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. Both the core courses and elective curriculum are organized around the three broad and overlapping rubrics of connectivity, comparison, and translation, which together are intended to encompass the various ways scholars in participating disciplines have conceptualized the juxtaposition of languages and cultures.
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.
Typical Timeline
Terms 1-5: Begin undergraduate study, declare major.
Term 6 (Winter Term of junior year): Apply for admission to TCS program.
Terms 7 and 8 (senior year): Enroll as advanced undergraduate, complete major requirements, declare sub-plan, and begin master’s program courses (500+ level).
Terms 9 and 10 (fifth year): Enroll as Rackham graduate student, complete requirements for Master’s degree.
