The Graduate Certificate Program In Cultural Studies

What Is Cultural Studies at Stony Brook?

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. Cultural Studies augments a traditional focus on textual and aesthetic artifacts with its emphasis on culture in its social and material dimensions. Focus on elite and dominant culture, and on national cultures, is relativized by sustained attention to popular and mass culture, minority and diasporic cultures, subcultures, cross-cultural and transnational/global formations. Focus on poetry, novels, and paintings is put on more equal footing with the study of film, television, and new medias and genres. Cultural Studies mobilizes the study of earlier historical periods to gain leverage on categories that continue to shape our lives and worlds today.

As such, the Cultural Studies Certificate program is designed for 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 Program

The Graduate Certificate Program in Cultural Studies is administered through the Department of Comparative Literary and Cultural Studies (CLCS), in conjunction with the Humanities Institute at Stony Brook. The Certificate Program is open to students enrolled in any of Stony Brook's Ph.D. programs. M.A. students may be admitted on approval of the Graduate Studies Committee, which will advise students in tailoring the program to their specific needs. The Certificate will be awarded upon completion of the 15-credit sequence (normally two core courses and three electives), which may also be counted toward the Ph.D. in the student's home department. Students enrolled in the program may also have the opportunity to work as teaching assistants in undergraduate Cinema and Cultural Studies courses.

For more information, contact

Professor Krin Gabbard, Graduate Program Director
Department of Comparative Literary and Cultural Studies
SUNY Stony Brook
Stony Brook, NY 11794-3355
(631) 632-7460
kgabbard@notes.cc.sunysb.edu