The programs of study listed below range from full-fledged departments specifcally devoted to Cultural Studies to smaller "centers" and "minors" embedded within other disciplinary programs. Many of the programs listed below are included because they have a strong Cultural Studies presence within them, though that label would not necessarily serve to describe their overall focus.
Annotations marked with asterisks (***) are taken from Ted Striphas' "Cultural studies' institutional presence: A resource and guide," which was first published in Cultural Studies 12:4, October 1998. Cultural Studies is published by Routledge, London. Many thanks to both Ted and Routledge for permission to reproduce this information here.
Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis, Theory and Interpretation (Netherlands)
***During the last decade, universities all over the world have reassessed their priorities, redirecting goals and refocusing their activities. Especially in the Humanities, the future lies in concentrating resources and pooling research, with the aim of "centres of excellence." The Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis, Theory and Interpretation (ASCA) is one such centre. Located at the University of Amsterdam -- one of the oldest in the world -- it brings together scholars active in literature, philosophy, the fine arts and popular culture, comparative religion, and cultural anthropology. Specialists in their respective fields, they also share a commitment to working within an interdisciplinary framework and to maintaining a close connection with cultural expression outside the academic world. Within ASCA they have joined forces to provide a stimulating environment for scholars and professionals both from the Netherlands and elsewhere. ASCA offers regular seminars, organizes workshops, and frequently hosts international conferences. It publishes a monthly newsletter and a yearbook. In addition to maintaining contact with similar institutions in Europe and the United States, ASCA is also assisted by an International Advisory Board.
California Institute of the Arts (USA), School of Critical Studies
***The School of Critical Studies offers a varied curriculum which is designed to broaden students' general knowledge and introduce them to the methods and disciplines of the humanities and the social and natural sciences. In developing the curriculum, the faculty has taken into account the special interests and needs of students as practicing artists. Courses are often interdisciplinary and address aesthetic, political, social, and ethical issues relevant to contemporary art practice. A number of courses focus on the historical development of an art form. The curriculum acknowledges the diversity and the dynamism of our cultural and intellectual heritage and aims to promote an active understanding of cultural innovation and social conflict as well as continuity, cohesion and tradition. All classes emphasize critical thinking and encourage open intellectual inquiry and clear communication of ideas. Classes are usually structured as seminars, offering students an opportunity to engage in lively debate and in-depth discussion.
California State University/Northridge (USA), Department of Speech Communication
Claremont Graduate School (USA), Program in Cultural Studies
***Claremont University's Cultural Studies Department was established in 1995. It is a graduate-only program that grants MA and Ph.D. degrees in cultural studies. the interdisciplinary curriculum trains students to research and analyze the nature, origins, production, distribution, and persistence of contemporary and past cultures. Students study cultural change and continuity, the operation of contemporary cultural forms, the construction of knowledge, the emergence and functioning of power relationships, and the shaping of cultural identities and their interactions with other cultural phenomena.
Curtin University of Technology (Australia), School of Communication and Cultural Studies
***The School of Communication and Cultural Studies has been a leader and innovator in literary, performance, and cultural studies for more than 25 years. It pioneered courses in Australian Studies and was one of the first tertiary institutions to offer Journalism as a major stream and to give students the opportunity to combine theoretical studies with practical applications. Recently the School has led the development of gender and studies. This forward-looking approach has made the School's courses strongly sought after, consistently attracting high quality under- and postgraduate students and highly-qualified staff, many of whom are nationally recognized practitioners in their disciplines.
Drake University (USA), Cultural Studies Program
***Established in 1990, Drake University's Cultural Studies Program is a multidisciplinary endeavor made up of courses for students and a series of forums, colloquia, and lectures for the University community. There is no cultural studies "department," and no cultural studies "major." Instead, the courses that make up its curriculum come from a variety of Arts and Sciences departments and from the School of Journalism, including English, Speech Communications, Honors, Sociology, History, Political Science, Women's Studies, Foreign Languages, and First Year Seminars. A cultural studies concentration, which requires eighteen hours of study including an independent study/research project, is compatible with majors in these departments/programs.
