The Culture, Literature & the Arts major (CLA) inquires into the make-up of diverse cultures and societies, and their literatures and arts. Students in the major study written and visual texts, interactive and performative modes of practice, and philosophical and theoretical accounts of those texts and practices.

Students gain an understanding of the complex relations among lived, represented, and speculated existence.  CLA courses focus on the historical, social, and aesthetic dimensions of arts and culture, with special attention to the intersections among gender, sexuality, race, ethnicity, class, disability, and other vectors of power and privilege.