Social, Cultural, and Critical Theory

The Ph.D. Minor in Social, Cultural, and Critical Theory (SCCT) will establish an interdisciplinary graduate curriculum based upon theoretical synergies among humanistic, social scientific, and naturalist disciplines.  Students in the SCCT minor will train in important twentieth-century theoretical traditions that have had an impact across multiple disciplines, such as postmodernism, phenomenology, postcolonial studies, historical materialism, cultural studies, critical legal studies, the Frankfurt School, psychoanalysis, race, gender, and queer theory.  It will also encourage exploration of-and cultivate future contributors to-new movements and directions in social, cultural, and critical theory such as actor-network theory, affect theory, anthropocene studies, biopolitics, critical area studies, border theory, critical finance studies, critical science studies, mediated geographies, new materialisms, object-oriented ontology, posthumanism, post-secular theory, race critical theory, somatechnics, trans* theory, and game studies, among others.

The SCCT students will aim for the same scholarly and professional careers as their Ph.D. program typically prepares them for and will foreground their strengths in interdisciplinary and conceptually rigorous forms of research as a means of strengthening their performance on the job market.