Duke University/University of North Carolina (USA), Program in Latin American Studies
***After more than half a century of informal cooperation, in the late 1980s the University of North Carolina and Duke University joined to create the Duke-UNC Program in Latin American Studies. The Program's objective is to enhance the Latin American curriculum on both campuses, provide research and training opportunities for students and faculty from all disciplines, and increase public awareness of the importance of Latin American cultures and traditions. Undergraduate and graduate students affiliated with any University department or professional school are encouraged to document their specialization in the region by earning a Certificate in Latin American Studies in conjunction with their master's or doctoral degree.
Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (Brazil), Programa Avangado de Cultura Contemporbnea
***Founded in 1994, the Advanced Program in Contemporary Culture (PACC/UFRJ) is a permanent international teaching and research forum in Cultural Studies. It proposes to encourage -- through interdisciplinary research in the fields of literature, art, architecture, anthropology, philosophy and politics -- transnational partnership in comparative cultural studies. PACC meets the new demand for specific research practices that correspond to the need for bringing a critical reading of cultural production into the discussion of the processes of identity, citizenship and democratization formation, in the context of national spaces which are currently being globalized by economic and political powers. PACC has also been working on the creation of a Graduate Studies Program in the Critical Theory of Culture, in association with other universities, both on a national and international level. The Graduate Program aims at stimulating transnational partnerships in comparative studies of culture as well as consolidating the field of Cultural Studies in Brazil, creating, in this way, a university that is involved in the production, academic transmission and public dissemination of knowledge concerning issues that gravitate around the democratic improvement of relations between the state and society.
George Mason University (USA), Cultural Studies Program
***George Mason's program is one of only a few completely interdisciplinary doctoral programs in cultural studies in the USA. That is, the program is not housed in any one specific department. It links the social sciences and the humanities, combining methods of interpretation and reception in production, distribution, and consumption of cultural objects in their social contexts. Internships, research collaboratives, community outreach, and interdisciplinary team teaching opportunities are connected to the program.
Georgetown University (USA), Communication, Culture, and Technology Program
Georgia Institute of Technology (USA), School of Literature, Communication, and Culture
***Georgia Tech's School of Literature, Communication, and Culture (LCC) is participating in the fundamental reconfiguration of the role of higher education in an increasingly technological, multicultural environment. The school's faculty share a commitment to interdisciplinary work at the theoretical and applied levels, as well as to the integration of new technologies into humanities and communication education. To aid in this endeavor, LCC offers several programs and resources designed to enrich the college experience. Currently offering a Master's degree in Information Design and Technology (IDT), a Bachelor's degree in Science, Technology, and Culture (STAC), and a minor in Women, Science, and Technology (WST), LCC is also responsible for providing general courses in literature, communication, and culture to all Georgia Tech undergraduates. In addition to current offerings, the School of LCC has an eye toward developing a Ph.D. program in the history, theory, and practice of technologies of representation.
Goldsmith's College, University of London (UK), Department of Media and Communications
***Established in 1978, the Department offers undergraduate degrees in Media and Communications, and joint degrees in Anthropology and Communications, Communications and Sociology. At the MA level it offers degrees in Media and Communications (a theoretical course), Television Drama, Television Documentary, Image and Communications (involving work in Photography and Computer Graphics) Journalism, and Radio. It also runs a large Ph.D. program in the College with 25 doctoral students expected to be enrolled in the next session. The Department has a strong interdisciplinary theoretical team, along with a strong commitment to media practice and research equivalent activity. Within this environment students are encouraged to engage critically with the different approaches to the media in a variety of academic and practice disciplines, to develop skills in research and presentation, and to explore creative possibilities across a range of media.
Griffith University (Australia), Australian Key Centre for Cultural and Media Policy
***The Australian Key Centre for Cultural and Media Policy is one of a number of Key Centres established by the Australian Research Council as part of its Research Centres Program. Its designation as a Key Centre indicates that its purpose is to develop a program of research and postgraduate studies in close consultation with government and/or industry partners. The role of the Australian Key Centre for Cultural and Media Policy, accordingly, is to play a leading and coordinating national role in developing cultural and media policy research and graduate programs in ways that are closely informed by the needs of, and advice from, Australia's cultural and media industries and government policy agencies. The intellectual orientations of the Centre are primarily concerned to (1) establish a productive interface between the concerns of cultural studies and the practical concerns of contemporary cultural and media policy, and (2) to incorporate a policy perspective into the concerns of cultural studies, particularly in its theoretical and historical understanding of the relation between government and culture.
