Degree Requirements
The graduate program in cultural production involves one academic year in residence at Brandeis in which students complete eight semester courses and a master's paper or project. In consultation with the program director, each entering student also selects one of three clusters, listed below, as an area of concentration.
Courses of Instruction
- CP 201a Making Culture: Theory and Practice (required)
- CP 202b Internship in Cultural Production (required)
- CP 203a Directed Research in Cultural Production for M.A. Students (required)
- Two courses in student's concentration cluster, one of which is identified as a core course in that cluster
- Two elective courses, one from each of the other two clusters
- One additional course from the program's electives or another Brandeis course approved by the director
Note: There is no foreign language requirement for the master's degree.
M.A. Thesis Option
Under exceptional circumstances, a student may petition the director of the program for permission to write a master's thesis, rather than the normally expected master's paper. It is expected that the thesis will be in the 75- to 100-page range.
The thesis must involve independent research and represent an original scholarly contribution. A two- to three-page written proposal to write a thesis, signed by the student's adviser, should be submitted to the director within the first four weeks of the semester in which the student intends to graduate.
The completed thesis will be evaluated by two faculty members, selected by the director in consultation with the student. The student is responsible for submitting an electronic copy of the thesis in accordance with university regulations.
Concentration Clusters
Cluster 1: Performance: Object / Body / Place
Courses in performance theory, theater, discursive practice, embodiment, mythopoesis, adornment, and the city as lived text.
Cluster 2: Visuality: Image / Media / Signs
Courses in comparative experiences of vision, cinema, television, semiotics, digital and other new media, Internet studies, materiality, photography, advertising, and mass communications.
Cluster 3: Memory: Museum / Preservation / Archives
Courses in historical consciousness, the cultural politics and poetics of museums and memorials, traumatic memory, historiography, artifact conservation, documentation, and archival practice.