The Ph.D. Program in Cultural Studies is an interdisciplinary and interdepartmental program based in the Department of Comparative Literary and Cultural Studies. The program treats culture as inseparable from its historical, social, political, economic and technological dimensions and, as such, works to reorient traditional humanities disciplines.

The Cultural Studies Program at Stony Brook is designed for students of modern and contemporary cultures 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, subcultures, cross-cultural and transnational/global formations, as well as the study of elite, dominant, and national cultures. Course requirements are designed to build competence in interdisciplinary Cultural Studies theory and practice, maximize collegial interaction among students, and allow students to develop disciplinary fluency in a particular subfield.

The Comparative Literary and Cultural Studies Department's strengths lie primarily in comparatist and cross-cultural studies, critical theory, and cinema and media studies, as reflected in the Department's popular undergraduate major in Cinema and Cultural Studies. Competence in one or more foreign languages has also long been considered essential to the department's mission. A network of affiliated faculty represent a wide range of areas in disciplines including Africana studies, art history, English, European and Hispanic languages, history, music, philosophy, and women's studies. Prospective students are encouraged to examine the list of faculty to see whether their own interests may be served by the current faculty cohort.