Ph.D. in Interdisciplinary Studies Humanities & Culture

Our Ph.D. with a concentration in Humanities & Culture allows you to study the human condition, explore creative ways to advance social justice and acknowledge differences among individuals and social groups. Our Humanities & Culture program draws on a variety of humanities fields – social and political philosophy, history, religious studies, literature, and aesthetics – that relate to social justice and cultural differences.

66 Total credits

$1095 Cost Per Credit Hour

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Discover three interrelated modes of inquiry

Interdisciplinary Inquiry

Examine tensions and relationships between disciplines to critique and redefine existing knowledge, meanings and relationships among facts, theories and methods.

Critical
Inquiry

Engage in ongoing intellectual dialogues with texts and artifacts, as well as fellow students, instructors and the public. Become a scholar-practitioner and make your voice heard.

Creative
Inquiry

Learn to see things in a whole new way. Examine and reorganize existing meanings and constructions of knowledge to reveal new, unconventional meanings and constructions.

66 credit hour program
Full & part-time options
*Hybrid program
January & July start dates
Complete your degree in as little as 3 years

*100% online classes with a one-week residency in Cincinnati at the start of each term.

Cost of Program

Core Courses

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HMS 710

Building the Canon: Historical Survey

3 credits

Examination of some of the ideas that have shaped human history from ancient times to the Enlightenment. Focuses on a broadly inclusive approach to the study of humanities looking at philosophy, religion, music, painting, architecture, sculpture, and tapestry, as well as multiple genres of literature – poetry, history, epic, sacred scripture, drama, short story, essay, treatise,
and novel.
HMS 720

Critiquing the Canon: The Idea of Progress

3 credits

Exploration of the idea of progress from a multitude of disciplinary perspectives (history, philosophy, economics, biology, literature, the arts, etc.) and investigation of its uses and abuses

Advanced Courses

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HMS 71

The Human Condition: The Pursuit of Happiness

3 credits

Exploration of contemporary theories that consider how the constructs of gender, race, and class have formed and deformed limits and aspects of the good life. Focuses on deepening the understanding of the idiosyncratic nature of the pursuit of happiness.
HMS 801

The Art of Protest

3 credits

Exploration of the rich tradition of protest literature in the United States, India, South Africa, as well as other regions of the world. Focuses on the study of the production and consumption of dissent as a site of progressive social critique; examines the historical links between modes of protest and meanings of literature, and explores how various expressions of dissent functions
as aesthetic, performative, rhetorical, and ideological texts within specific cultural contexts.
HMS 802

Memoir and Identity

3 credits

Examination of the origins, evolution, and contemporary practice of life-writing (with references to autobiography, biography, and other related forms) with a specific focus on personal, social, and cultural identities. Introduces the core questions and issues raised in memoir writing particularly as related to identity, diversity issues, and social justice and the relationship between public and private identities.
HMS 803

Gender, Identity, and Social Efficacy of the Constructed Self

3 credits

Development of a conceptual foundation for an interdisciplinary inquiry into the gendered self as read through the lenses of French feminism, Lacanian and other neo-Freudian psychoanalytic thought, deconstructionist theory, and contemporary media studies. Focuses on how human subjectivity is grounded in situated narratives of the self and explores current applications of
gender theory within and outside of academia in terms of race relations, social justice, political discourse, and pedagogy.
HMS 804

ReWriting Nations: Nationalism, Postcolonialism, and the Politics of Literary Representation

3 credits

Investigation of the roles the arts and literature (broadly defined) have played in shaping and contesting as well as adopting and adapting a range of national and postcolonial projects of the 19th and 20th centuries. Builds upon the foundations laid in HMS 710 and HMS 720.
HMS 805

Poetry and Politics

3 credits

Explorations of the complexities of any proffered/accepted social or political accounts of reality, the possibility, through the use of poetic approaches to language, of examining the resemblances rather than identities among the pieces of what we experience as social or political reality (Wallace Stevens), the movement between familiar and comfortable accounts and strange, dissonant ones (Robert Hass, Richard Hugo), and the importance of a concentrated internal linguistic/experiential exploration (Jane Hirschfield, Louise Gluck, Jorge Borges, et al.) as central to the poetic exploration of the many realities that accompany our efforts to explore and revisit familiar as well as unfamiliar accounts of social/political life.
HMS 806

MLK and Social Change

3 credits

Introduction to the life, sermons, speeches and thoughts of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Exploration of the cultural roots of the Civil Rights Movement and the African-American religious traditions as they influenced Dr. King and his cohorts. Additional focus on the struggle of African Americans to obtain their civil rights and to achieve racial equality in the United States from the
“Jim Crow” Era to the 1980s.
HMS 807

