The following requirements are in addition to, or further elaborate upon, those requirements outlined in the Student Services section of this Web site.

IPCT seminars are open to all interested students. The IPCT certificate program, however, is a selective program to which students must formally apply. The application consists of a two-page essay, in which the student explains his or her research interests and the usefulness of critical theory to those interests, and a letter of support from a faculty member of the student’s home department.

To obtain the IPCT certificate, the student must complete five courses, at least two of which must be chosen among the following introductory seminars:

• Critical Theory and Literary Studies. Poststructuralism, cultural studies, and postcolonial theory in literary analysis and theory. The influence of psychoanalysis, Marxism, structuralism, semiotics, and post-structuralist thought on contemporary textual analysis. Cultural critique and context-centered methodologies.
• Critical Theory and Philosophy. Themes may include the origins of critical theory in Kant, Hegel, Marx, and Nietzsche; the contemporary re-emergence of critical theory in the work of the Frankfurt School; and/or the post-structuralists.
• Critical Theory and the Study of Politics. The concepts of progress and power in politics and in the study of politics: the sources of modern political critique in the Frankfurt School and Phenomenology; the critique of positivism in the social sciences; the critique of sovereignty, identity, and race; empire and post-colonial politics.  

The remaining three (or two) courses must be chosen from a list of seminars designated annually. The list is posted on this site. Updates are posted in the German Department, Kresge Hall.

IPCT Courses:

• Postcolonial and Critical Theory 
• Modernity, Modernism, and Modernist 
• Critical Theories of Space and Place 
• Critical Theory, Aesthetics and Visual Culture
• Studies in Literary Theory & Criticism: Man & Animal
• French Critical Thought and Culture
• Critical Studies in World Politics
• Language and Politics
• Knowledge and Politics: The Skeptical Problematic
• Knowledge and Politics: The Linguistic Turn
• Law, Sovereignty and Bare Life
• Political Theology
• The Culture Industry and Possibilities of Resistance
• Dis-Agreement:  Culture and its Discontents
• Studies in Literary Theory: W.E.B. Du Bois and Walter Benjamin
• Poststructuralism and Minority Discourse
• Gender, Sexuality, and Politics in Postmodernity
• Hannah Arendt: From Kantian Aesthetics to the Practice of Political Judgment
• Strauss and Weber: Value Pluralism, Relativism, and the Crisis of Modern Rationalism

IPCT Courses Offered in 2006-7:

Note: An updated list is posted in the German Department, Kresge Hall.

• Critical Theory and the Study of Politics. Michael Loriaux. (Course offered through Political Science.)
• Political Theology. Bonnie Honig. (Course offered through Political Science.)
• Seminar in Contemporary French Philosophy. Penelope Deutscher. (Course offered through Philosophy).
• Deconstructing--The Uncanny: Derrida's "Politics of Friendship". Samuel Weber. (Course offered through German Department.)
• Political Subjectivity in Contemporary Thought: Recent Controversies. Ernesto Laclau. (Course offered through Comparative Literary Studies.)
• Writing Sense in the Maghreb. Nasrin Qader. (Offered through Comparative Literary Studies.)
• Nationalism. Elizabeth Shakman Hurd. (Offered through Political Science).
• Site, Street, Screen:  French Visual Culture from 1945-present. Hannah Feldman. (Offered through Art History).
• Issues in Rhetorical Theory: Trope between Literature and Politics. Dilip Gaonkar. (Offered through Communications Studies).
• The Public Sphere. Keith Topper. (Offered through Commmunications Studies).