Program Structure & Requirements

The required core courses of the program have two goals. The first is to introduce students to a variety of methods used in the disciplines to explore empirical topics that engage the themes of connectivity, comparison and translation. The second goal is to guide students as they plan, research, and carry out capstone projects, and to provide a lively interdisciplinary intellectual community for students, centering on their projects.

TCS 501
Interdisciplinary Approaches to Transcultural Studies I, is offered in the Winter semester of each year and required of program students in the Winter semester of their fourth year. This three-credit course is intended to help students plan for the engaged, research-oriented portion of their capstone project. Readings and discussions take up interdisciplinary methods for empirically exploring cross-cultural connectivity, comparison and translation.

TCS 502
Interdisciplinary Approaches to Transcultural Studies II, is offered in the Fall semester of every year and is required for program students in the fall of their fifth year. This three-credit seminar guides students as they analyze research data and other results of experiential learning and begin to create a final version of their capstone project. It is intended to continue to develop the intellectual community created in TCS 501, and to give students more opportunities to present and develop their ideas in front of an engaged, challenging audience of peers.

TCS 599
Transcultural Studies Colloquium, a three-credit course offered during the Winter semester, will convene program students once every week during their final semester, so they might present draft versions of their capstone projects. This course is designed to continue and develop the intellectual community created by TCS 501 and TCS 502.

Connectivity refers to all forms of cultural contact, transmission, and exchange, and encompasses such concepts as hybridization, creolization, contact zones, and the like.

Comparison invokes the ways groups of people imagine and represent similarities and differences between their own and other communities, as well as comparative methodologies in a variety of humanities and social science fields.  

Translation includes theories and practices of textual translation, but may also suggest various forms of “cultural translation” and the broader set of problems involved in thinking about how meanings and practices that originate in one context get transposed into different contexts.

Students select their remaining courses, in consultation with their advisor, from a list of approved courses offered at the 500+ level by participating departments.

TCS students are encouraged, but not required, to declare a sub-plan for the MA degree by December of their senior year. Students complete a sub-plan by successfully completing four or more courses designated for that sub-plan by the end of their fifth year. Students can petition to design their own sub-plans in consultation with their advisors and/or the program director. Pre-established sub-plans include the following:

• Environment and culture
• Global gender studies
• Transcultural theory
• Multicultural studies
• Translation studies
• World history
• World art and literature

The available courses under these headings change considerably each year, and there is no fixed curriculum for these sub-plans. Instead, students are encouraged to plot a coherent pathway through the program in conversation with their advisors.

View a partial list of courses taken by past TCS students.

The program is structured as a sequential undergraduate-graduate study degree program on the 4+1 AMDP model, enabling current undergraduate students in LSA to earn their MA degree with one additional year of study beyond the BA/BS.

• Terms 1-5: The student begins undergraduate study, declares major (and minor if applicable) and works toward undergraduate degree completion. .
• Term 6 (winter term of junior year) or Term 7 (fall term of senior year): The student applies for admission to the TCS program.
• Terms 7 and 8 (senior year): The student is enrolled as an advanced undergraduate, completes their undergraduate degree program requirements, declares sub-plan, and begins master’s program courses (500+ level).
• Terms 9 and 10 (fifth year): The student is enrolled as a Rackham graduate student, and completes the requirements for TCS Master’s degree.