About Us
Cultural Studies is an emerging discipline that seeks to understand the complexity of culture and its political uses. Its contemporary force and relevance is that it has a wide vocabulary for the accommodation of the comparative understanding of different societies. The central aim of the graduate programme in Cultural Studies is to promote the discipline at UWI as an important area of study and research and, by so doing, to stimulate academic discourse and promote understanding of Caribbean culture and identity.
Objectives
To engage with and explore the concept of Cultural Studies in a Caribbean context.
- To study and document the historical range and diversity of Caribbean peoples and their cultures.
- To examine the many facets of Caribbean cultural expression in an interdisciplinary context and from a variety of theoretical perspectives.
- To promote research and publication in the area of Caribbean Cultural Studies.
- To explore the relationships between Caribbean culture and the social and political developments of the region.
- To analyse the uses and abuses of the Caribbean’s cultural heritage in the economic development of the region and its people.
- To promote the study of nation and identity as defined by cultural history.
- To critique the formation and existence of gender hierarchies in the Caribbean and the normalising effects of culture.
- To establish UWI as a recognized international centre of excellence for the study of Caribbean Culture and identity.
Rationale
Taking its cue from the Cultural Studies Initiative (CSI) the broad rationale for which has been spelled out in a number of documents, the graduate teaching programme in Cultural Studies is grounded in the belief that it is necessary to develop a cadre of trained people in the Caribbean region who are sensitised to the region’s history and cultural heritage, and who can articulate and disseminate an understanding of that history and heritage at all levels of Caribbean Society and beyond. Graduates in Cultural Studies are likely to become an important resource in the formulation of national, subregional and regional policies for sustainable economic and social development in the Caribbean.
Back to top