The Department of Art Theory and Creativity is committed to promoting art studies, with high-level development as its aim, discipline construction as its priority, team building as its focus, postgraduate and undergraduate training as its goal, and social services as its path.

The Department has a reasonable team structure and a strong faculty. There are 20 faculty members, including seven professors, including two Yangtze River Distinguished Professors, one Young Yangtze River Scholar and one Foreign Member of the Academy of Europe), seven associate professors, one assistant professor and four associate researchers. All members of the team have studied abroad or visited renowned foreign universities, and their academic backgrounds are focused on art theory, aesthetics, art history, theatre and film studies, visual culture studies, sociology of art, art semiotics, digital humanities, etc., which has formed an interdisciplinary and integrated research advantage.

In the last five years, the team has been active in academic exchanges and achieved outstanding research results. The Department has hosted four major projects of the National Social Science Foundation of China (including two major projects in art), one major project of the Humanities and Social Science Foundation of the Ministry of Education and one major project at a base of the Ministry of Education, published more than 200 papers on SSCI, A&HCI journals such as well as CSSCI journals such as Social Sciences in China, Literature and Art Studies and Literary Review, and compiled several sets of translation and reading series of classics of western art theory.

The Department is mainly responsible for disciplinary construction of art studies, which consists of four major fields: Art Theory and Aesthetics, Art History and Art Criticism, Theatre and Film Studies and Art Communication and Technology. Each year, the Department admits master's and doctoral students from art-related disciplines. At the same time, the Department offers a Liberal Arts Experimental Class minor programme, which enrolls around 30 new students each year from undergraduate applicants in Nanjing University. The Department has a comprehensive system for training undergraduate, master's and doctoral students, emphasizing students' artistic theoretical qualities and their ability to identify and solve problems, and aiming to cultivate interdisciplinary, international and research-oriented art talents.

The Department relies on cooperative resources within Nanjing University and overseas, serves the local government of Nanjing City and Jiangsu Province, collaborate with universities, social institutions and cultural enterprises at home and abroad to carry out academic research. We recruit scientists, entrepreneurs, designers, and artists of international first-class standards from around the world to carry out art and cultural exchange activities.

As a cohesive and centripetal art teaching and research team, the Department will certainly make contribution to building our program of art studies with NJU spirit and Chinese characteristics.