Hampshire College (USA), School of Cognitive Science and Cultural Studies [sic??]
***The School of Cognitive Science and Cultural Studies at Hampshire College represents a unique enterprise in American undergraduate education. The School brings together faculty in the fields of psychology, computer science, linguistics, philosophy, and mass communications who share common interests in the nature of knowledge and information. Cognitive science attempts to understand the human being as a "knowing" organism. Cognitive scientists are concerned with language and memory, with the nature of belief and emotion, and with the relationship between "mind" and "brain" and between minds and machines.
[February 2000 follow-up: Having noted that the previous link for the School of CS and CS was dead, I poked around the Hampshire website and it would appear that Cultural Studies has been relocated in the School of Humanities, Arts and Cultural Studies, while the School of Cognitive Science appears to have divested itself -- at least in name -- of its former Cultural Studies affiliation.]
Harvard University (USA), Center for Literary and Cultural Studies
***The Center for Literary and Cultural Studies, founded in 1984 with a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, provides a locus for interdisciplinary discussions among Harvard faculty, faculty from other area institutions, and graduate students in a variety of fields, including literature, psychology, history, art history, philosophy, and archaeology. The CLCS has established itself as a significant force for the enhancement of the study of literature and cultural criticism at Harvard. It presently sponsors thirty-three ongoing faculty/graduate student seminars; it also supports lectures, conferences, workshops and informal occasions for the exchange of ideas and the sharing of scholarly work. Faculty and graduate students from Harvard and other area institutions, and independent scholars in the greater Boston area, are welcome.
Institut Fuer Kulturstudien (IFK) (Austria)
***The IFK was founded in 1992 through the initiative of Erhard Busek, former Austrian Federal Minister of Science. The institute is sponsored by the Austrian government, but has no status as a university. Currently, the IFK sponsors a visiting fellowship, junior fellowships, conferences, the Vienna Colloquia in Cultural Studies, and several in-house seminars. Its current research program, "imagined communities," explores themes of memory, experience, and innovation.
Kansas State University (USA), Program in Cultural Studies [within the English department]
***Kansas State University's department of English has offered an MA with specialization in Literature and Cultural Studies since 1992. Coursework in the program includes the theory and practice of cultural studies, a seminar in cultural studies, as well as other advanced courses in literature, criticism and theory, and cultural studies. Students also select relevant courses outside the English department in order to pursue interdisciplinary study in areas such as anthropology, history, sociology, philosophy, modern languages, political science, and mass communications. Most students in the Program in Cultural Studies are eligible to receive financial assistance in the form of graduate teaching assistantships. The Program also sponsors an annual symposium.
Lancaster University (UK), Institute for Cultural Research
Founded in 1996 as a means of enhancing, co-ordinating and promoting interdisciplinary research on culture covering a wide range of work in the Arts, Humanities, Social Sciences and Management, the ICR offers MAs in Cultural Studies and Visual Culture and a Ph.D in Cultural Research. They also produce a journal (Cultural Values), organise conferences and seminar programmes, and host the Blackwell Annual Lecture in Public Culture.
Lingnan University (Hong Kong), Bachelor of Arts (Hons.) in Cultural Studies
***The degree BA (Hons.) in Cultural Studies aims to provide a challenging bilingual (Chinese-English) education which will enable students: (1) to engage themselves productively in the contemporary study of culture; to become sensitive to, and critical of, the issue of identity and value to which various forms of culture are tied; (2) to understand the complex issues of modern self, society and history through the dynamic structure of an interdisciplinary curriculum, in which the understanding and integration of multiple perspectives will become crucial to all their core work in the analysis and criticism of culture; and (3) to open themselves intellectually to the wide-ranging voices of dissent today, by studying those texts and contexts that have been changing their views of others, so as to develop independent judgment on the multifarious cultural practices and social institution in the contemporary world. The program will be inaugurated in the academic year 1999-2000
McGill University (Canada), Graduate Program in Communications
Middlesex University (UK), School of English, Cultural, & Communication Studies
***Media and cultural studies at Middlesex University is an interdisciplinary subject area focusing on "race" and representation, gender and sexuality, ethnicity and identity, and the globalization of popular culture. At the undergraduate level, students develop their research skills and in their final year are offered a range of options including work placement. Supervision of postgraduate research is offered in black cultural studies, postcolonial studies, masculinity, and sexuality.
