Social Studies Degrees

Asian Studies

The program also offers minors in Indian, Chinese, Japanese and Southeast Asian studies.
The nations and cultures of Asia present a uniquely challenging and diverse subject of study.

Some of the great human civilizations emerged in Asia, and today the continent is home to some of the world’s most vigorous economies and fascinating political systems.

At Colgate, students are encouraged to learn more about Asia in its own terms, through direct confrontation with Asia’s languages, literature’s, histories, religions and arts. The Asian studies program focuses on India, China and Japan, and offers courses on Southeast Asia and Asians in America as well.

Students choose to concentrate on one of the three countries through an interdisciplinary course of study grounded in a particular discipline. In this way students acquire a broad knowledge of an Asian culture and an ability to analyze the culture using the tools of an academic discipline.

Middle Eastern Studies and Islamic Civilization

This minor concentration focuses on the Middle East and North Africa while also studying the wider Islamic world.

It provides students with an understanding of the origins and development of the Islamic faith in its heartland, as well as an awareness of the multicultural and dynamic character of modern Islam.

It also trains students in the history, culture, politics, and political economy of the Middle East, North Africa, and the Islamic world.

Medieval and Renaissance Studies

Come explore the richness and variety of European civilization from the late Roman era through the Renaissance and Reformation.

Spanning the humanities and social sciences, the program covers history, art, literature, music, philosophy, science, and religion from the 4th to the 17th century.

It is intended as a supplement to traditional majors in being broadly interdisciplinary.

Jewish Studies

Jewish Studies at Colgate encompasses a wide range of studies in Jewish religion, history, politics, arts, and language. Our interdisciplinary program recognizes the complex interaction between religion and culture in Jewish life, and the diversity of Jewish historical experience. We encourage students to explore their particular interests, be they religious, literary, or political.

We are proud of our students, who have pursued Jewish Studies both on campus, in Israel, and many other locations. (The photo below was taken by Marc Frankel ’06 on a Jewish-Studies funded trip to Birobidzhan, Siberia, which provided the background for his senior thesis). Our faculty are actively engaged as teachers, scholars, and lecturers at home and abroad. Every year, we invite a number of artists, writers, and commentators in a variety of fields of Jewish interest to enrich our offerings with their knowledge and perspective.

The Saperstein Jewish Center was dedicated in 1993 as a campus home for Jewish Studies, as well as for Jewish religious and secular life. The center houses a Jewish book, music, and film library, as well as computer facilities. All students and faculty are encouraged to make use of these resources.

Environmental Studies

The Environmental Studies Program is designed to enhance students’ awareness of the seriousness and complexity of regional and global environmental problems and to underscore the consequences and impacts of the human experience on the habitability of planet Earth.

Our concentrators learn to think, speak, and write clearly and articulately about environmental issues from a variety of perspectives.

The program is located within the Division of University Studies with teaching faculty coming from a number of departments and applying their knowledge and expertise to teaching and research endeavors that cross disciplinary boundaries.

The concentrations in environmental biology, environmental economics, environmental geography, and environmental geology all have a required core of ENST courses that ensures a common experience and an interdisciplinary flavor to the curriculum. At the same time, students gain depth in a particular discipline by taking a specified suite of courses in biology, economics, geography, or geology.

The program encompasses two major concentrations — Africana studies and Latin American studies — and four topical minor concentrations: African studies, African American studies, Latin American studies and Caribbean studies.

Africana studies is an interdisciplinary program that studies the history and culture of the peoples of Africa and the African Diaspora.

The Latin American studies program offers students the opportunity to undertake the comparative study of Latin American society and culture, drawing from such disciplines as anthropology, archaeology, economics, geography, history, literature and literary criticism, and political science.

Both programs provide a suitable background for engaging in graduate studies or professional work in a variety of fields including government service, journalism, international development, and teaching.

Africana and Latin American Studies

The program encompasses two major concentrations — Africana studies and Latin American studies — and four topical minor concentrations: African studies, African American studies, Latin American studies and Caribbean studies.

Africana studies is an interdisciplinary program that studies the history and culture of the peoples of Africa and the African Diaspora.

The Latin American studies program offers students the opportunity to undertake the comparative study of Latin American society and culture, drawing from such disciplines as anthropology, archaeology, economics, geography, history, literature and literary criticism, and political science.

Both programs provide a suitable background for engaging in graduate studies or professional work in a variety of fields including government service, journalism, international development, and teaching.

Africana and Latin American Studies

The program encompasses two major concentrations — Africana studies and Latin American studies — and four topical minor concentrations: African studies, African American studies, Latin American studies and Caribbean studies.

Africana studies is an interdisciplinary program that studies the history and culture of the peoples of Africa and the African Diaspora.

The Latin American studies program offers students the opportunity to undertake the comparative study of Latin American society and culture, drawing from such disciplines as anthropology, archaeology, economics, geography, history, literature and literary criticism, and political science.

Both programs provide a suitable background for engaging in graduate studies or professional work in a variety of fields including government service, journalism, international development, and teaching.

Women’s Studies Program

The Women’s Studies Program is built on the understanding that gender is a crucial category of human knowledge and action. Women’s Studies recognizes the complexity of human lives as gender interconnects with sexuality, race, class, ability, nationality, ethnicity, religion and age in the constitution of experience and identities. It thus seeks to provide insights which lead one beyond older and more exclusionary theories and practices.

The program is at its core interdisciplinary, integrating knowledge from different disciplines to encourage critical engagement with all forms of experience from a feminist standpoint. Interdisciplinary study leads students to question frameworks, concepts and methods, enabling them to understand better both the past and the contemporary world, while envisioning a future beyond traditional roles and inequities.

By emphasizing interdisciplinarity, the program seeks to help students acquire the tools to analyze critically the societal, cultural, global and personal issues that shape their lives and challenge them to look at these issues from multiple perspectives. It also encourages them to reflect on the ways in which knowledge is produced in within different and oftentimes unrecognized systems of oppression, and to examine categories that are presented as natural and permanent in their cultural and historical context. Finally, the program strives to help its students acquire the skills of critical analysis and imagine alternatives that challenge the naturalizing of inequalities.

Social Sciences

The Division of Social Sciences is composed of the Departments of Economics, Educational Studies, Geography, History, Political Science, and Sociology and Anthropology, as well as the International Relations Program.

Beyond seven concentration programs, the division supervises — under a social sciences topical concentration — additional programs that cannot be completed in a single department. Concentrators in this area often are students who require work in other divisions. Typical programs are those concerned with urban studies, philosophy and law, sociology and psychology, or society and science. In some cases the division director of the contributing discipline may assume advisory responsibilities.