The Department of Social and Cultural Analysis (SCA) is interdisciplinary in nature, integrating topics from the humanities with methodologies from the social sciences. SCA houses the programs in Africana studies, American studies, AsianPacificAmerican studies, gender and sexuality studies, Latino studies, and metropolitan studies. Students who major in social and cultural analysis choose courses from these program areas in SCA and create an individualized concentration.Students have the opportunity to combine cutting-edge scholarship with real world practice. The department’s faculty and students explore the range of relationships between human collectivities on the one hand and institutions and structures of power on the other, taking into account how these relationships are affected by such modern global developments as intensified urbanization, increased transnational exchange, and proliferating diasporic populations.The type of rigorous intercultural study promoted within the Department of Social and Cultural Analysis requires students to recognize the complex modes of communication at work both within and across different social groups. The department therefore strongly encourages its students to develop advanced skills in language and linguistics by any of the following means: taking elective courses in sociolinguistics; studying a language other than English beyond the minimum level required by the College of Arts and Science (especially one germane to the department's fields of study); pursuing community-based internship fieldwork necessitating the development and use of specific language skills; or undertaking study or research abroad in contexts entailing the exercise of key language or linguistic capabilities.