The Center for Social Theory grew out of the Committee on Social Theory that was created in 2012 (under the leadership of Harry F. Dahms, Sociology, and Allen R. Dunn, English/Philosophy) to provide graduate students with the opportunity to pursue and obtain an interdisciplinary graduate social theory certificate at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville. The center continues and institutionalizes the committee’s activities as they included the organization of conferences (such as the 2014 Conference of the International Social Theory Consortium), lectures by both outside speakers and committee members, as well as by graduating students fulfilling the capstone requirement of the graduate social theory certificate. The Center for Social Theory provides a context for faculty and students to complement, counterbalance, or compensate for the limitations associated with individual disciplines—with active exchange related to inter-, cross-, multi- or trans-disciplinary perspectives. The Center is fostering and supporting research across the social sciences and humanities, between particular social sciences, or between the humanities, social sciences, and natural/applied sciences, with regard to these thematic complexes: