Welcome to Comparative Cultural Studies

The Department of Comparative Cultural Studies (CCS) at the University of Houston is an interdisciplinary department offering degree programs in Anthropology (BA, BS, MA) Liberal Studies (BA, BS), Religious Studies (BA) as well as undergraduate minors in Anthropology and Religious Studies. Collaboration across these programs enhances the strengths of each and encourages cross-cultural learning and understanding. 

Students in CCS explore the historical and present-day production of cultures and the ways in which cultural constructs affect the political, social, and aesthetic relationships that shape human communities. CCS prepares students to understand and apply a comparative approach to cultural difference and change in a globalized world.  

By creating a shared space for interdisciplinary learning and research, particularly through engaged community-based public scholarship in Houston and the Gulf Coast Region, CCS enhances the comparative cross-cultural opportunities available in each of its component curricular programs: Anthropology, Liberal Studies, and Religious Studies. 

CCS provides students with the foundation for lifelong learning, and the critical intellectual tools for a wide range of careers – in education, research, media and communications, business, government and policy-making, law, healthcare, and the other professions.

Goals of Comparative Cultural Studies

• analyze and understand diverse cultures from multiple disciplinary perspectives; 
• to inspire, promote, and develop cross-cultural understanding and literacy through the comparative study of distinct belief systems and symbolic, textual, and performative traditions;
• to provide the skills and knowledge to understand and work in cross-cultural and global contexts

Our students gain the comparative cultural knowledge and cross-cultural skills to become effective thinkers and culturally sensitive leaders in the global workplace as well as in diverse local communities.