Roger Lancaster is finishing fifteen years as Director of the Cultural Studies PhD program and will step down from the post at the end of the summer (2014). “It’s been a pleasure to work with wonderful colleagues and students,” he said at an end-of-semester social marking his long term.
“I’m especially proud of the program’s accomplishments,” he added. “On my watch, we graduated our first PhD. We now have 57 alums, roughly half of whom hold tenure-line positions. And the degree has not been a dead end for the other half. About thirty percent of our graduates are in reliable term appointments — and most of the rest do important work in relevant applied fields.
“Everyone already knows that the field of cultural studies is poised to engage with pressing social problems: inequality, war, climate change. What we have established beyond doubt is that a degree in interdisciplinary cultural studies is also sufficiently flexible and sufficiently disciplined to equip graduates for a life career of teaching and research under current economic and institutional conditions.”
Asked about his plans for the future, Lancaster said, “I look forward to intensifying my research and teaching.”
During his term as Director, Lancaster has remained an active scholar, receiving a Fulbright Award and following up The Gender/Sexuality Reader with The Trouble with Nature and most recently Sex Panic and the Punitive State, which garnered his second Ruth Benedict Prize. He’s also brought out a number of scholarly articles on such topics as crime, punishment, and gay marriage, as well as an op-ed in the Sunday New York Times.
May 11, 2014