Become a portrait painter with a distinctly feminist perspective. Or a social activist trained in performance strategies. Or a biologist with deep expertise in 3D modeling. SMFA's Combined Degree program leads to both a Bachelor of Fine Arts and either a Bachelor of Arts or Bachelor of Science degreea combination that yields academic and creative skill sets that will serve you well no matter where your journey takes you.Graduates of the Combined Degree program receive two degrees within five years. In addition to your BFA, you'll graduate with a Bachelor of Arts or Bachelor of Science in a major of your choice.Tufts provides its students with the resources of a major research university and the breadth of academic options afforded by our School of Arts and Sciences.As a combined-degree student, youll spend your first year exploring both the fine arts and liberal arts and sciences curriculum. Youll make the most of both campuses, expand your social and intellectual horizons, and start to imagine where youd like to go with your combined degree.<br><br>Visual and Material Studies (VMS, formerly Visual and Critical Studies) is a cross-disciplinary department bringing together faculty from the related fields of Art and Architectural History, Film, and the Language Arts. Since its creation in the 1980s, VMS faculty have developed curricular offerings to complement artists practices by focusing on the social contextualization of material culture. Course offerings expose students to varied histories, aesthetic theories, and methodological approaches, thereby encouraging in-depth analysis of a broad range of visual works. In these classes students explore the relationships between makers of art, spatial constructs, audience, and the contexts in which visual culture circulates. VMS course offerings span introductory as well as more focused, seminar style, in-depth approaches to evaluating visual practices across the humanities and social sciences. VMS faculty's expertise underscores a pluralistic approach to placing images, objects, and sites within global perspectives that explore alternative literacies, post-colonial visual practices as well as issues of race, identity, and gender materialized in the visual arts.