The purpose of the DSSC minor is to provide a set of high-quality core courses that emphasize theory, methods, and key issues in Development Studies and Social Change, and facilitate and enhance the current level of interdisciplinary research among graduate students and faculty.
By focusing on the social basis of change in the Global South, the minor program engages a wide range of academic disciplines, including the social sciences, humanities, and biological sciences. The minor program focuses on three areas:
The relationships between macroscopic processes of political, economic, and social change, and the microscopic conditions of lived experience in the developing world
Interdisciplinary perspectives (encompassing the social sciences, the biological sciences, and the humanities) on this general thematic concern
Preparation of doctoral students for field research in the Global South.