What Is the Global Culture & Theory Undergraduate Program at Duke Literature?

The Global Culture & Theory program is the undergraduate major and minor offered by Duke University's Literature Program. It draws broadly on humanities resources to examine the ethical, cultural, social, and political complexities of events in the world, with courses focused on film and media, literature, and the arts. If you are considering a major or minor that crosses traditional disciplinary lines rather than staying within a single department, this program is designed for that kind of inquiry.

What the program covers

The curriculum is explicitly interdisciplinary. According to the program's own description, its foundation includes:

• Critical theory
• Literary studies
• Race and gender studies and queer theory
• Philosophy
• Political theory
• Visual culture, film, new media, and sound studies

Coursework centers on film and media as well as literature and the arts, but the framing questions are broader: how culture and society relate to each other, and how events in the world can be understood through humanistic analysis.

How it fits into the Literature Program

Duke's Literature Program describes its overall project as rethinking what comparison means in a world shaped by economic and technological integration. While language, literature, and aesthetics remain central, the program combines philosophical and theoretical reflection on the status of "literature" and "culture" with work in history, political economy, the sociology of culture, anthropology, visual culture, and cinema studies.

The program frames this as modeling a new kind of global studies from the humanities perspective — one that treats literature and culture as active agents in understanding, defining, and changing social formations. The Global Culture & Theory major and minor are the undergraduate expression of that approach.

What it aims to give you

The program states that it aims to provide a broad knowledge base and equip students with analytical skills. In practice, that means the major is less about mastering a single canon than about learning to bring theory, cultural analysis, and media study to bear on contemporary questions.

Practical entry points

If you want to evaluate the program further, the Literature Program site lists these undergraduate-relevant pages:

• Major Requirements
• Film & Media Concentration
• Ph.D. Requirements (useful mainly for context on the program's research culture)
• Our Faculty

The site also notes a Global Culture & Theory Undergraduate Program section and an "Explore Program" link from the front page.

A note on the program's context

The front page includes a memorial notice for Fredric Jameson (1934–2024), the cultural theorist and literary critic who helped raise the international profile of Duke's Literature program. This is background rather than a requirement, but it signals the theoretical orientation — critical theory and cultural analysis — that shapes the undergraduate curriculum.