About Cultural Studies

The Cultural Studies Program grounds the study of cultural objects (e.g. texts, institutions, media, events, everyday practices) in an analysis of the particular political, economic, and social conditions in which cultural meanings are produced, circulated, received, and contested. It joins faculty and students in an intellectual community of advanced study, with the aim of educating academics and professionals to understand the constitution of both past and present social formations in the interests of a more humane and equitable future. The program traffics with a broad range of scholarship and theory that examines the relation of cultural objects to their conditions of existence, e.g., Marxism, the Frankfurt School, the Birmingham School, French structuralism and poststructuralism, and ongoing attempts to understand various modes of subjugation (labor, gender, sexuality, race) within changing political-economic conditions. Our aim is to produce graduates who are fully apprised of the theoretical debates that have preceded them, who have a solid grasp of the relevant history as well as of contemporary scholarly developments, and who are thus equipped to engage with the key issues of our time.