Master of Arts in Cultural, Social, and Political Thought

The Cultural, Social, and Political Thought major in the Master of Arts (MA) program is interdisciplinary within the humanities and social sciences and is based on a cohort learning model that fosters an environment of interdisciplinary engagement and exchange, research, peer mentoring, collaboration among a small group of students, within a team-based learning experience.

The overall academic aims of the major are to emphasize social, cultural, and political thought and to install the intellectual and practical tools to work successfully with community partners and agencies to facilitate social change. Students graduating from the Cultural, Social, and Political Thought major will demonstrate a range of professional skills (e.g., peer review, public presentations, critical thinking) and research competencies. Graduates are capable of producing novel, relevant, and rigorous research that makes significant contributions to interdisciplinary knowledge.

The Cultural, Social, and Political Thought major is thesis-based and requires students to complete 9.0 to 18.0 credit hours of graduate semester courses and a thesis.

This program is highly theoretical and interdisciplinary in nature and intended to ground students in a body of cognate critical theories and methodologies. Across disciplinary boundaries, the Cultural, Social, and Political Thought major emphasizes the critical engagement of ideas and their manifestation in shifting cultural, social, and political contexts.

The program’s key learning outcomes are

• Mastery of theoretical frameworks related to cultural, social and political thought such as Feminism, Poststructuralism, Postmodernism, Postcolonialism, and Critical Theory.
• Mastery of substantive knowledge in the interdisciplinary area of cultural, social and political thought. Research topics are not constrained but may include such problems, issues, and concepts as gender, race, class, age, disability, sexuality, equality, nation, citizenship, justice, power and resistance.
• Mastery of relevant methodological approaches pertinent to cultural, social and political thought, such as Historical Materialism, and mastery of relevant methods, such as Discourse Analysis, Ethnography, and Interviewing.

Mastery of ability to propose, design, present, and disseminate novel and applicable research in the interdisciplinary area of cultural, social and political thought.