Monash University (Australia), Center for Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies
***The Centre is an interdepartmental unit, maintained by the Faculty of Arts, with responsibility for teaching, and research in three main areas of work: comparative literature, cultural studies; and critical theory. The Centre has been a part of the Arts Faculty at Monash University, Melbourne, since 1970. The Centre's Research Seminars are open to all staff, postgraduates, and visitors with an interest in the topics. Recent seminars have included: Transient Aesthetics: Installation, Judgement & Suicide; The Ontological Function of Poetics: Logic, Performance and the Body; and Linguistic Vulnerability and Objectification: Sites of the Subject-at-Risk in Butler and MacKinnon.
National Tsing Hua University (Taiwan), Center for Asia-Pacific Cultural Studies
***The objective of the Center is to foster intellectual exchange in the Asia-Pacific context. Activities include seminars, symposia, conferences, collective research, exchange of information, research in progress, etc.
New York University (USA), Program in American Studies
***The Program in American Studies offers courses of study leading to the degrees of Master of Arts and Doctor of Philosophy. It is designed to prepare students for advanced work and teaching in American Studies. Interdepartmental by definition, the student's course of study is arranged by the Director and the Director of Graduate Studies and involves seminars offered in the program and selected courses in the Departments and Programs of Africana Studies, Anthropology, Cinema Studies, Comparative Literature, English, Fine Arts, History, Journalism and Mass Communications, Liberal Studies, Music, Performance Studies, Philosophy, Politics, and Sociology. The program's committee is made up of faculty from many of these departments. The program interprets "American" in a broad sense to include assessments of the historical role of the United States in the Americas and, more generally, in world affairs. Inasmuch as the program has a regional focus, special attention is given to studies in urbanism and to New York in particular, a global city that comprises many world cultures.
Open University Worldwide (UK)
***Professor Stuart Hall is a major contributor to a new set of multi-media resources entitled Culture, Media, and Identities, providing a broad based exploration of the interdisciplinary fields of cultural and media studies. They analyze current theoretical ideas and debates about culture and chart its growing importance in may aspects of contemporary life. Key topics include: The growth of new technologies and their impact on everyday life and popular culture, the analysis of media messages and images, how culture constructs new identities, and the rise of new multi-media culture industries which dominate the networks of circulation. The resources are comprised of six self-study workbooks, six audio cassettes, and supplementary material assuming no specialist knowledge. They will be of particular value to academics and lecturers teaching these subjects in their own institutions.
Pratt Institute (USA)
Stanford University (USA), Department of Modern Thought and Literature
Stony Brook University (USA), Department of Comparative Literary and Cultural Studies
Trent University (Canada), Department of Cultural Studies
***This program, founded in 1977, is Canada's first undergraduate program in cultural studies. It is a four-year interdisciplinary program aimed at the study of modern culture and unique in its emphasis on the arts in its plan of education. It offers courses in social and cultural theory, as well as media and popular culture, music, theatre, film, the visual arts, and literary studies. Many members of the Cultural Studies Program also teach and undertake research within various of Trent's interdisciplinary graduate programs; the majority are associated with the MA in Methodologies for the Study of Western History and Culture and/or the Frost Centre's MA in Canadian Studies.
University of Arizona (USA), Department of Comparative Cultural and Literary Studies
***Established in 1987, the Graduate Program in Comparative Literature and Literary Theory (CPLT) quickly achieved considerable strength, attracting many of the best scholars and teachers in the College of Humanities and elsewhere, as well as excellent students, many of whom are from other countries or are members of under-represented groups in the United States. The focus of the program, however, shifted to literary and cultural studies, and the program was officially reorganized in 1992 to the Graduate Program in Comparative Cultural and Literary Studies (CCLS) to reflect this development. The program encourages students to explore similarities and differences within and among national cultures and literatures, as well as in the work of individual authors. Such studies focus on the production, circulation, and interpretation of meaning and value in a variety of discursive formations from literature and art to cultural performances and political economies. It confers MA and Ph.D. degrees.
