Related Departments, Services & Programs

The Department of Comparative Studies promotes interdisciplinary and cross-cultural research and teaching in the arts and sciences. The Department of Comparative Studies encourages critical reflection about culture that crosses boundaries of discipline, nation, and language. We attend to the construction of knowledge and the dynamics of power and authority in a range of historical discourses and practices: social, religious, literary, aesthetic, technological, scientific, political, and material.

The School of Educational Policy and Leadership (ED P&L) is deeply committed to addressing pressing educational issues, devising possible solutions, and creating innovative approaches. This commitment is anchored in a challenging, supportive, and fulfilling educational experience for our students. As part of The Ohio State University's College of Education, one of the leading graduate programs of education in the United States, students learn from faculty and their classmates who are engaged in leading research, administrative practices, and development in all educational sectors.

The English Department of The Ohio State University offers a varied and comprehensive curriculum in literature, rhetoric, composition, folklore, language study, critical theory, film, and creative writing. The strength of the department rests not only on its regular full-time faculty members, many of whom have won University-wide teaching awards in recent years, but also on its undergraduate students whose interests and gifts are as varied as the curriculum itself.

The Department of Greek and Latin is devoted to the study of the languages, literature, and cultures of Greece and Rome, focusing on Antiquity but including all periods from the Bronze Age to Modern Greece. This study is important, as the origins of western and much Near Eastern literature, philosophy, art, religion, and social forms lay in the ancient world, making Greece and Rome vital contributors to ongoing discussions of who we are. In both its teaching and research, the Department is fundamentally interdisciplinary.

The Department of History is a large and diverse department with over 200 students currently pursuing advanced graduate study in 18 different fields of history. Chronologically we encompass almost every age of civilization, and geographically we span nearly all regions of the globe. We offer, in addition, degrees in the thematic fields of women's history, military history, diplomatic/international history, world history, and the history of business.

The Department of Human Development and Family Science is concerned with the study of human development across the lifespan, the dynamics of marital and family relationships, and the conditions in the family, community, and society which enhance, support, or impede individual development and family life. Many factors make an HDFS major very valuable, such as a growing elderly population, a stable high divorce rate, and more dual income families which has led to more children being in child care.

The mission of PAES is to describe and explain basic and applied phenomena associated with teaching and learning, focused especially on those who participate in sport and excercise those who have special needs, those who supply educational services, and those who pursue lifelong learning in the workplace.

Through its BSSW, MSW, and Ph.D. degree programs, the college of Social Work enables students to experience and explore the knowledge, values, and skills required for professional social work practice and research.

The Department of Sociology is anintellectual community of 33 active and distinguished faculty, over 100 graduate students in-training as the next generation of scholars and educators, and nearly 1200 undergraduate majors, all supported by 13 able and dedicated staff members. Our department is proud of its commitment to excellence in scholarship and instruction, which is reflected by our ranking as a top-20 department nationwide.

The School of Teaching and Learning offers exemplary programs for those beginning a teaching career, those who seek to deepen their research-based knowledge to inform their teaching, and those looking to become a researcher/scholar.

Women's Studies in an interdisciplinary field of research and teaching that places gender at the center of inquiry. It raises many questions about gender as a socially and culturally constructed phenomenon that affects our personal lives, artistic expression, social relationships, and even the ways we think about ourselves and the world. Women's Studies considers the ways class, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation and age shape women's and men's experience, and is one of the fastest growing fields of inquiry to emerge in higher education in the past thirty years.

The Gay Lesbian Bisexual and Transgender Student Services provides support, advocacy, and programming for GLBT students, staff, and faculty at Ohio State University. These services also seek to educate the wider OSU community about heterosexism and homophobia in order to create a more inclusive and welcoming campus climate for gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, and intersex individuals and their allies. GLBT-related activities and educational programming are provided throughout the year.

The Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity is a university-wide interdisciplinary research institute with the goal to deepen our understanding of the causes of and solutions to racial and ethnic disparities. The Institute brings together a diverse group of scholars and researchers from various disciplines, all of whose hopes and goals are that the Institute gives transformative meaning to both our diversity and our common humanity.

The Office of Minority Affairs promotes a welcoming climate and serves in an advocacy role for minority individuals both at Ohio State and in the larger community. The office directly serves and celebrates the contributions of African Americans, Appalachians, Asian Americans, Pacific Islanders, Native Americans, and Hispanic Americans. It primarily focuses on recruitment, retention, and timely graduation of undergraduate, graduate, and professional students.

African American and African Studies at The Ohio State University is the proud product of the 1960s Black freedom movement. The primary mission of the department is to stimulate teaching and research about the Black experience in the U.S., Africa and throughout the African diaspora. Also, the department hopes to encourge students and others to assess various strategies for advancing human progress through the examination of the worldwide struggle for Black freedom.

The Ohio State University¹s American Indian Studies in The Colleges of Arts and Sciences offers a minor to students who desire to explore Native histories, issues, and perspectives from a local, regional, and global level within multiple disciplines. The vision is to ground OSU in its native Ohio history, assist campus departments with recruiting American Indian faculty and students, supporting research by students, staff, and faculty.

The American Sign Language Program at The Ohio State University is an interdisciplinary program offered through the Colleges of the Arts and Sciences (Department of English), the College of Social and Behavioral Science (Department of Speech and Hearing) and the College of Education (Education: Teaching and Learning). The Ohio State University is among a growing number of colleges and universities to view American Sign Language as a “foreign language” that fulfills second language General Education Credit (GEC) requirements.

Asian American Studies (AAS) is an interdisciplinary and comparative field that focuses on the experiences, cultures, and significance of people of Asian and Pacific Islander descent living in the United States. Our goals are to help students acquire knowledge and skills that will prepare them to live and work in an increasingly multicultural and global society; to offer comparative and intersectional approaches to understanding race, migration, ethnicity, class, gender, sexuality, and citizenship; and other critical studies.

The undergraduate concentration in Comparative Ethnic and American studies (CEAS) provides a course of study that engages interdisciplinary and comparative understanding of ethnicity and race in the Americas. Like other concentrations in Comparative Studies, CEAS places "comparison" at the heart of its mission: we analyze processes of racialization in relation to gender, sexuality, and class that have shaped ethnic American experiences, cultural production, and relations to citizenship.

Disability Studies at The Ohio State University examines the nature, meaning, and consequences of disability in global culture from an integrated social, political, cultural model. It incorporates historical, phenomenological, political, cultural, medical, sociological, technological, educational, and legal perspectives in order to provide an enriched and coherent view of disability as part of universal human experience. In 2006, OSU began offering a Graduate Interdisciplinary Specialization in Disability Studies.

Latino/a Studies at Ohio State University is a cross-disciplinary program, offering coursework from more than 12 departments. Across courses students will encounter an emphasis on the perspectives of Latino/as who have shaped historical events, produced written, musical and visual arts, reformed educational practices and policies, and changed the landscape, economy and politics of US cities. The work of Latino/a Studies is explicitly anti-oppressive as it relates to the intersections of race, class, gender, and sexuality.