Application deadline: January 15, 2019
The fields of communication and cultural studies have a long
and storied connection, going back to the seminal work of Stuart Hall and James
W. Carey. Some of our most important media scholars in recent years have been
inspired by, and have extended, cultural studies scholarship, including Andrea
Press and Laurie Ouellette.
But did you know that George Mason University in Fairfax,
Virginia (just outside of Washington, D.C.) has a longstanding PhD program in
Cultural Studies? So if you know any MA students who are looking for a strong
interdisciplinary PhD program in cultural studies, please do let them know about
Mason’s program.
The Mason program is the oldest of its kind in the U.S. It
is designed to augment traditional disciplinary training in the humanities and
social sciences at the MA level with a rigorous training in cultural studies
methodology. Even though the program is steeped in the traditions of cultural
studies as the field has emerged in the UK, the US, and elsewhere, we remain
constantly critical of those traditions and our aim is not fidelity to any
particular strand. Instead, our mission is to train students in the skills
needed to engage critically and flexibly with the current cultural and
political conjuncture and to generate politically useful knowledge, by
formulating and honing a specifically cultural studies approach.
Thus, our core curriculum offers coursework in political
economy and Marxian theory, gender and sexuality, social institutions,
postcoloniality, visual culture, science and
technology, as well as histories of cultural studies methods and methodologies.
Over the life of the program we have graduated close to 90
students and most of those who looked for academic positions have been
successful. Our alumni have secured academic appointments in a wide range of
universities, both in the U.S. and abroad.
Those who have not chosen an academic path have found their
degree useful for employment at non-profits and cultural and policy
institutions. We have alumni who work in the US State Department, the
Smithsonian, the Inter-University Program for Latino Research, the American
Council on Education, and one was recently made Director of the Palestinian
Museum in Ramallah.
Many of our alumni have become—and continue to
become—visible and influential scholars. As an example, a few recent alumni
book publications over the last couple of years underscore the variety of our
program’s production, and also its high level of achievement:
Fan Yang, Faked in China: National Branding, Counterfeit
Culture, and Globalization. Indiana UP. 2016.
Robert Gehl, Weaving the Dark Web: Legitimacy on Freenet,
Tor, and I2P. MIT Press, 2018. 0262038269
Kristin Scott, The Digital City and Mediated Urban
Ecologies. Palgrave, 2016. 3319391720
Leah Perry, The Cultural Politics of US Immigration: Gender,
Race, and Media. NYU Press, 2016.
Sean Andrews, Hegemony, Mass Media, and Cultural Studies:
Properties of Meaning, Power, and Value in Cultural Production. Rowman &
Littlefield, 2016.
Olga Herrera, American Interventions and Modern Art in South
America. U. Press of Florida, 2017.
Donna Hope, Reggae Stories: Jamaican Musical Legends and
Cultural Legacies. U. West Indies P, 2018.
There's a lot more to our program than can be described in
the brief compass of this email. For further information, please consult our
web site: description of Cultural Studies: https://culturalstudies.gmu.edu/
For admission information, please see: https://culturalstudies.gmu.edu/apply
Our admissions deadline is January 15, 2019.
And please contact the program director, Denise Albanese
(dalbanes@gmu.edu) if you or your students would like to discuss the program,
visit campus to meet students or faculty, or request further information.
Best,
Tim Gibson
Department of Communication
Member, Executive Committee, Cultural Studies PhD program
George Mason University
Fairfax, Virginia 222030
tgibson1@gmu.edu
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