Program Overview

Integrated Media Arts MFA Program

The Integrated Media Arts (IMA) MFA program at Hunter College is a hub for co-created media-making, digital humanities, and collaborative storytelling committed to public discourse, social justice, and community-centered pedagogy and research.

Program Description

Using a range of emerging technologies and the tremendous advantages provided by interdisciplinary collaboration across media arts, humanities, and sciences, the IMA program supports students as engaged citizens and professionals, faculty in their research and artistic production, and NYC-based community groups seeking digital and media tools to support their missions.

Make Space Initiative

Make Space is a hub for transformative media and social impact, growing out of IMA's collaborative classes. It brings students from Urban Planning, Public Policy, and Public Health together with IMA students to create media that advances social justice in New York City neighborhoods.

Make Space Team

The Make Space team includes IMA student Make Space Fellows who mentor students in the Mellon Public Humanities and Social Justice (MPHSJ) Scholars Program. In Spring 2026, four IMA Student Humanities Action Lab (HAL)/Make Space Fellows acted as Media Mentors for community partners working on Climate and Environmental Justice and Carceral Justice.

Make Space Partners

Make Space partners with various organizations, including the Lenape Center, the Flatbush African Burial Ground Coalition, Seneca Village, and the East New York Community Land Trust.

History of Make Space Project

Make Space grew out of IMA's collaborative classes, which over the past decade have brought students from Urban Planning, Public Policy, and Public Health together with IMA students to create media that advances social justice in New York City neighborhoods. The project was further developed through seed funding from the Ford Foundation.

Phase 1: 2018 2020

The Ford Foundation awarded Hunter College funds to develop a vision for a global media center devoted to social justice and community-engaged practice. Activities included extensive interviews with Hunter faculty, students, and outside thought-leaders, research on similarly-oriented programs and centers, and the draft and revision of the vision and concept for a Media and Digital Humanities "hub" called Make Space.

Phase 2: 2021 2022

In 2021, in collaboration with professor James Levy's project Whose Land?, Make Space created two Whose Land? fellowships. IMA students Kiara Holley and Luca Lee worked over the summer to foster community connections that resulted in work made by IMA students in the Community Media, Advocacy, and Urban Environments class taught by Kelly Anderson.

Sample Community-Facing Coursework

• IMA 78014: Spaces Speak Harlem Surveillance (Fall 2024 class) Prof. Andrew Demirjian
  • Spaces Speak will be a co-created audio Augmented Reality artwork that maps the desires for alternative futures of liberation movements and communities seeking social justice against a backdrop of systematic federal and local government suppression in East Harlem.
• Archival Media and Participatory Aesthetics class
  • Mother, Bethel, Harlem, USA: A collaborative project and exhibit between artist and professor Thomas Allen Harris, IMA students, and the Hunter East Harlem Gallery.
• Media, Advocacy, and the Urban Environment class
  • Sound Walk for the Flatbush African Burial Ground Coalition: A collaboration between the coalition and IMA students Kiara Holley and Prisca Edwards.
  • Beads & Seeds Documentary: A collaboration between the Lenape Center with IMA students Monica Rocha and Nate Dorr.
• Other documentaries created in collaboration with community partners include:
  • Gentrification Express: Breaking Down the BQX
  • Subprimed
  • Rezoning Harlem
  • The Domino Effect

Research Areas

The IMA program focuses on various research areas, including:

• Social justice and community-centered pedagogy
• Digital humanities and collaborative storytelling
• Emerging technologies and interdisciplinary collaboration
• Public discourse and community engagement

Program Guide

The program guide includes information on:

• Curriculum
• Critiques
• Thesis Information
• Registration
• Forms