and thinkers who want to engage in research both in and through the arts.
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Virtual Reality Theater 

Apply Today

For more information about Media Study Graduate programs, email mediastudy-grad@buffalo.edu

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