Graduate Studies at USC

CSLC graduate students build foundational skills around methodology, literary, media, and cultural studies taking the core courses, while taking elective courses in their desired areas of emphasis to prepare them to engage in their future dissertation research.  Students are able to take courses in the departments of English, French and Italian, Latin American and Iberian cultures,  East Asian literatures and cultures, cinema and media studies, art history, critical studies, gender and sexuality studies, and more.

Student research projects transcends traditional disciplinary boundaries, engaging with diverse media, methodologies, and global perspectives. Their projects reflect the program’s commitment to understanding how cultural production take shapes and is shaped by questions of identity, power, memory, and imagination. Objects of study beyond literature have included documentary and experimental film, hip hop, video games, sports, choreography and dance, conceptual art, postcards and other ephemera.

Below is a sample of a typical graduate student’s trajectory in the CSLC program.