Building Your Own Major: MacKay '26 Combines Poetry and Critical Theory
today.emerson.edu
One student's self-designed major in Poetry and Critical Theory reveals how interdisciplinary thinking challenges the rigid boundaries academia draws around knowledge — and who gets to define it.
InterdisciplinarityEpistemologyCritical TheorySocial Construction of Knowledge
Theory Briefing
- MacKay '26 used Emerson's Interdisciplinary Studies program to build her own major, merging poetry and critical theory into one cohesive field.
- Her custom curriculum challenges the idea that disciplines are natural categories — a live case of epistemological boundary-work in higher education.
- By fusing philosophy, literature, and theory, MacKay embodies the argument that the most generative thinking happens at the edges of established fields.