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Facts and Data

  • Duration: 4 semesters
  • Degree Award: Master of Arts
  • Language: German
  • admission free
  • Special admission requirements

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Cultural Analysis - Master's Programme

Orientation and Goals

The Master's programme in Cultural Analysis is research-oriented and follows the tradition of cultural and social sciences as well as gender research, which are well-established at the University of Oldenburg. It deals with the materiality and mediality of contemporary and everyday cultures as well as their historical foundations. Focus areas include the ethnographic understanding of material culture and its entanglement in current problems of transculturality, migration, globalisation, and sustainability.

The programme is designed to enable students to perceive socio-cultural problems across disciplines, to develop questions and to learn to independently work on them using a variety of sometimes unconventional scientific methods – both individually and in a team. The starting points are socially marked, gendered, and ethnicised body images and practices, attires, and worlds of objects – in everyday life as well as in public, national, and transnational institutions. The programme aims to intertwine practical and theoretical ways of understanding, to elucidate the interactions between dimensions of representation and performativity, and ultimately to connect cultural, political, and social analysis.

The programme’s home is the Institute for Material Culture, but it also draws on the cultural-analytical expertise of other cooperating disciplines. Its lecturers come from the fields of Empirical Cultural Studies, Social and Cultural Anthropology and Museum Studies, Art and Media Studies, Sports Sociology and Theory of the Body, Migration Research, Aesthetics, Ecology and Cultural Mediation, Political Science, and Gender Studies. Depending on the project, external partners are involved; there are numerous international co-operations.

The Master's programme is aimed at graduates of cultural and social science courses who enjoy precise observation and thinking and have a pronounced readiness for transdisciplinary scientific work. They should not be afraid of empirical or artistic methods, even if they are new to them in one area or another, have English skills (reading specialist literature), and like to study in a self-organised and project-based manner.

Study Design and Contents

This course of studies lasts 4 semesters. Part time study is possible.
You will complete 120 credit points in the following areas:

Specialised modules 75 CP

  • Introduction to cultural analysis 9 CP
  • Ethnographic methods of cultural analysis 9 CP
  • Body images, body practices 6 CP
  • Presentation, performativity, practices 6 CP
  • Exemplary analysis of material culture and its mediation 12 CP
  • A project 18 CP
  • Individual profile development in an inter- and transdisciplinary context 15 CP

Professionalisation area 15 CP

  • Compulsory elective modules for profile development

Master's module 30 CP

  • Master's thesis module 

Teaching and Learning

Introductory block seminar, seminars with tutorials, reading course, research workshop, workshops, practice sessions, excursions, project work, graduate conference

Reasons for Studying

Our principles:

  • small learning groups
  • learning in presence or with blended learning
  • intensive support
  • project-orientation
  • promotion of self-study
  • avoidance of academic debt

 

The Master's programme is designed according to the principle of research-based learning and offers students the opportunity to pursue their interests based on current cultural studies research.

Promotion of:

  • transdisciplinary thinking (through tandem teaching)
  • project work and teamwork
  • presentation of scientific research
  • individual profile development and professionalisation 
  • interdisciplinary reflection on perspectives, implications and effects of your analyses
  • exploration and application of research tools and methods for scientific and artistic communication

 

Because the Master's degree programme offers a project module based on a sound theoretical examination of cultural studies approaches, in which students develop the skills to conduct their own initial qualified research and mediation, it also provides excellent preparation for a doctorate.

The programme is designed as a full-time course, but can also be completed as a part-time course on request.

Foreign Language Skills

In order to study this course at the University of Oldenburg as a student from outside of Germany, you need an adequate knowledge of German.

German Language Proficiency
You can proof your German language proficiency with the following language certificates:
 

  • DSH: Deutsche Sprachprüfung für den Hochschulzugang (Level 2)
  • TestDaF: Test – Deutsch als Fremdsprache (with level 4 in all four areas)


The proof of language proficiency must be presented for the enrolment. For other proof possiblities see: Language requirements

Careers and Areas of Employment

As a graduate, you should have at your disposal a proven mastery of abstract thinking, methodical, and transfer skills, project skills, as well as a sharp eye for connections interactions.

These skills prepare you for a professional role in the fields of:

  • teaching and research
  • publishing
  • media
  • artistic and cultural mediation
  • cultural policy
  • cultural institutions and initiatives
  • museums and archives
  • artistic, cultural, fashion, museum, and exhibition review


There are many new career opportunities in the area of self employment, for which the project skills and independence promoted in this programme are very important. 

The established occupational fields traditionally require a further educational qualification. This can take the form of traineeships with publishers, media, and museums, or in other trainee programmes. This programme also prepares you for such requirements. 

In addition to well founded theoretical analysis, this programme also offers a project module, in which previously acquired research and mediation skills are further developed.

Target Group/Admission Requirements

  • Bachelor's degree or equivalent qualification in Cultural Studies with focus on Material or Visual Culture, Art and Media Studies, Ethnology, Cultural Anthropology, Gender Studies and/or Social and Political Sciences with focus on Cultural Studies and/or Gender Studies or in a closely related field worth at least 60 credit points
  • If applicable, in-depth explanations of taken modules or internships or work experience to proof a focus of cultural studies and/or gender studies

Application/Admission Procedures

This is an open admissions degree course, and applications are accepted for both the winter and summer semesters.
The application deadline for the winter semester is 30 September.
The application deadline for the summer semester is 31 March.

Please note
For open-admission Master's degree programmes it is strongly recommended to submit their applications as early as possible before 15 July for the winter semester and before 15 January for the summer semester. If the supporting documents are submitted after these dates but before the standard application deadlines, this may have disadvantages for the start of your studies. Please note our information on the local application procedure (German document).

Further Information

Programme Information: http://www.uni-oldenburg.de/materiellekultur/studiengaenge/ma-kulturanalysen/

Research interests:
 


General questions: Coordinator for Academics and Teaching:


(Changed: 28 Mar 2024)  | 
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