Final Year Project

Project Title

Critical consciousness of cultural tropes/conventions, and university students’ engagement with gendered expectations/performativity, capitalism/consumerism, and nation-building/statecraft

Description

This research project explores how critical cultural consciousness modulates Habib University (HU) Junior (3rd year) and Senior (4th year) and graduated students’ engagements with three major dimensions of the social order: gendered expectations/performativity, capitalism/consumerism and nation-building/statecraft. These, as in any society, constitute significant markers of culture within Pakistan. The objective of this research is to explore how the curriculum of a liberal arts undergraduate education helps students develop critical cultural consciousness and therefore their engagement with the three dimensions of culture and political economy mentioned above. Findings indicate that a correlation exists between exposure to a liberal arts curriculum and the development of critical thinking and in turn of critical consciousness. This evolving consciousness gradually translates into modes of thinking, values and subsequently into daily conduct. Considering that Habib University is Pakistan's first liberal arts university, this study will contribute to academic literature in a significant way, wherein important outcomes of this type of education are discussed bearing in mind its effects on the way students think about important dimensions of the social order.