Mar 29, 2024  
2018-2019 Catalog 
    
2018-2019 Catalog [ARCHIVED CATALOG]

Cultural Studies, BA


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The Cultural Studies (CS) major is the interdisciplinary liberal arts option at Columbia College Chicago. The CS major offers a variety of concentrations–Urban Studies, Media and Popular Culture Studies or Literary Studies. At 36 credit hours, the CS major works well in conjunction with a minor, or with a double major. For students who seek the superior thinking and communications skills afforded by the liberal arts, the CS major prepares them for career opportunities in arts administration, non-profit management, teaching, community, and social service management, among others. The CS major also prepares students for law school or graduate school in a variety of fields, including American studies, sociology, anthropology, women’s studies, and linguistics. Cultural Studies majors have the opportunity to develop outstanding thinking, writing, reading, and speaking skills by analyzing the values, ideas, and belief systems that inform cultural products and everyday practices.

Cultural Studies majors should also develop excellent skills for civic engagement by becoming adept at examining how race, ethnicity, gender, class, and nationality inform the power structures that undergird culture. In short, the CS major provides the broad preparation that empowers students to improvise and adapt in a rapidly changing job market, and to make conscious creative choices in their practice of citizenship and life-building.

As a result of successfully completing program requirements, students should be able to:

  • understand and use conceptual vocabularies and methods central to the analysis of the intersection of culture with other social and material practices;
  • comprehend and apply a wide range of theories and terms to the analysis of culturally contested texts, contexts, discourses, practices and institutions; and
  • produce vigorous written research that showcases an argument developed using appropriate methods and scholarly sources.

PROGRAM REQUIREMENTS - 36 credits required


CONCENTRATIONS


Cultural Studies: Literary Studies

After successfully completing program requirements for this concentration, students should be able to:

  • identify and analyze the relationship between literature and its many contexts;
  • understand key concepts and theoretical perspectives in literary analysis and use them to develop their own interpretations and theoretical insights; and
  • identify and evaluate the cultural/political implications of their own interpretive practices and participation in literary culture.
Cultural Studies: Media and Popular Culture

As a result of successfully completing program requirements for this concentration, students should be able to:

  • examine the complex interconnections among discourses, social structures, relations of power, and subjectivities in multiple contexts;
  • apply a range of theories and methodologies to cultural texts and practices, including media, popular culture, art, creative industries, everyday life, and politics; and
  • produce useful knowledge of social and political significance that intervenes in the arenas of media, popular culture and everyday life.
Media and Popular Culture Electives

Cultural Studies: Urban Studies

As a result of successfully completing program requirements for this concentration, students should be able to:

  • identify major themes and events in the history of urbanization and respond to current issues in the urban environment;
  • apply a range of theoretical and methodological approaches to the production, experience, and representation of the urban environment; and
  • produce a substantive research project that analyzes an urban issue, theme or object.
Urban Studies Electives

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