The School of Interdisciplinary Studies offers several undregraduate and graduate degree programs. Our flagship Comparative Studies Ph.D. program has tracks in Cultures, Languages and Literatures (humanities) and Culture, Society and Politics (social sciences). These are designed as interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary courses of study that enable doctoral students to develop expertise within traditional disciplines and across disciplinary and cultural boundaries. Primary areas of strength for the CLL program include studies of literature and migration, rhetoric and composition, U.S. multiethnic literatures, early modern literatures, gender, sexuality and embodiment in literature, modernity and postmodernity in literature, space and place in literature, and postcolonial literature and culture. Primary areas of strength for the CSP program include studies of sociocultural and medical anthropology; bioarchaeology, ethnoarchaeology, zooarchaeology and primatology (anthropology); gender, agriculture, adulthood, adolescence, childhood, race, social class and economics (sociology); comparative politics, American politics, international relations, public policy and law, post-conflict resolution, democracy and democratization, political behavior and quantitative methods (political science). The curriculum in both programs also draws from many disciplines in the Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters and across the broader university. With accomplished faculty and Eminent Scholars, our program is proud to offer an innovative, rigorous, transdisciplinary course of study. Each year we offer to the most qualified candidates excellent teaching and research fellowships. Our faculty, students and staff collaborate in constructing an energetic, productive and pleasurable learning community.
