collageInformation about Area & Cultural Studies Degrees
Area studies comprise all fields of a society from a certain geographic spot. Research in this field usually involves social sciences combined with humanities, with aspects such as the diaspora community and emigration. Meanwhile, cultural studies focus on perspectives and practices in certain cultures from Asian, African, American or Latin regions, and pay a special attention to ideology, class structures, ethnics, generations and other important factors.
Students in a Bachelor’s programme in area and cultural studies can choose an international university and specialize in one of the main civilizations or study abroad and learn more about the roots of that local culture. Students will develop international cultural sensibilities, an open mind to what makes a culture unique, but also similar to others, as well as find new ways of effective communication.
Area and cultural studies is a discipline that constantly blends theory with research, in order to understand the meaning that humans give to the world around them. Graduates have high chances of becoming analysts of the society, sociologists, marketing specialists, teachers or lecturers, in the public or private environment.
Program Overview
Cultural Studies is an emphatically interdisciplinary area of inquiry that intersects the humanities, science studies, the social sciences and the arts. Its researchers theorize the forces that shape the lived reality of people in the 21st century. Drawing on a range of practices, researchers investigate values, beliefs and belongings, cultural processes and cultural objects, economic and social relations, institutions and identities. What distinguishes Cultural Studies from other approaches to the study of culture is its recognition that no single disciplinary approach can get at the complexity of cultural forms and its emphasis on power, social justice and social change. As one of the only Cultural Studies program in Canada with a project option, Cultural Studies at Queen’s (CSQ) is a unique program that integrates the range of theoretical approaches used within Cultural Studies, and that fosters scholarship in both historical and contemporary fields of research.
Opportunities
Cultural Studies offers opportunities to break down conventional divisions between academia and activism, between theoretical critique and cultural production. Necessarily self-reflexive, Cultural Studies draws on a range of methods and critical theories. Comprising 89 distinguished faculty from 22 disciplines to offer an innovative program at the M.A. and Ph.D. levels, CSQ is committed to a diversity of students and faculty and to the global expertise that they bring to the cultural and academic fields.
Career paths – employment opportunities
Professional work in fields related to the study of culture, including work in the media, non-profit agencies, museums, galleries, publishing houses and social policy agencies. The objective of the Ph.D. program is also to prepare candidates for careers in teaching and research. Our graduates will have acquired a broad knowledge of research in their area of study and will have the ability to design and teach courses in that area.
Want a chance to get to know Cultural Studies?
Join us for a brief webinar on November 26th at 3pm EST, to find out about our PhD in Cultural Studies.–Degrees Offered/Method of Completion
Degrees Offered
M.A.: 2 years full time (part time also available)
Ph.D.: 4 years full time (part time also available)
Method of Completion
M.A. Pattern I: 4 full-term courses + CUST-802 + 20,000-25,000 word thesis or a major project.
M.A. Pattern II: 6 full-term courses + CUST-802+10,000-12,000 research essay or a minor project.
Ph.D.: 4 full-term courses in the first year, including two required core courses; plus CUST-802, a qualifying exam; thesis proposal exam; thesis or project–Supervision
We encourage students to identify an area of research interest and contact potential supervisors before applying. A potential supervisor must be assigned before an admission offer is made – we work with over 100 faculty from across the fine arts, humanities, social sciences and natural sciences. Our faculty have indicated that they are particularly interested in recruiting new MA and PhD students in the following research areas.–Funding, Academic Prerequisites & Deadline
Funding Information
M.A.: Minimum $12,000
Ph.D.: Minimum $18,000
We encourage you to apply for additional funding through external scholarships (SSHRC, OGS, etc.). Entering graduate students who win federal government tri-council awards are automatically provided a $5,000 (for M.A) or $10,000 (for PhD ) top-up award by Queen’s.
Please visit the Funding section of the Cultural Studies website for more funding opportunities.
Academic Prerequisites
M.A.: Four-year bachelor’s degree in a related program from a recognized university. Academic average of at least a B+
Ph.D.: Master’s degree in Cultural Studies or a related discipline from a recognized university. Academic average of at least an A .
Application Requirements
- Two official transcripts for any degrees earned outside of Queen’s
- Two letters of recommendation: Please note that referees listed on your online application will receive the link to Queen’s online recommendation form after you submit your application
- A Statement of Interest outlining your research interests, why you consider the Cultural Studies a good fit for your research, and which faculty you have been in touch with as potential supervisors
- An academic writing sample, preferably a short research essay (approximately 10 pages) in PDF format
- A Curriculum Vitae when applying for a Doctoral degree
- A list of current courses
Test Requirements
For international students, if required, a TOEFL total score of at least 600 (paperbased) or TOEFL iBT minimum scores of: writing (24/30; speaking (22/30); reading (22/30); listening (20/30), for
total of 88/120. Applicants must have the minimum score in each test as well as the minimum overall score. Please review “Step 3” of the Queen’s application process on English Language requirements.
Key Dates and Deadlines
Application Deadline: 31 January to qualify for funding–Learning Outcomes
Degree Level Expectations – MA & PhD (206 KB)–Explore our new “Cultural Studies Grad Maps” and start mapping your future with Queen’s
Master of Arts in Cultural Studies
Graduate Studies
The Master of Arts in Cultural Studies provides opportunities to explore culture and the arts as part of a social, economic and political environment. The educational objective of the program is to train graduate students to conduct research that reflects an interdisciplinary understanding of culture.
The M.A. in Cultural Studies is a degree with two currently approved specializations: 1) Texts and Cultures and 2) Curatorial Practices.
