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Master of Arts
MACotermOverview
Modern Thought and Literature (MTL) is an interdisciplinary humanities graduate program advancing the study of critical issues in the modern world. Since 1971, MTL students have helped redefine the cutting edge of many interdisciplinary fields and reshape how disciplinary scholarship is understood and practiced. MTL graduates are leaders in fields such as American studies, ethnic studies, film studies, social and cultural studies, women’s studies, and English and comparative literature.
The program trains students to understand the histories and methods of disciplines and to test their assumptions. It considers how disciplines shape knowledge and, most importantly, how interdisciplinary approaches reshape objects of study. MTL students produce innovative analyses of diverse texts, forms, and practices, including literature, history, philosophy, anthropology, law, and science; film, visual arts, popular culture, and performance; and material culture and technology.
Each student constructs a unique program of study suited to their research. Students have focused on such areas as gender and sexuality; race and ethnicity; science, technology, and medicine; media and performance; legal studies; and critical and social theory. The program’s affiliated faculty are drawn from fields throughout the humanities and humanistic social sciences, as well as from education and law. As interdisciplinary study is impossible without an understanding of the disciplines under consideration, each student is expected to master literary analysis methods and gain a foundation in a second field or discipline.
