BA (Hons) in Social Sciences with Major in Liberal Studies and Minor in Media Studies
Program Overview
Areas: Literature, history, philosophy, media studies, culture and society, politics, sociology, anthropology, history
Duration: 4 years, 8 semesters
Credits: 131
Career Paths: Civil services, corporate sectors, marketing, advertising, public relations, film-making, journalism, entertainment media, human resource management
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Program Description
Having laid the foundations for building a strong liberal arts degree program, BNU's Liberal Arts Department is embarking on an exciting journey to further richen, broaden and deepen its offerings for bright, inquisitive and vibrant minds. The robust, comprehensive, holistic, varied and multi-disciplinary nature of this restructured program will visibly and qualitatively distinguish the line-up of our courses from those being marketed by others.
The primary impulse inspiring this step in our academic endeavors is the need to create and foster an academic agenda that creatively and constructively responds to the cultural, economic, political and institutional challenges of the country. Since our inquiry is anchored around questions like who are we, what is our history, how do we live in and with the world today, how do we live with others to find peace and prosperity, this initiative aims to cultivate an uninhibited spirit of inquiry in young minds by opening up new vistas of current thinking and action.
Our vision is to equip our students with the requisite tools such that they can craft rationally informed judgments from independent analysis, critical thinking and blending of global knowledge with local cultures and experiences. Our ambition is not to tell students what to think. We strive to create a fertile academic milieu where students are challenged to form their own opinions. We teach them how to think.
We promise a uniquely transformative experience to help you grow into intellectually insightful and cosmopolitan individuals, fully cognizant of local challenges and global opportunities. Our students will, therefore, find this degree a fertile ground for free academic discussion and debate through intensive engagement with current global knowledge and texts produced by leading thinkers. By undergoing this experience we expect our students to find their own answers and voices for determining and shaping alternative futures.
Apart from taking core courses in the Department of Liberal Arts, students will be encouraged to avail rich and unparalleled academic resources on offer in other BNU schools. Elective courses in fine arts and design studies, architecture, psychology, education, journalism and film/television studies will be an integral component of our pedagogy and methodology. This degree is also highly suitable for students wanting to discover their moorings before pursuing higher education in law, business studies, social sciences and other vocations.
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Admission Requirement
- To be eligible for admission to undergraduate program in Liberal Studies, a candidate must satisfy any one of the following requirements
- FA / F.Sc with at least 2nd division (i.e. 495 marks)
- O-levels (in at least 8 subjects) and 3 A-levels. Advanced Subsidiary (AS) will not be taken into account
- High School Diploma and International Baccalaureate (IB) result with at least 2.5 CGPA and equivalence certificate from IBCC
- Admission Test
- Interview
Students awaiting their FA/ F.Sc/A-Level results may apply for admission at BNU. Selected candidates will be granted provisional admission only, which may be regularized after they have been declared successful and meet the admission requirements of the university.
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Courses
This re-defined degree program trains students in critical and humanist disciplines like sociology, politics, history, economics, basic sciences and literature thereby equipping them to be much better positioned to play productive and constructive roles in the marketplace.
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Semester I
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Semester 2
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Semester 3
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Semester 4
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Semester 5
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Semester 6
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Semester 7
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Semester 8
The department reserves the right to replace, cancel, and/or change the sequence of courses depending on enrolment and faculty availability.
Courses are offered upon minimum course enrollment of 15 students
Some of the other courses of Liberal Studies program include -I, Examples of courses that will be on offer in coming semesters are:
- History of India/Subcontinent, including the British Raj and Nationalist Movements
- Colonialism: Strategies of Power in Asia and Africa
- Modern Political Theory/Philosophy
- Introduction to Cultural Anthropology
- Pakistan: Roots of Dictatorships
- The Idea of Democracy and Political History in Pakistan
- Pakistan: Ethnography, Language, Culture
- Class and Power
- Identity Politics: Race, Ethnicity, Nationality
- Globalization: Promises and Perils
- Global Political Economy
- Europe: Reformation, Renaissance, Enlightenment
- Modern Philosophy
- Islam: First 300 years
- Reformist Thought in Islam
- Media: Local, National, Global
- Television: Information, Entertainment and Thought-Control
- European Literature
- South Asian Literature
- Introduction to Logic and Methods of Scientific Inquiry
- Social Theory
- Philosophical Investigations
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Degree Requirement
Degree requirements for this program include successful completion of 130 credit hours of course work including research methods and/or thesis.