This past week the College of Social Studies (CSS) has begun its recruitment process. You may have noticed the “it’s more than a major” posters, read the Wespeak last Friday, or maybe you plan on attending one of the information sessions. As a senior in CSS, I wanted to present my views of the major for freshmen who might be considering it.
CSS offers knowledge, skills, and community, as does any major. The curriculum is based around modernity: how capitalism, democracy, and the nation-state became prevailing institutions in the West. Sophomore year focuses on modernity through philosophy, history, government, and economics. Junior year is supposed to focus on post-1945 non-western countries. It was my experience that the junior tutorials proposed non-western countries follow the western development model. The junior colloquium focuses on social inquiry to what capacity we can study the discipline of the social sciences. The final senior colloquium asked the question: to what extent capitalism and democracy can be applied to countries outside of Western Europe. It was my experience that Western Europe is always used as a point of reference even when not studying Western Europe.
When talking about the skills CSS offers, one often thinks of “the college of suicidal sophomores.” Sophomore year is very intense: it made me physically ill, I had anxiety dreams all summer on Thursday nights, and it took a semester of debauchery in Eastern Europe to recover. That said, I now feel like I can handle any workload. Through this oftentimes hellish year, you learn to process a lot of material very quickly and hone your writing skills. Small, discussion oriented classes allow student to learn how to participate in academic conversations. I learned to write short papers very well and have become more comfortable talking in academic settings. However, there is not a strong research element to the major, there is not a strong emphasis on longer research papers and there is no methodology class requirement (e.g. historiography, ethnographic studies, sociological analysis, economic-statistics, etc.).
Lastly, CSS offers a sense of community. CSS is nice because you are always with the same students with whom you feel comfortable speaking. There are weekly lunch lectures, scheduled social times, and a bi-annual banquet and speaker. There is a strong sense of community with other people in your class mostly facilitated in the wee hours of the morning in PAC Lab.
While I have gained much from CSS, I am only partially happy with my major. While the multi-disciplinary approach to social studies is unique it is a western-centric multi-disciplinary approach. Postmodern and critical studies are not incorporated into the major, as of now. Currently, there is a student-initiated proposal (with support from the faculty chair) to change the junior class structure to move away from a modernity model. The junior colloquium would provide a postmodern critique to the concept of modernity through feminist theory, critical race theory, queer theory, post-colonial studies, and radical political economic theory. There is also a suggestion to require junior tutorials to have a stronger research element and enforce the non-western, post-1945 content (that was not adhered to this year in the history tutorial).
Such a change in the structure of the major would offer a more complete knowledge and skill base to CSS: it would provide both an understanding of the modern world and offer a critique of the modern world, and students would learn to write short analytical essays and longer research papers. However, such changes have not yet been implemented. If you are a freshman, and such changes in the major are important to you, I suggest asking questions at the information that will induce a departmental change in the curriculum.
CSS is a unique major in that course selections (apart from a small choice junior year) are set. Understand that you set your class schedule from sophomore year to senior year. If you go abroad and write a thesis, you can only take 8 courses outside of CSS curriculum, and you must fulfill GenEds. Lastly, CSS is highly theory based and conceptually oriented. If you are interested in an interdisciplinary major focusing more on regional studies (e.g. LAST) or critical/topical studies (e.g. WMST, AMST), I suggest further researching your options.
The CSS curriculum is currently incomplete and frustrating. I often jokingly/sadly tell my friends I majored in “the man.” Structural curriculum changes to the major would have left me with an entirely different experience, probably very positive. I urge interested students to ask questions about curriculum renewal during the information session. I also urge freshman to consider what their academic goals are before applying and seek out multiple opinions to interdisciplinary scholarship.
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