The School of Interdisciplinary Arts at Ohio University offers a unique program of study in the arts. The Ph.D. program educates scholars who are grounded in a single discipline and able to view that area through the lens of the other arts. The School also provides extensive course offerings at the undergraduate level that fulfill University general education requirements.

Interdisciplinary Arts is an exploration of interrelationships, interdependencies and interactions among the arts. This approach employs various methodologies to examine one art form through the study of other arts and other disciplines. Students and faculty cross disciplines to analyze the arts in such contexts as culture, history, theory, politics, religion, gender, ethnicity and economics. Advanced study of the arts should be based on strong knowledge of individual art forms, coupled with insight into how the arts interact and are interrelated. The ethos of interdisciplinarity is that understanding of art and culture is enhanced through these approaches. The goal is the balance and synthesis of the artist, the thinker, the citizen, the human being.

Interdisciplinary Arts students at Ohio University undertake a strong education in a primary discipline, with study in a secondary area, and engage in a series of interdisciplinary seminars. The goal is to approach one area from multiple perspectives. Students take courses from faculty across the College of Fine Arts, as well as in disciplines outside the fine arts. This doctoral program emphasizes a cultural education, which may serve as preparation for a variety of professional careers, especially college and university teaching.

The program prepares students for scholarly research, while also valuing creative activity through the arts. In addition, the cultural and intellectual contexts in which the works become significant are critical to the understanding of the works themselves.

The centerpiece of the program is a series of core interdisciplinary, team-taught seminars. Faculty and student scholars come together to investigate intensively a selected topic and period from multiple perspectives and disciplines.

In the era of postmodernity, the boundaries between arts are becoming increasingly permeable, and today's scholars recognize that discipline-based research can be inadequate to illuminate arts of past eras. The School of Interdisciplinary Arts seeks to educate scholars for the twenty-first century, who are grounded in the knowledge of a discipline and able to view the arts through the unique lens of interdisciplinary studies.