COLLEGE OF LIBERAL ARTS

INTERDISCIPLINARY RESOURCE

WHAT IS CLAIR?

The College of Liberal Arts Interdisciplinary Resource (CLAIR) supports interdisciplinary learning, scholarship, and engagement initiatives within the College of Liberal Arts at Colorado State University. In particular, it aims to:

  • Serve as a resource for interdisciplinary interactions across learning, scholarship, and engagement within the College;
  • Support and nurture interdisciplinary programs and initiatives within the College;
  • Define and represent interdisciplinary as it applies to the College; and
  • Showcase the College's interdisciplinary achievements.

WHAT IS INTERDISCIPLINARITY?

In the context of the College of Liberal Arts at Colorado State University, interdisciplinarity represents creative combinations and collaborations across disciplines in the Social Sciences, Arts, and Humanities to address multidimensional problems.

The liberal arts are in many ways a natural catalyst for interdisciplinarity. Liberal arts scholars reach across disciplines to collaborate on broader issues; liberal arts courses include content, scholarly perspectives, and methods that overstep individual disciplines, and certain academic departments and programs associated with the liberal arts are explicitly interdisciplinary.

LEARNING

INTERDISCIPLINARY MAJORS

Interdisciplinary Liberal Arts

Combine almost any area of curriculum and gain advanced experience across multiple disciplinary areas of study. Courses from the humanities, languages, literature, the arts, and social sciences can combine to cultivate knowledge across multiple fields of interest, giving a core competency and deeper understanding of the world.

International Studies

Learn about the world through multiple different perspectives, communicating through different areas of our rapidly globalizing world. This major puts together various cultural and political issues while also educating students on a variety of liberal arts skills.

Women's and Gender Studies

Examine how people’s experiences with power, privilege, and difference are understood through the social categories of race, class, gender, ethnicity, sexual identity, age, ability, citizenship, and national origin. This framework for understanding women and gendered relations in culture and society leads students to ways to more directly and effectively address social change

OTHER INTERDISCIPLINARY LEARNING OPPORTUNITIES

LB 393: Seminar in Arts, Humanities and the Social Sciences

Launched by the College in Fall 2018, this team-taught course brings faculty together from different disciplines to create a unique interdisciplinary seminar for students. Each semester offering is unique. Register on RAMweb during class registration window.

Liberal Arts and Community Engagement in Todos Santos, Mexico

This semester-long education abroad program is designed to help students cultivate global connections and work with community partners on topics in the arts, humanities, and social sciences. Earning 15 credits for the semester, students will be led by CSU professors in several different liberal arts courses – Art and Art History, English, Ethnic Studies, History, and Spanish – while also engaging with the community of Todos Santos.

LB393 students in a class
todos-mural-4

SCHOLARSHIP

Hannah Love participating in a planning exercise with IRISS

Interdisciplinary Centers and Institutes

Institute for Research in the Social Sciences (IRISS) The Institute for Research in the Social Sciences fosters, enhances, and promotes social science research that addresses critical and complex societal problems. IRISS connects scientists from diverse disciplines, provides consulting to all scientists at CSU, and brings together external partners with team of scientists. They also provide training in social science research methods.

Graphic produced by the Digital Liberal Arts Hub

Digital Liberal Arts

The Digital Hub is a center dedicated to exploring new questions in the Liberal Arts through the use of data visualization techniques and computational approaches to research and teaching. The Hub seeks to provide a space for collaboration across disciplines and methodological perspectives and offers training for scholars and students in the use of digital tools. There are opportunities for undergraduate internships with the Digital Hub.

ENGAGEMENT

ACT Human rights Film FEstival

ACT Human Rights Film Festival

Film is a uniquely powerful storytelling medium that can foster empathy, change behaviors, and educate and inspire us. Film can transport audiences, bridge communities, promote tolerance and inclusivity, and build community engagement. ACT brings films, filmmakers, and film subjects from around the world to Fort Collins and offers audiences the opportunity to learn about current global crises and human rights successes. The ACT Human Rights Film Festival is annual event held every spring.

CONTACT

Questions?