加州大学-伯克利

ISF is an interdisciplinary major and a research-driven program of liberal education. It offers students the unique opportunity to develop an individualized cross-disciplinary research program that includes a course of study and a senior thesis. The course of study is made up of courses taken in the social sciences, the humanities, and/or the professional schools and colleges, alongside the required courses in ISF. The capstone experience is a scholarly, rigorously-researched, 40-page required senior thesis, which represents a sustained inquiry in the social sciences or humanities based on original, cross-disciplinary research.

ISF has identified a number of interdisciplinary research fields that have engendered excellent scholarship and attracted students across campus. ISF students may pursue other research fields identified in consultation with ISF faculty and academic advisers. The already-defined ISF research fields provide models and resources about scholarly interests. The research fields found on the ISF website are there to help ISF students identify their own research interests and customize their own research program and course of liberal arts study.

Learning Goals for the Major

• Develop strong interdisciplinary research skills by creating a course of study in the context of which students can explore new phenomena, problems, themes, and issues pertaining to larger social, cultural, technological, and historical transformations.
• Acquire awareness of methodological approaches in the social sciences and/or humanities in order to apply interdisciplinary methods and key concepts to the study and analysis of a particular social or cultural phenomenon under conditions of larger social and global transformations.
• Expand critical reading, thinking, analytical, and technological skills acquired in upper division courses through their application in the context of the research project.
• Demonstrate organizational, argumentative, multilingual, and communicative skills through successful design, structuration, execution, and presentation of a major interdisciplinary research project.

Honors Program

All honors students enroll in the senior thesis seminar with other majors (ISF 190). Students seeking honors must identify and seek out senate faculty members from other departments, ideally members of the ISF Faculty Advisory Board, to serve as second readers. Students must then let their ISF 190 instructor know that they intend to pursue honors in the major, and will give the name of their second reader to the ISF 190 instructor. Their grades in ISF 190 will be constituted by an average of grades assigned by the ISF 190 Instructor and the second readers.