University of Birmingham (UK), Department of Cultural Studies and Sociology
***The University of Birmingham's undergraduate major in media and cultural studies, offered through the department of cultural studies and sociology, offers a broad introduction to the shape of contemporary society (including its historical formation and the various lines of its possible future development), and to some key issues within it. These include, centrally, "mass" media and also other forms of cultural production, such as popular music, or public and private uses of photography. But we want to look as much or more at social groups and social divisions of class, of gender, of "race"; at the cultural and political forms which they generate; and at the ways we form meanings, prejudices, stereotypes, values and identities around and about them. We are also intrigued by the centrality of culture and by all the ways in which the term is used: we can refer to cultural institutions (museums, the British Council, the BBC); to high culture, mass culture, popular culture, women's culture, black culture, "enterprise" culture; to youth and other subcultures; to cultural production, cultural policies, cultural industries. The department offers a number of postgraduate programs, conferring both MA and Ph.D. degrees.
University of California/Davis (USA), Graduate Program in Cultural Studies
University of California/San Diego (USA), Department of Literature
University of California/Santa Cruz (USA), Center for Cultural Studies
***The Center for Cultural Studies at UCSC was founded in the Spring of 1988. Through an ensemble of research clusters, conferences, workshops, visiting scholars, publications, film series, and a Rockefeller Residency Program, the Center has encouraged a broad range of research in the rapidly evolving field of cultural studies. In 1995-96, the Center embarked upon a three-year project on Post-Marxism, Postsocialism, and Postcommunism. This project is designed to capture a range of intellectual, political, economic, and social phenomena consequent to the breakup of socialist regimes and decline of Marxist doctrine in the late twentieth century.
University of California/Santa Cruz (USA), History of Consciousness Program
***History of consciousness is an interdisciplinary graduate program centered in the humanities with links to the social sciences and arts. It is concerned with forms of human expression and social action as they are manifested in specific historical, cultural, and political contexts. The program stresses flexibility and originality. Interest is focused on problems rather than disciplines. Although students are prepared to teach in particular fields, the emphasis is on questions that traverse a number of different ones. Over its 30 years of existence, history of consciousness has won increasing recognition as a leader of interdisciplinary scholarship. Program graduates are prolific scholars at prominent universities, and recent dissertations are regularly published by major academic presses. Graduates currently find employment in a wide range of disciplines, including: literature, women's studies, science studies, anthropology, sociology, American studies, cultural studies, ethnic studies, communications, and philosophy.
University of Canterbury (Aotearoa/New Zealand), Department of Cultural Studies
University of East London (UK), Department of Cultural Studies
***The BA in cultural studies began in 1980 (while the institution was known as North East London Polytechnic), as a collaboration between the School of Education and Humanities and the Sociology Department; a separate Department of Cultural Studies was established in 1986. Its primary aim has been to offer an analysis of cultural processes and the power relations inscribed in them, but also to develop skills in communicating these insights in a variety of media. Its distinctiveness has been its strongly historicized version of cultural studies, offering an historical and theoretical understanding of mainly British culture. Since 1991, the department has offered an MA in cultural studies, and since 1996, an MA in Women's Studies as well.
University of Guelph (Canada), Centre for Cultural Studies
***Opened in January, 1996, the Centre for Cultural Studies is a research center that welcomes participation by faculty, students, and other members within and beyond the university. The Centre supports a wide range of activities that connect interdisciplinary cultural analyses with the larger community: colloquia, lecture series, talks, roundtable debates, reading groups, etc. It is particularly committed to developing collaborative scholarship and publication in the field through their seminars. These research groups currently focus on cultural studies pedagogies, cultural studies methodologies, jazz, and cultural memory. The Centre works to bridge the traditional gap between the "two cultures" of the Humanities and the Sciences and to foster cross-disciplinary collaboration.
