Where Worlds Meet: About the Cultural Studies Program
The Cultural Studies Program, established in the year 2000, is an interdisciplinary program at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem run jointly by the Faculty of Humanities and the Faculty of Social Sciences. The Program is a leader in the field of cultural criticism, creating a dynamic scholarly and intellectual arena for investigating contemporary cultural complexity.
The Cultural Studies Program is the only program in the country that combines issues and methodologies drawn from both the Humanities and the Social Sciences to foster daring critical perspectives. The Program advances groundbreaking agendas of study and research, connecting disciplinary worlds that rarely intersect elsewhere. The Program is not concerned with merely breaking down boundaries between disciplines but rather seeks to bring worlds together and to create dialogues between new and old areas of knowledge.
Every year, the program offers a range of cutting-edge core courses, focusing on questions including space, migration, emotions and affect, power relations, and cultural change. Likewise, it addresses issues related to visual and digital culture, consumer culture, popular culture, and more.
The Program attracts students from a wide range of disciplines in the Humanities and Social Sciences as well as graduates of art academies, in addition to professionals and social activists engaged in a variety of areas, from education to architecture. Many of the Program’s graduates continue on to further studies overseas or find positions in leading academic and cultural institutions in Israel and around the world, aided by the support that the Program offers.
In recent years, the Program has created unique research and study frameworks that promote an array of formats for advanced interdisciplinary research. These include the “Chevruta in Cultural Studies” (study sessions in small groups modelled on traditional Jewish learning formats to facilitate both independent and joint inquiry), our internship program, occasional laboratories and the ongoing departmental seminar.
The Program is open to BA graduates with a degree in the Humanities or Social Sciences, graduates of art programs, and professionals from various fields, among them education, architecture, or law. It suits anyone who is eager to analyze social and cultural phenomena from a critical perspective or is interested in advancing an individual intellectual project that does fit easily into the constraints of with traditional disciplinary units. The Program brings together different worlds and constitutes a platform for mutual inspiration among graduates of sociology and anthropology, literature and theater, communications or history, philosophy or geography, well as graduates of special programs such as Amirim (Interdisciplinary Honors Program in the Humanities), PPE (Philosophy, Politics, and Economics), MBA, or history of art, graduates of the Bezalel Academy for Arts and Design, Shenkar College of Engineering, Design and Art, or colleges such as Sapir, Beit Berl and more.
Further information about the program and its content can be found on our Facebook page.