The Graduate Program in American Culture and Literature Program at Kadir Has University offers both the M.A. and PhD. Degrees. The Graduate Program provides students an opportunity to examine the cultural and literary life of the United States. While literature remains a core aspect of the program, our program retains an interdisplinary perspective and we encourage students to explore the life of the United States from a wide range of perspectives including, but not limited to: popular culture, cultural theory, gender studies, law, music and comparative studies.
The Program has an international faculty trained at some of the best universities in the U.S. which provides students with the guidance they need and access to individuals with an intimate knowledge of the cultural life of the United States. Offering both flexibility and a solid grounding in the field of American Culture and Literature, this program will allow students to advance in their current field or move on to pursue a Ph.D. Moreover, all classes are held in the evening to accommodate those students who choose to work while pursuing their studies. The University is also located in an historic district of the Istanbul where students can take advantage fo the many libraries, archives and other resources that a cultural capital such as Istanbul has to offer.
The program is organized around four broad areas:
- Genre, Period or Critical School
- Popular Culture and Media
- Race, Gender and National Identities
- America in a Global Context
Students must complete 8 classes totaling 24 credits. Students will choose one of the areas listed above as a major focus. Students must declare their focus area by the end of the first semester of classes. They will be required to take 3 classes that focus on their major area (not including the required classes).
Students who enter from programs other than our own M.A. program will be required to take:
Introduction to American Culture Studies, Cultural Theory in addition to the minimum number of classes and credits for the PhD.
Required Classes
- The Roots of America
- Contemporary Theory
- Comparative American Studies
- Major Trends in American Literature
Electives
- Popular Culture
- Comparative American Studies
- Race, Class and Gender in America
- Special Topics in American Literature
- Feminists, Womanists and Guerilla Girls: Women’s Movements in the U.S.
- From the Outside Looking In: America From Abroad
- The City
- Empire for Liberty: The USA in the 19th Century
- Feminism, Law and Literature
- American Writers Right Now
- American Novel
- African American Literature
- Women’s Voices in American Literature
- Twentieth Century American Poetry
- The American West
- American Drama
- The Jazz Age
- Film in America
- Ethnicity and the Media
- On the Road: Traveling Across America
- American Travel Writing in Turkey
- American Movie Musical
- American Material Culture
- Documentary Form and Meaning
- Film, Culture, Identity
- Issues in Third World Cinemas
- Imagining Indians: Native Americans, Literature and the Media
- The History of Comics in the USA
- The Comic Mode
- Science Fiction
- American Regional Literature
- Realism and Naturalism from Europe to America
- The Culture of the “Sixties
- America in Jazz, Blues, and Folk Music 1920-1965
- American Drama and Film: Shakespeare in America
- Literary Odysseys
- The Harlem Renaissance
- Single-Author Seminar:(Plato, Melville, Morrison, etc.)
- Caribbean Literature
- Wit, Satire, and Humor from Mark Twain to R. Crumb
- The Beats
- Town and Country: Pastoral Literature from Theocritus to Thoreau
- The Lyric Tradition
- The Tragic Mode
- Images of Labor and Capital
- Native American Literature
- The Immigrant Experience
- The American Philosophical Tradition
