The Interpretation Theory Program provides students and faculty with an interdisciplinary forum for exploring the nature, ethics, and politics of representation. Reaching widely across the disciplines, work done in the minor reflects a long-standing drive to cultivate self-consciousness in the use of a significant range of interpretive methods. Students use this course of study to develop a flexible, comparative, critical, historicized grasp of theories of the production of meaning in and through cultural life. They also sharpen their skills in critical reading and intellectual analysis.

Students who minor take a total of six courses that build on a combination of classic and current hermeneutic methods. Each year, graduating seniors enroll in a capstone seminar that proposes a structured investigation into an inherently interdisciplinary problem. Faculty team-teach the course as a way of drawing out multi-disciplinary concerns in both theory and practice.