The Graduate Certificate Program In Cultural Studies

The Graduate Certificate Program In Cultural Studies
Students who complete the Cultural Studies Certificate Program will, upon completion of their home department’s Ph.D. program, be awarded the Ph.D. in “[home department] and Cultural Studies.” Ph.D. students from all departments at Stony Brook are eligible; M.A./M.F.A. students may also apply and be admitted by the Director of Cultural Studies.

What Is Cultural Studies at Stony Brook?
The Cultural Studies Program at Stony Brook is designed for students whose interests cut across traditional modes of study in the Humanities and Social Sciences. Areas of emphasis include popular and mass culture, minority and diasporic cultures, visual culture, media and technology, cultural production, cross-cultural and transnational/global formations, as well as the study of elite, dominant, and national cultures. Interdisciplinary studies of all aspects of modern (in the broadest sense) and contemporary culture come under the heading of Cultural Studies at Stony Brook. Cultural Studies engages culture as inseparable from its historical, social, political, economic and technological dimensions. As such, Cultural Studies builds on, contributes to and reorients traditional humanities and social science disciplines.

The Certificate Program
The Cultural Studies Certificate program is designed for graduate students whose interests are not fully served by traditional Humanities and Social Science departments but who seek to be employed by such departments as they continue to adapt and evolve in a changing disciplinary and interdisciplinary landscape. The certificate is administered through the Department of Comparative Literary and Cultural Studies (CLCS), in conjunction with the Humanities Institute at Stony Brook. CLCS’s strengths lie primarily in literary and cultural theory, cinema and media studies, visual culture studies, comparative and cross-cultural studies, as reflected in the Department’s popular undergraduate major in Cinema and Cultural Studies. A network of Cultural Studies affiliated faculty represent a wide range of areas in disciplines including Africana Studies, Art History and Studio Art, Asian and Asian American Studies, Digital Art, Culture and Technology (cDACT), English, European and Hispanic Languages, History, Music, Philosophy, and Women’s and Gender Studies. The Certificate Program is open to students enrolled in any of Stony Brook’s Ph.D. programs. M.A./M.F.A students may be admitted on approval of the Director of Cultural Studies, who will advise students in tailoring the program to their specific needs. The Certificate will be awarded upon completion of the 15-credit sequence (two core courses and three electives), which may also be counted toward the Ph.D. in the student’s home department.