Visual Culture

3 credits

Introduction to the history, methods, and central debates within the field of visual studies. Explores how scholars from various disciplines have focused attention on both the cultural specificity of vision and on the ever-widening array of images and objects available for viewing.
HMS 808

Creative Writing I

3 credits

Study of creative writing, examining multiple genres of literature—poetry, drama, short story, essay, and novel—and multiple ways of understanding the written word. Focuses on supporting the needs of students who are interested in writing a Creative Dissertation that will involve their own poetry, novel, short stories, play, or creative nonfiction. Creative writing courses are to be
taken as electives unless otherwise approved by the HMS chair.
HMS 809

Critical Theory

3 credits

Close study of influential schools of critical theory that has gained prominence before the historical backdrops of nationalism, imperialism, and Fascism as well as an attendant resurgence of antiauthoritarianism, feminism, civil rights struggles, and decolonization efforts. Special attention is paid to Cultural Marxism, the Frankfurt School, British Cultural Studies, Feminist
Critical Theories, and Critical Race Theory.
HMS 811

Global Women’s Writing: Art, Culture, and Social Justice

3 credits

This course explores works by women writers of the non-Western world in short story, poetry, and personal narratives, with emphasis on those that address post-colonial/contemporary issues and ideas. Global regional writing is then placed in conversation with works by American women authors whose backgrounds express themes of immigration/migration and cultural aspects of their or their ancestors' countries of origin, demonstrating creative, intellectual, and political connections. Throughout the course, students will have the opportunity to address both primary and secondary/critical sources reflecting the interplay of art, culture, and social justice in this literature as well as to complete pieces of creative writing with themes such as women's lives, issues, and creative challenges.
HMS 850

Individualized Study I

3 credits

Individualized and advanced study of specific questions and issues of importance within the context of students’ individual experiences and professional lives supervised by the chair of the primary area of concentration. Focuses on students' individual intellectual pursuits and interests.
HMS 860

Individualized Study II

3 credits

Individualized and advanced study dedicated to students' individual research objectives supervised by the dissertation chair. Focus on the generation of a draft dissertation proposal.
HMS 870

Individualized Study III

3 credits

Individualized and advanced study dedicated to students' individual research objectives supervised by the dissertation chair. Focus on dissertation research and writing. (elective)
HMS 880

Individualized Study IV

3 credits

Individualized and advanced study dedicated to students' individual research objectives supervised by the dissertation chair. Focus on dissertation research and writing. (elective)
HMS 891

Capstone Course

3 credits

The Capstone Course provides students the opportunity to expand upon work toward the dissertation research begun in HMS 850 with emphasis on developing each student's scholarly skills. This course includes the proficiency review in both Foundational Themes and Content in the Concentration.

Electives

You have the option of exploring courses outside the ECL concentration or using electives for a certificate (e.g. Executive Leadership) or for the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Legacy Studies specialization.

EMBEDDED CERTIFICATES - No extra time or cost to complete

Graduate certificates provide you with a distinguished addition to your Ph.D. focus. All students in the Ph.D. Program in Interdisciplinary Studies have the option to pursue one of these graduate certificates embedded in the program:

Creative Writing
Design Thinking
Educational Leadership
Ethics and Philosophy

Executive Leadership
Museum Studies
Women’s & Gender Studies

Meet Our Faculty

Dissertation Information and Examples

The program supports a variety of formats for doctoral dissertations, including theoretical, historical, and interpretive research, social action research projects, empirical research using qualitative, quantitative or mixed methods, and creative dissertations. Here are some examples from our Humanities & Culture graduates:

François, Emery (2021). The Beauty and the Strife: A Memoir of Haiti and Her Legacy in the United States.
White, Tamara (2020). Visually Representing Diabetes Management for Incarcerated Women in California: A Creative Dissertation.
Reinstatler, Michelle L. (2019).Becoming Legend: Constructing Paranormal Experience and Cultural Performance in Ghost-Hunting Reality TV shows and Recreational Ghost Hunting.
Johnson, Jr., James L. (2018). Sympathy for the Devil: Thawing the Ego and Fostering Empathy through a Theory of Lacanian Reader-response.
Jones, Natalie (2017). The Womanist Ethics Matrix: A Methodological Tool for Transformation and Social Change

Funding Your Future

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Ph.D. in Interdisciplinary Studies Humanities & Culture