2024-2025 Bulletin: Program Requirements
Cultural Studies
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Program
Cultural Studies situates culture as a site of struggle among structures of power, representation, and subjectivity. Our methods of study are critical in so far as we emphasize not only the ideological dimension of cultural practices, but also their radical, political potential. We are also reflexive in our approach, emphasizing the ideological investment by cultural studies in the processes of its own production. The fields in which our faculty specialize include history, feminist and queer studies, critical race theory, film and media studies, literary studies, postcolonial studies, Transatlantic studies, psychoanalysis, science studies, historical perspectives on immigration, memory and nationalism, as well as the Frankfurt and Birmingham Schools.
We are concerned to link cultural theory to cultural practices and activist politics. Students are required to take courses in a variety of research methodologies appropriate to the discipline of Cultural Studies, including ethnographic field research methods, visual research methods, oral history, archival studies, digital humanities, and film or literary theory and analysis.
Instruction in Cultural Studies is conducted in seminars. Classes are small and each student’s program is designed individually. A favorable student-faculty ratio allows for an unusual amount of individual attention from faculty members. Students work with faculty advisers in planning their course of study; candidates for the Ph.D. work closely with a faculty committee composed of professors in the student’s fields of study.
Students have considerable choice in the design of their course of study, including choice of concentrations and minor fields. Working closely with faculty advisors, students devise a course of study that gives them intellectual depth in Cultural Studies as well as one other traditional humanities field. Cultural studies courses are also an attractive option for students obtaining degrees in the social sciences, religion, education, politics, or Arts and Cultural Management.
Programs
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