University of Illinois/Urbana-Champaign (USA), Unit for Criticism and Interpretive Theory
***The Unit for Criticism and Interpretive Theory is an interdisciplinary program developed within both the Graduate College and the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Drawing upon the expertise and resources of nineteen humanities and social science departments, the Unit promotes a broad range of teaching, research, and related scholarly activities. Through designated courses, the ongoing work of the Faculty Criticism Seminar, regular exchanges of work in progress, a monthly colloquium, and visits to campus of distinguished scholars from other institutions, the Unit provides both students and faculty with an interdisciplinary vantage point for their own teaching and research. To graduate students enrolled in MA or Ph.D. programs in participating departments, the Unit also offers a formal program leading to advanced certification in criticism and interpretive theory.
University of Lisbon (Portugal), Department of English Studies
Information on the department's MA program in "Culture and Society" is available (via the link above) in both Portugeuse and English. There is also a degree course in "Communication and Culture," for which there is currently no information on the Web in English, but interested parties are encouraged to contact Alvaro Pina (alvaro.pina@sapo.pt or ferpi@mail.telepac.pt) for more information.
University of Massachusetts/Amherst (USA), Department of Communication
University of Melbourne (Australia), Cultural Studies Program
***The University of Melbourne, Faculty of Arts offers cultural studies programs at undergraduate and postgraduate levels. The program was established on the initiative of the Department of English in 1992. Specific appointments have been made to cultural studies and, as an interdepartmental program, it has involved scholars working in English, Art, History, History, Cinema Studies History, Women's Studies, Political Science, Criminology, and Philosophy. The undergraduate program allows students to complete a BA to Honors level. At a postgraduate level, the program offers both an MA and a Ph.D. in cultural studies.
University of Minnesota (USA), Department of Communication Studies
University of Minnesota (USA), Cultural Studies and Comparative Literature
***Cultural Studies and Comparative Literature (CSCL) offers interdisciplinary and cross-cultural studies of how varying modes of discourse (e.g., art, architecture, literature, music, philosophy, religion) are both rooted in and active within history, society, and culture. The objective is an improved understanding of the complex interrelation of ideas, values, social patterns, and material realities, with attention to the subtleties inherent within different styles of thought, genres of expression, cultural contexts, and historic moments. The Department of Cultural Studies and Comparative Literature offers both major and minor programs at the undergraduate level. In addition, we also offer two graduate school programs: Comparative Studies in Discourse and Society and Comparative Literature.
University of Natal (South Africa), Centre for Cultural and Media Studies
***The Centre for Cultural and Media Studies (CCMS) is the Southern African region's premier graduate research and educational unit in media studies. The staff, research, and publications of the Centre are internationally renowned and read, and its leading staff members have been visiting professors in a variety of universities all over the world. The Centre was established after the Soweto uprising of 1976, in order to develop strategies of cultural resistance through media and culture. The aim of the Centre was to teach critical media and cultural studies and to actively contribute to political change from inside the anti-apartheid coalition then known as the Mass Democratic Movement. Staff and students set out to develop theories and strategies to enable grassroots empowerment and local media and cultural development projects. The Centre offers courses of an interdisciplinary nature, calling on contributions for the faculties of Humanities, Social Science, Science, Architecture and Education.
University of North Carolina/Chapel Hill (USA), University Program in Cultural Studies
***As universities are facing new pressures and scholars are facing the complexities of a changing world, the field of cultural studies has gained both importance and visibility. No model has emerged as the dominant organization of cultural studies as either a research or pedagogical practice. The University Program in Cultural Studies is an interdisciplinary program with both curricular and scholarly resources and responsibilities at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Its goal is to encourage interdisciplinary research and education in cultural studies and to help produce a viable and flexible model for cultural studies and its role in the contemporary university by working closely with other and interdisciplinary programs. In addition to sponsoring an ongoing lecture series and annual conferences, the UPCS awards a BA and a graduate certificate in cultural studies.
