About HISC
The History of Consciousness Department offers a Ph.D. program that operates at the intersection of established and emergent disciplines and fields, acquainting students with leading intellectual trends in the Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences. Intellectual projects are problem based and draw upon diverse theoretical approaches. The major categories listed below have characterized work in the department over its more than 40 year history; faculty and student research projects typically fall within more than one of these categories. Fields and disciplines listed within these categories represent areas of specific current interest in the department, though we support student projects that move beyond the listed areas.
Philosophy and Theory
post-colonial studies, Marxism, psychoanalysis, political history and theory, science and technology studies, humanisms and posthumanisms, human rights, theology
Science and Technology Studies
physics, philosophy, science studies, poststructuralist theory, environmentalism, technology, and society
Race and Ethnicity; Gender & Sexuality
African and African American Studies, ethnic studies, Jewish studies, queer theory, feminism, disability studies, histories and theories of race and racialization, animality studies
Political Economy & Social Movements
globalization, world systems, financialization, history of movements of the left and right, environmentalism
Poetics, Media, Aesthetics
visual culture, music, literature, digital arts, popular culture, cultural studies
Graduates of the History of Consciousness Department find employment in a range of disciplines, including literature, women’s studies, ethnic studies, American studies, sociology, anthropology, communication, and philosophy. History of Consciousness graduates have also found positions outside academic institutions as researchers, writers, filmmakers, curators, organizers and administrators.
Why the Sphinx?
A brief history of the Sphinx as recounted by Professor Emeritus, James Clifford:
“Hayden White chose the Sphinx in 1978 when he (and I) arrived to renovate Histcon. There were no permanent faculty in the program before us. Some colleagues and members of the administration were saying that to mark a new beginning we should change the program’s name, that it was an embarrassment. Hayden refused, saying that the name was famous/notorious and we should make it work for us.
Moreover, since ‘history of consciousness’ meant either everything or nothing, since the name was an enigma, interpreted in many ways, what better image than the Sphinx? So Hayden got an artist to design the monumental profile we still have, and it dominated all our first posters.
The Sphinx had the added advantage of being indeterminately male and female, animal and human, and simultaneously Eastern and Western. (Though after a few years there was a period–in the wake of Edward Said’s book–when it was condemned as ‘Orientalist.’)
That’s all I remember.”