Department for the Study of Culture and Society

Drake University

Mission Statement

 

Mission:  The Department for the Study of Culture and Society is dedicated to teaching, research, and service that contribute to understanding society and culture as they are, as they are experienced, and as they should be.  The department seeks to prepare students for active and responsible civic engagement through the development of critical thought, especially about social organization and institutions, cultural practices, political relationships, and personal identity.  Because the department defines its mission with regard both to comprehensive processes of social change and the historical development of the human sciences, it is committed to creating interdisciplinary programs that facilitate productive encounters with difference, critical interpretation of texts, reflexivity toward knowledge and practice, appreciation of complexity, and empowerment of the subject. 

 

To achieve this mission, the department is organized around the following objectives and programs: 

 

  1. Liberal arts objectives: 

 

1.         encourage and model critical thinking, which includes the facility to think theoretically and analytically;

 

2.         strengthen skills in writing and speaking;

 

3.         prepare students to better encounter changes in their lives and in society and to respond productively and ethically;

 

4.         help students identify and understand the problems that will challenge, and shape societies in which they live;

 

5.         encourage students to participate in civic institutions, social movements, and other opportunities for democratic action as local citizens and as citizens of the world.

 

  1. Intersecting thematic priorities: 

 

1.         the complex relationships between meaning, action, agency, and social structure;

 

2.         the use of discourse to constitute society, culture, and subjectivity;

 

3.         the nature and reproduction of cultural and social difference;

 

4.         the operations of power as they suffuse all social and cultural practices;

 

5.         a deepened and critical appreciation of how knowledge about culture and society is created and used;

 

6.         a sharpened sense of how we both depend upon and are determined by cultural and social practices, and of how to nurture individual reflection and creativity;

 

7.         the critique of domination, an openness to understanding diverse social and cultural change, and a commitment to freedom and justice.