DCU Launches new BA in Contemporary Culture and Society
Friday 5 October 2007

Dr. Vera Sheridan, Academic Programme Co-ordinator, Kyle Mahon and Helen Flynn, BA in Contemporary Culture and Society students

The Faculty of Humanities & Social Sciences, DCU announced a new BA degree which looks at the way culture and society shapes our world. The three-year honours degree course, the BA in Contemporary Culture and Society takes in its first group of students this year.

The degree has been developed as a response to a rapidly changing Ireland and students on the course will seek to understand and analyse our modern world and the factors that influence us now.

Factors such as: the change in family life and communities; the cultural tensions between East and West; the challenges posed by mass media; uncertainty in the workplace, home and society; the effect of crime on the daily life of ordinary citizens; the changing roles of science and technology in society.

At the launch of the new course, Professor Ferdinand von Prondzynski, DCU President said: ‘students on this programme will be better equipped to shape policy and culture in the future’.

Professor Eithne Guilfoyle, Executive Dean of the Faculty of Humanities & Social Sciences, described the course as ‘A first for the Faculty and DCU in several ways, it is the first programme to be affiliated with 5 different schools, the first to have its home in a Faculty rather than with a school and the first that allows students to choose between 5 different possible areas of concentration.’

Teresa Vaclavu a student on the course, said ‘I didn’t know what to expect but am thrilled and surprised in a good way!’.

Students choose from a range of modules in five strands on the degree and can construct the degree according to their interests. The five strands are:

• Interculturalism – the cultural, ethnic and religious diversity that characterises a globalising world order.
• Internationalisation – the politics, history, culture and language of countries and regions.
• Contemporary Society – the rules and norms that structure contemporary public life.
• Media and Society – the role the media play in shaping our views of culture and society.
• Language and Society – the role of language in society and culture and the study of languages in their cultural context.