Robert Harvey
Co-Department Chair

Mary Jo Bona
Co-Department Chair

Graduate Program Directors

Krin Gabbard Co-Director
Lisa Diedrich Co-Director (Women's Studies)

Students and faculty in the Department of Cultural Analysis and Theory (CAT) at Stony Brook University engage in exciting, interdisciplinary approaches to traditional fields of study. Our goal is to investigate new cultural, pop-cultural, and cross-cultural phenomena from multiple points of view.

The Department offers two graduate programs: one in Comparative Literature (M.A. and Ph.D. degrees) and one in Cultural Studies (Ph.D. degree). The programs are distinct, with different requirements, but students in one program may include the other as one of their fields of study. Graduate students have the opportunity to assist and teach in all of three undergraduate programs. Ph.D.s in recent years have landed tenure-track jobs at such institutions as Baruch College, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Skidmore College, California State University, DePaul University.

The Women's Studies program, in the College of Arts and Sciences, offers a course of study that leads to the
Graduate Certificate in Women's Studies. The program has graduate faculty members from more than 20 different programs in the social and behavioral sciences, humanities, and health sciences. The program is designed to allow students working toward a degree in departments such as English, Comparative Studies, History, Music, Philosophy, Psychology, Sociology, or Theatre to draw on faculty whose work deals with gender issues in a wide range of disciplines. Since Women's Studies has graduate faculty in nearly every department in the social sciences and humanities, the certificate program offers graduate students the opportunity for an unusually rich interdisciplinary experience.