About the Cultural Studies Program

The Graduate Program for Cultural Studies (CLST) provides the University of Pittsburgh with a vibrant intellectual center for interdisciplinary cultural critique and analysis.  Through its two graduate certificate programs (MA and PhD), course offerings, common seminar and colloquium, graduate student fellowships, dissertation writers' colloquium, dissertation prize, incoming graduate student meet-and-greet, open house, professional workshops, distinguished guest lecture, major annual or biennial conference, and its co-sponorship of dozens of talks and forums, CLST fosters the intensive study of cultural formations, past and present, from around the world.

One of the oldest and, with nearly one-hundred course offerings annually, most extensive cultural studies programs in the US, CLST serves as a site where 193 faculty members and 92 enrolled graduate certificate students from fifteen of Pitt's departments and schools exchange ideas about studying culture, beyond national boundaries and disciplinary divisions.  CLST, in short, stands as an institutional forum for responding to the increasingly global need to engage, through interdisciplinary and postdisciplinary lenses, the problematics of culture.

The program's current director is Michael Sawyer

For a full calendar of program events, click here.

Read the papers from 2020's common seminar and colloquium: What is the World's Question? Before and in COVID-19.


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News

Dietrich School Seeks Candidates for Director of Cultural Studies

Dietrich School Seeks Candidates for Director of Cultural Studies

The Cultural Studies graduate program in the Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences is an important interdisciplinary unit for graduate students from the Humanities and Social Sciences. I am...

Director Election Update

Breaking news: New Director Election to be held in Fall 2023; Program to be Run by the DSAS Graduate Office beginning 30 June 2023.

Our recent Directorship election resulted in the Executive Committee’s recommendation to DSAS administrat...

Spring 2023 Crosslists

Crosslisted courses for Spring 2023 have been announced.  Click here for more information. Topping them off is...