Participating Departments and Programs

A number of faculty from key interdisciplinary programs and departments are participating to offer courses and faculty for this graduate Program.

They are as follows:

African American Studies Program

The undergraduate major and minor in African American Studies is comparative and transnational, ranging across the Caribbean and Central, North, and South Americas, with a particular interest in the development of African-derived communities in the United States. The course of study investigates the aesthetics, the histories, and the intellectual as well as vernacular traditions of these African-derived communities.
The concern is the counter-histories and counter-practices generated and cultivated by the millions of persons trafficked in the international slave trade in their efforts to establish viable psychological, communal, and expressive formations within a situation of displacement and diasporia. The focus of the curriculum, then, is one of the longest standing cultural and intellectual critical traditions in the “democratic” history of the modern West, as well as one of the most vibrant centers of expressive practice in the history of the Western hemisphere.

http://www.humanities.uci.edu/afam/

Department of Asian American Studies

The Department of Asian American Studies (formerly the Interdisciplinary Studies Program, since 1991) offers an undergraduate major, minor, and a graduate emphasis in Asian American Studies.  Faculty with interdisciplinary expertise in Asian American Studies also have affiliations with departments in the School of Humanities, Social Sciences, Social Ecology and Arts.  The Department offers more than thirty courses annually with an enrollment of over two thousand students.  Strong student interest is demonstrated in large enrollments in diverse courses such as Asian American Film and Video, Asian American Women, Asian American Literature, Politics of Protest, Asian American Labor, Vietnamese American Experience, Chinatowns in American Society, Ethnic Food and Ethnic Identity, Asian American Race Relations, among others.
http://www.humanities.uci.edu/aas/

Chicano and Latino Studies Program

The Chicano/Latino Studies Program is designed to provide undergraduate students with an opportunity to examine the historical and contemporary experiences of Americans of Latin American origin.  This diverse population includes people who trace their heritage to Mexico, Cuba, Puerto Rico, El Salvador, Guatemala, Nicaragua, and many other Latin American and Caribbean nations.

The Curriculum seeks to provide an awareness, knowledge, and appreciation of the language, history, culture, literature, sociology, anthropology, politics, social ecology, health, medicine, and creative (art, dance, drama, film, music) accomplishments in Chicano/Latino communities.  The Department offers a B.A. degree in Chicano/Latino Studies, a minor, and a graduate emphasis.

http://www.socsci.uci.edu/clstudies/index.html

Critical Theory Emphasis

The Critical Theory Emphasis (CTE) graduate program is the curricular arm of UCI's Critical Theory Institute (CTI). Scholars of Critical Theory explore and develop theoretical models to analyze and critique cultural forms from literature and art to more general systems of information, social relations, and symbolic categories of race, gender, and ethnic identity. The goal of the CTE is to promote the study of shared assumptions, problems, and commitments of the various discourses in the arts, humanities and social sciences.

The CTE and CTI draw on the most prominent scholars of critical theory as measured by our national and international reputation, the prominence of the faculty, and our ability to attract graduate students and post-doctoral scholars from around the world. Some of the world's most erudite scholars of Critical Theory who have been affiliated with UCI include Murray Krieger, J. Hillis Miller, Etienne Balibar, Jean Francoise Lyotard, and Wolfgang Iser. As a result, UCI is known nationally and internationally as an institution with particular expertise and stature in critical theory. This distinction has defined the special character of the Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences at UCI and has contributed to UCI's national reputation for scholarly excellence.

Designed to provide an institutional framework for teaching critical theory, the CTE is responsible for organizing advanced theory seminars and for administering the Emphasis program requirements. An emphasis in Critical Theory, under the supervision of the Critical Theory Committee, is available for graduate students in all departments, including M.A. and M.F.A. candidates.

http://www.humanities.uci.edu/cte/about/about.html

Department of Women’s Studies

UCI's Departmetn of Women's Studies is dedicated to the study of women, gender, and sexuality in their complex articulation with race, ethnicity, class, and nationality in a transnational framework. The Program's goal is to foster both critical and creative analysis of the various disciplinary perspectives--historical, political, economic, representational, technological, and scientific--that have (or not have) constituted women, gender, and sexuality as objects of study. By emphasizing a rigorous interdisciplinary perspective in their teaching and research, the Women's Studies faculty seek to produce new knowledge about the meanings of social movements and social divisions based on gender, race, class, caste, nationality, religion, ethnicity and sexuality, and to equip students with a range of analytical and methodological skills.

http://www.humanities.uci.edu/WomensStudies/