Requirements

1. Basic to the curriculum is the Culture and Theory three-quarter core course sequence, Culture and Theory 200 A,B,C, which will be offered every year. These core courses will serve to lay a solid foundation in critical and cultural theories, their philosophical genealogies and institutional histories and interdisciplinary methodologies. The core sequence will also provide the space for an intellectual coherence and cohort building for CT graduate students who will be taking most of their other courses in supporting departments and programs.

2. Seven additional theoretical courses drawn from sets of offerings in IDPs, Critical Theory Emphasis, and Departments, including Humanities 270 and 260.  One of these courses must be focused on research methods. Working closely with a faculty advisor and committee, students will set up a coherent course of study related to one or more of the areas explored in the core courses. Typically the seven courses will revolve around a set of theoretical problems, e.g. feminist theory and practice, critical race studies, sexualities, Postcolonialism, transnational circuits, globalization, theorizing the political, philosophical debates on ethics, the intersections of visuality and textuality, to name a few.

The theoretical Problem courses are centered on the philosophical and theoretical approaches that form the basis of much work in critical, cultural and social theory regarding race, gender and sexuality studies.

3. Six courses on a focused area of study.  This might include concentrations within and across a Department, within the Critical Theory Emphasis, or in an IDP.  In the latter case, students will take the dedicated core courses of a graduate Emphasis as well as Departmental courses approved for the Emphasis.  Students could also choose to work on a coherent area of focused study devised with their advisor. The Focused area of study courses address a particular field in which these theories have been applied, as well as a focus on groups, nations, regions: such as globalization, racism and the welfare state, diasporas of particular kinds, human rights, anti-colonial resistance movements in particular regions, Muslim women and questions of the veil, the Harlem Renaissance, Asian American feminism, modernity and race.   

4. CT 210 First year students will take this 1 –unit course every quarter for the first year. As part of this course, students are required to attend seminars and colloquia (to be decided in consultation with the graduate advisor) at the university.

5. One individual study, CT 280. Students will take CT 280 during the second year with their faculty advisor.  In this independent study, they will expand and develop a seminar paper into a Master’s paper. 

6. Students will be Teaching Assistants or Teaching Associates in a Humanities or Social Science Department or an IDP, or participate in Humanities Out There of the proposed Mentored Teaching Internships in community colleges for a total of at least three quarters.  They will also be required to take the Teaching Seminar and workshops associated with the course in which they teach.

7. In their third and fourth years, students will take a 1-unit research and prospectus seminar, CT 290, to enable a systematic progress towards the dissertation.

Master’s paper:  During their second year, students will work with their faculty advisor to expand and develop a seminar paper into a Master’s paper.  Upon completion of the paper, the faculty advisor and two other core faculty members will participate in an assessment of student’s work to date.

Qualifying exam:  Students will work with a committee to draw up reading lists and head notes on four topics, three of them relating to the major areas of study outlined in the 200 core course series, and one of them relating to the area of disciplinary or focused study as it pertains to Culture and Theory.
 Students will then write responses to two-four exam questions and then take an oral exam.  The exam committee would include two members from the student’s discipline of concentration or focused area of study, of which one will be outside the CT Program, and three members from the Program, chosen with careful attention to match fields of interest of the student with the expertise of the faculty members. 

Dissertation: Dissertation topic should be drawn from specialization from focused area of study, chosen in consultation with the Graduate Advisor and Executive Committee, students will draw up their dissertation committees, which must each consist of at least two members from the Core Faculty in the Program whose interests match the topic chosen for the thesis.  The dissertation committee must also include an outside member, who is not a core member of the Culture and Theory program. This committee member may be drawn from Humanities, Arts, or Social Sciences faculty at UCI, from other UC programs, from an outside university.  Students must also prepare a formal written prospectus to be approved by the Dissertation Committee. Dissertations must be approved by the students’ dissertation committees and submitted to the Executive Committee.

Language/Symbolic Systems Requirement:  By the time they qualify for candidacy, students must demonstrate through course work or examination the ability to do research in either:  2 ancient or modern languages (other than English).  Students may be able to petition to have expertise in statistics, mathematics, or computer science replace one of these language requirements if the student has achieved appropriate proficiency and if the work can be shown to be clearly relevant to their field.

Time to Degree: Normal time to degree will be 6 years, including three years to candidacy, and three years in candidacy.  This may be different for those coming in with a M.A. and for those who are given credit for courses taken elsewhere.