Note: This plan will not be available to students until 2011

The Minor in Critical and Cultural Theory brings together students and academics undertaking or teaching majors in a variety of disciplines: Sociology, Philosophy and various studies in culture (Literature, Film, Media, Performance, Music, Art Theory, Art History, Politics). The Minor emphasises the multiplicity of disciplinary approaches and the ways such disciplines speak to each other as well as the transdisciplinary theory that increasingly underpins various genres of cultural artefacts.

The academic content of the CCT Minor comprises a specific set of discourses developed and used to understand the culture of modernity: Marxism, Psychoanalysis, Semiotics, Structuralism and Post-Structuralism, German Critical Theory, its philosophical antecedents and their legacy in Feminism, Postmodernism and Gender and Queer Theory. Emphasis will be given both to understanding the socio-political and historical specificity of various strands of cultural and critical theory, as well as the function of such theory in the examination of cultural artefacts.

The subject-specific aims of the BA Minor in CCT are:

1. To rigorously examine the key theoretical discourses that comprise and inform the literature of ‘cultural’ studies.

2. to provide arts students with the opportunity to gain a coherent knowledge of the core theoretical issues that inform the humanities and social sciences as they have been developed in critical theory, continental philosophy and the other theoretical approaches to modernity.

3. to consolidate and broaden understanding of the relation between politics, social theory, the history of philosophy and aesthetics.

4. to provide an introduction to the history of ideas, illustrating the transdisciplinary resonances and tensions between cultural analysis and political and social analysis.

A student who wishes to gain a Minor in Critical and Cultural Theory must complete 36 units of credit including 6 uoc at Level 1, at least 12 uoc at Level 2 and at least 12 uoc at Level 3.

Level 2 offers electives covering aspects of cultural history and politics, studies in gender and difference, philosophy of art and aesthetics, German Critical Theory and its heritage and structuralism and post-structuralism.

Level 3 courses cover key issues and debates in semiotics, critical race theory, colonialism and postcolonialism, psychoanalysis and culture, philosophies of difference and visual theory. The capstone course will involve students in a cultural internship program aiming to reflect on the relationship between cultural theory and cultural practice.