The Cultural Studies (CS) major is an interdisciplinary approach to the analysis of contemporary culture and its relation to society that prepares students to transform creative enterprises and industries with a commitment to equity, social justice, and a more humane, democratic society. CS helps students to think critically about cultural politics more generally, looking at the way identities and subjectivity are developed, reinforced, embodied, and performed by becoming adept at examining how race and ethnicity, gender and sexuality, social and economic class, and nationality inform the power structures that undergird culture. While the CS major provides an important center for the critical study of culture and society in the humanities and social sciences across the curriculum, the Cultural Studies minor is an excellent supplement to those studying production and performance. Serving students who seek the superior thinking and communications skills afforded by the liberal arts, the CS major prepares students for career opportunities in arts administration, non-profit management, teaching, community and social service management, public relations, and social media communications positions, as well as preparing students for graduate school or law school.  

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;
• analyze the complex interconnections among discourses, representations, social structures, relations of power, and the performance of subjectivities in multiple contexts;
• apply a range of theories and methodologies to texts, performances, discourses, practices, and institutions, including media, popular culture, art, creative industries, everyday life, and politics;
• identify and evaluate the social and political implications of their own interpretive and creative practices; and
• produce knowledge of social and political significance, using appropriate methods and scholarly sources, that intervenes in the arenas of media, popular culture, and everyday life.