Your path: Purpose of Cultural Studies
The Purpose
of Cultural & Historical Studies
The Birth of Cultural Studies
Cultural studies emerged as an academic discipline about 50 years ago as a response to society's increasing demand to better understand the rapid changes occurring on a global and local scale.
The two World Wars, the independence of colonized peoples, Civil Rights' movements, the Cold War and major advancements in technology and media profoundly shook the authority of the traditional disciplines in academia.
Because traditional disciplines were not always able to address such emerging issues as feminism, class, race, ethnicity, nation, media, popular culture, historical identity and film, cultural studies was born from within the academy as a way to ask in new ways the most relevant and vital questions of its time.
While it continues to embody a reverence for the rich literary, historical and philosophical tradition of the West, it understands that this past must be read through a lens that is politically and ethically sensitive to the myriad complexities of contemporary life.
History and Social Philosophy
Integral to the discipline of cultural studies is the study of history and social philosophy.
The Cultural and Historical Studies program at Marylhurst has combined the disciplines of cultural studies with history and philosophy to create a multidisciplianary approach in order to enable students to explore how social, political, ethical and economic issues of the present are shaped by the past – and how our study of the past is influenced by the present.