About International Literary and Visual Studies
International Literary and Visual Studies (ILVS) was designed to give creative, strongly motivated students the flexibility they need to pursue their intellectual and artistic passions to wherever they might lead. Being multicultural and interdisciplinary, the ILVS program is similar to International Relations (IR), though with a stronger emphasis on the arts and humanities. As one of Tufts more challenging majors, ILVS requires an honors thesis or project from all graduating seniors. The ILVS program is another reason why Tufts is an excellent place to pursue international studies.
The major is designed for students with a strong interest in global issues, who wish to study the literature, cinema/media, or visual arts of two or more cultures. The program explores the interaction of expressive media and cultures, in order to help students gain both practical and theoretical understanding of literature, film, the visual sign, gender, and culture. The major requires firm grounding in at least one foreign language (except those on the World Literature track).
Beyond foreign-language preparation, the ILVS major requires twelve courses, distributed according to the emphasis selected by the student. The student must choose either a literature emphasis, a film emphasis, a visual studies emphasis, or a world literature emphasis, along with two geographic areas of focus. (The World Literature track requires to study literatures from at least three regions.) Each ILVS major is encouraged to develop a set of questions or a topic of interest that guides course selection and eventually leads to the required senior thesis or project. Review the requirements for the ILVS major.
The program prepares students for multicultural careers in artistic production, business, communications, design, education, law, medicine, and research/cultural analysis.