About

Photograph Courtesy of Ken Gonzales-Day

Area Advisor: Chitra Ramalingam (chitra.ramalingam@yale.edu)

Opportunities for the study of museums, collections, and objects are vast, interdisciplinary, and diverse at Yale.  Public Humanities helps students to tap these resources across a broad range of disciplines, whether their interest is in cultural analysis through objects, exhibition design and execution, curation, preservation, or museum-based pedagogies and public outreach.  In addition to the fifty-plus courses across the disciplines that draw on Yale’s museums and special collections, many internships and other opportunities are available to work in one of the Yale museums or in other partnering institutions.  The Museums and Collections area within Public Humanities draws upon diverse faculty resources, as well as the expertise of professional staff at the Yale Art Gallery, the Yale Center for British Art, the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, the Peabody Museum, as well as important smaller collections within the libraries and specific departments.  Various galleries and exhibition spaces on campus also afford students the opportunity to design and mount their own exhibits.