University of Pittsburgh (USA), Program for Cultural Studies
***Created in the mid-1980s, The Program for Cultural Studies is an interdisciplinary program concerned with the dynamics of culture on a global scale. It incorporates faculty from most departments in the humanities and the social sciences, and from several professional schools in the University. It involves over ninety graduate students and one hundred faculty members who wish to work beyond the confines of existing departmental structures. Students who wish to apply to the program must be enrolled in a graduate or professional program at The University of Pittsburgh. The Master's Certificate in Cultural Studies is granted only after the completion of all degree requirements for the MA in the student's home department, school, or program; the Ph.D. Certificate can be awarded only after the student has been admitted to candidacy for the Ph.D.
University of Queensland (Australia), Media and Cultural Studies Centre
***The Media and Cultural Studies Centre was established in February 1995 to facilitate teaching and research in the study of media from a contemporary cultural studies perspective. Its aims include: (1) fostering collaborative research projects; (2) the encouragement of international exchanges and visits by researchers in the area; (3) the promotion of postgraduate study in the area of media and cultural studies within the department and within the University of Queensland generally, thereby attracting postgraduate students nationally and internationally; (4) raising the profile of the activities of academic staff and students in the media and cultural studies area; (5) the stewardship of the interdisciplinary media studies major; and (6) the sponsorship and development of the proposed Television Archive to be located at the University of Queensland.
University of Rochester (USA), Graduate Program in Visual and Cultural Studies
***An innovative graduate program with a unique emphasis on visual and cultural studies, Rochester's Graduate Program in Visual and Cultural Studies provides students with an opportunity to study critically and analyze culture from a social-historical perspective. The Program stresses the close interpretation of artistic production within historical and cultural frameworks. The Visual and Cultural Studies Program, housed in the Department of Art and Art History, offers students the chance to earn a master's or doctoral degree by doing intensive work simultaneously in several of Rochester's humanities departments. Because the primary faculty work in art and art history, film studies, and comparative literature, students are able to relate recent developments in literary and cultural theory to visual works, and to investigate the interrelationships between visual texts and critical theory. Students may also take courses in such departments as anthropology, history, music, and philosophy.
University of Southern California (USA), The Cultural Studies Collective
University of Strathclyde (UK), MLitt in British Cultural Studies [within the Department of English Studies]
University of Teesside (UK), BA (Honors) Degree Program in Cultural Studies
***Located in the University of Teesside's School of Law, Humanities, and International Studies, the BA (Honors) degree program in cultural studies was launched in October 1996. The planning and management of the course is provided by the English and Cultural Studies Subject Group alongside the BA (Honors) English degree. The aim of the cultural studies program at Teesside is, among other things, to: introduce students to the history, traditions, and methodologies of the academic discipline of cultural studies, and of the major academic disciplines that make up the cultural studies repertoire; prompt students to review and evaluate the assumptions, strengths, and blind spots of both the major academic disciplines that make up cultural studies and the project of cultural studies itself; and to enable students to become independent learners and future developers of their own intellects.
University of Tennessee (USA), Cultural Studies in Education Unit
***Cultural Studies in Education is a graduate unit that derives its intellectual identity and orientation from disciplines such as anthropology, history, philosophy, psychology, and sociology. The Unit offers concentrations at the master's degree level in Urban/Multicultural Education (Track II), Sociocultural Foundations of Sport, Social Foundations of Education, and Motor Behavior/Sport Psychology. The Ph.D. is also offered in all of these areas except Urban/Multicultural Education. Pending approval of the Graduate Council, M.S. and Ph.D. Concentrations will be added which are based more heavily on social theory and a blending of educational and sport studies.
University of Western Sydney (Australia), Research Centre for Intercommunal Studies
University of Wroclaw (Poland), MA Specialization in Cultural Studies
At present, cultural studies is taught as an MA specialization for 4th and 5th year students in English. The idea for the specialization was developed from the "British Studies" course run in English Departments in Poland, designed to "describe" and "explain" British life and institutions to Polish students. The most serious disadvantage of the previous model was its ignorance of the fact that British culture was being studied in Polish surroundings by Polish students who, well-aware of their own background, necessarily filtered the acquired material through their experience. Thus, the University of Wroclaw's MA Specialization in Cultural Studies has tried to turn this previously one-sided fascination into a "flirtation" between Polish and Anglo-Saxon cultural discourses through teaching, research, and conference initiatives.