Students in both specializations will have an opportunity to take courses drawn from six related areas:
Cultural Theory
Cultural Studies is an important site for the fostering of critical thinking about the social and political significance of cultural objects, forms, and processes. Studies in this field question dominant assumptions and engage with important cultural controversies, especially around questions of value and the distribution of power and authority. Materialist and inter-art theories provide important lenses for work in the field and focus critical questions about the production, consumption, and distribution of texts. The study of theory facilitates an understanding of the dynamics between text and culture, individual and society, and generates insight into how social differences such as race, ethnicity, class, and gender shape and unsettle cultural production and consumption. Such study also inevitably raises the question of the relationship between “cultural theory” and “critical theory,” variously argued to be aspects or allies of one another, occupying different spaces of critique and practice.
Cultures of Childhood
The subject category of “the child” has been central to cultural discourses in Europe and European settler societies since at least the Enlightenment, and has been variously used to secure definitions of class, family, nation, history, and the modern individual. Discourses of childhood provided terms and figures through which colonizing nations represented and constructed their others, at the same time as colonial encounters challenged and shaped understandings of the child. In contemporary culture, the idea of “the child” is employed in debates about sexuality and gender, ethnicities and race, consumerism and citizenship. These discussions are intensified by the increasing connectivity of a world linked by information technologies. The study of Cultures of Childhood in a department of literature investigates these historical and contemporary cultural discourses through consideration of texts that use the figures of “the child,” “the boy,” and “the girl” as important rhetorical strategies; texts directed to children and adolescents; and texts produced by young people. Such texts include not only print texts, but also Internet texts, films, TV texts, texts of material culture such as toys and video games, as well as oral texts such as family stories and schoolyard games. Studying texts designed for young readers, in particular, allows for theoretical investigations into the manufacture of consent in liberal democratic cultures.
Gender, Sexualities, and Culture
Gender and sexuality are foundational to our understanding of self and world, private and public, and personal and political. Over the past three decades, feminism, gender studies and queer theory have had a profound impact on the way in which we analyze literature, film and other forms of cultural production. Feminist and queer theorists have played a central role in the continued development of cultural theory, especially in the areas of psychoanalysis, film theory and visual culture, semiotics, phenomenology, and discourse analysis. Students in this area of study will explore the relationship between feminist theory, queer theory, and literary and cultural production; the impact of queer theory on contemporary understandings of sex, gender and sexuality; the continued relevance of feminism and feminist theory to questions of gender and sexuality; and the development and circulation of terms such as “homosexual” and “heterosexual” and concepts such as “masculine” and “feminine,” categories that have a fundamental impact on how we organize and understand cultures, subjectivities, and knowledges.
Local, National, and Global Cultures
Canada has been profoundly affected by transnational and post-national cultural discourses, particularly post colonialism and globalization theories. At the same time, there has been a burgeoning academic interest in Canadian and Aboriginal literatures, which are often local in their context and production, and sometimes nationalist in their perspectives and concerns. Paradoxically, then, English literary and cultural studies today are global as well as national and local. Topics of enquiry include the implications of globalization for Canadian and Aboriginal texts and identities; the potential for dialogue and collaboration across nations and cultures; the ways in which local histories and contexts engender different relations to the global; and the language of human rights. This area of focus involves the study of literary and cultural production, circulation, and consumption, and will draw on perspectives developed by diasporic theory, postcolonial theory, anti-racist theory, and others. It takes an approach to the study of literature and culture that bridges human rights and citizenship studies, globalization studies, environmental studies, Aboriginal studies, labour studies, media and communications studies, women’s and gender studies, and peace and conflict studies, among others.
Manuscript, Print, and Digital Cultures
In recent years, an explosion of digital media and the resulting shifts in cultural paradigms have ignited a popular and scholarly interest in the complex relationship between manuscript/print and cultural production. The modes of producing and transmitting written texts – manual, typographic, and electronic – have profoundly influenced a wide range of cultures, subcultures, and communities. Not surprisingly, an enquiry into the nature and constitution of manuscript, print, and digital culture drawing on methodological approaches from different disciplines has already established itself as its own dynamic field of study. This field now encompasses a wide research terrain, including theoretical debates over aesthetics and culture, archiving and public memory, oral texts and writing, popular cultures and reading publics. The study of manuscript, print, and digital cultures encourages approaches from a variety of fields to consider legal questions about copyright and censorship; technological practices of manual, industrial, and digital publishing; sociological analyses of book production, distribution and consumption; and communications studies of media institutions. This area of focus will enable students to investigate the development of manuscript/print media as culture-forming technologies and also consider the emergence and influence of related media such as photography, film, radio, television, and the internet. It will develop a heightened awareness of how manuscript, print, and digital cultures are shaped by historical and contemporary struggles over technologies and marketplaces, aesthetic value and cultural authority, and various local, national, and global contexts.
Visual Cultures
Among the various forms of inquiry that Cultural Studies has impelled in recent years is the area of visual cultures. A central interest in the field of visual cultures is the study of images and representation, drawing on approaches from art history and film studies, cultural and literary studies, and theories of performativity. The field of visual cultures examines the cultural construction of the visual in the arts, media, and everyday life, and encourages critical engagement with various theories of seeing. Possible topics of investigation include comics and graphic narratives; illustrated books; film, television, and internet narratives; historical and contemporary visual and/or performing arts; and the history of collecting and museums.
This MA program will enable graduates to pursue further studies and careers in teaching, public service, communications, and cultural industries.
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