The course is intended to: 1) help you develop strength in one or two new methods; 2) develop your basic literacy in a wide range of fields; and 3) lay additional groundwork for a cross-disciplinary community of scholarship at Pitt.

The course is free-standing, but it also has links to an interdisciplinary research project, the World-Historical Dataverse (www.dataverse.pitt.edu), which is working to create a world-historical data resource. Students who complete this course will be considered for graduate research assistantships in that project in 2012-13.

*New* course in Cultural Studies (category B)

CLST 2006: Special Topics in Cultural Studies

Interdisciplinary Methodology

1:30-4:00pm Wednesdays

2201 WWPH

Patrick Manning (HIST)

Andrew W. Mellon Professor of World History

This is a course in interdisciplinary theory and methods for graduate students who have achieved substantial strength in an academic discipline—in the social sciences, humanities and arts, natural sciences, or information sciences—and who wish to develop strength in an additional discipline and in the interplay of disciplines. Each student will read to prepare collaborative presentations describing key aspects of two disciplines; develop statements on the frameworks, assumptions, links, parallels, and contradictions of various theories; and prepare a major paper on a previously unfamiliar methodology. Each discipline will be discussed at an introductory level, but the exercise of comparing and connecting disciplines will require advanced conceptualization. The course works in association with a practical research project to develop a world-historical dataset containing systematic, worldwide data on selected variables and topics.

Course Objectives

The overall objective of this interdisciplinary graduate course is to encourage the development of a multidisciplinary academic discourse at Pitt, particularly emphasizing global perspectives, in which interested graduate students and faculty members participate, under the aegis of the Global Studies Center. The specific course objectives are:

• To introduce students to a wide range of disciplines, theories, and methods. Discussion is to include the framework, data, method, and analysis for each.
• To enable Individual students to develop substantial strength in a new discipline and method of their choice.
• To compare and contrast the various disciplines, seeking out links and parallels among them.
• To consider the possibility of creating a global historical dataset reflecting many of these disciplines.

>>Return to the Cultural Studies main page

>>See all Cultural Studies courses