Department of Interdisciplinary Studies - Appalachian State University

Appalachian State University

Apr 08, 2025

2025-2026 Undergraduate Bulletin [DRAFT]

Department website: interdisciplinary.appstate.edu

Maria Pramaggiore, Chair

The Department of Interdisciplinary Studies offers a range of courses as well as four interdisciplinary degree programs that explore critical, contemporary issues in culture and society–issues that often cut across disciplinary boundaries. The department is also home to Watauga Residential College, an interdisciplinary, alternative general education program. Our faculty are actively involved in scholarship and applied research in the fields of gender and sexuality studies, science and technology studies, globalization and development, animal studies, art & activism, global pop cultures, documentary studies, and new media studies. We offer degrees in the interdisciplinary fields of Gender, Women’s, and Sexuality Studies and Global Studies. Students can also design their own degree through the department’s Individually Designed degree programs. The department promotes creative and imaginative engagement in cross-disciplinary investigation of complex systems and problems.

Gender, Women’s and Sexuality Studies

Gender, Women’s and Sexuality Studies is an interdisciplinary academic field that critically engages beliefs, attitudes, assumptions, and norms about gender, women, and sexuality and their intersections with other axes of difference including race, ability, nationality, and class. Studying GWS equips students with critical analytical skills necessary to understand how power works in national and transnational contexts and to address and offer creative solutions to issues of equity, diversity, and social justice in our world today.

Global Studies

Global Studies is an interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary academic program devoted to the understanding of historical, social, political, geographic, cultural, and artistic dimensions of international, transnational, and global processes. Students may choose to focus on any of the several aspects of global studies: area studies, international studies, postcolonial studies, or a topical field such as development and globalization, global human rights, or immigration and refugee studies . The aim of the program is to: (1) give students competency within their focus area; (2) foster an appreciation of the connections between themselves and the rest of the world, and; (3) encourage students to become knowledgeable, active participants in the global arena. The teaching of global studies emphasizes critical thinking and problem solving skills.

Interdisciplinary Studies and Individually Designed Majors

The Bachelor of Arts and Bachelor of Science Individually Designed majors are unlike any other degree program at Appalachian State university. IDS students design their own major, integrating concepts and methods from multiple disciplines. Rather than stressing the uniqueness of separate disciplines, our IDS foreground interdisciplinary inquiry that leads students toward syntheses, and thus towards an appreciation of the interconnectedness of the world. Our courses, our degree programs, and our minors reflect the fact that often the most compelling social, cultural, and intellectual questions are bigger than any one disciplinary box.

Our Individually Designed degree programs encourage students and faculty to develop a sense of the world that is both broad and deep, to embark upon a practice that allows one to learn, teach, create and research across the boundaries that separate academic disciplines and that separate academic learning from other forms of knowing.

Watauga Residential College

Watauga offers an experiential general education program that incorporates community-based research and multicultural immersion consciously connecting students’ academic, social, cultural, and residential experiences.

For more information on Watauga Residential College, visit watauga.appstate.edu/.

Honors Program in Gender, Women’s and Sexuality Studies, Global Studies and Individually Designed

The Department of Interdisciplinary Studies offers honors programs in Global Studies (GLS), Gender, Women’s, and Sexuality Studies (GWS), and in our Individually Designed programs of study (IDS) to provide students with opportunities for advanced research in their major. The purpose of the honors program is to promote academic excellence among undergraduate students in the interdisciplinary fields represented by the department.

Application to an honors program in one of the Department of Interdisciplinary Studies’ programs requires a recommendation from a faculty member teaching in the program, emailed to the IDS Honors Director.

To graduate with “Honors in Global Studies” (BA), “Honors in Gender, Women’s, and Sexuality Studies” (BA), or “Honors, Individually Designed” (BA or BS), students must:

have a 3.0 cumulative GPA; • have a 3.3 (B+) or higher GPA in the major/program of study (GLS, GWS, IDS);
earn a B or higher in each of their honors courses and maintain an average GPA of 3.3 (B+) or better across honors courses in their major/program of study;
complete 6 credits in honors courses in their major/program of study (including at least 3 credits at the 3000-level or above); these can be honors sections or honors contracts;
complete a 3-credit Honors Thesis (which may be completed within the capstone course by adding an honors contract or in GLS/GWS/IDS 4510).

Programs

Bachelor of Science

Individually Designed, BS (772A)

Bachelor of Arts

Minor

Courses

Appalachian Studies

Gender, Women’s and Sexuality Studies

Global Studies

Interdisciplinary Studies

Judaic, Holocaust, & Peace Studies

JHP 3030 - Interpreting Genocide Through Film (3)

Watauga Residential College

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