Overview

Description

CALENDAR DESCRIPTION:

Examines current debates in media and cultural studies, including hegemony, biopower, affect, subjectivity, cultures of capitalism and cultures of resistance.

COURSE DETAILS:

Insisting, as one of its founders, Raymond Williams, does, that “culture is ordinary” Cultural Studies considers the objects of high and low culture to understand them on their own terms but also to comprehend their relatedness to issues of ideology and identity. The course will focus on the convergence of culture and politics and will provide students with an opportunity to analyze how matters of culture, politics, and power relate to broader discourses regarding identity, power, ethics, agency, and the expansion of democratic public life. This course is an introduction to the theoretical foundations of contemporary work in cultural studies, with a particular emphasis on the study of media, popular culture, media audiences, subcultures, and consumer culture. We will consider cultural studies as an academic movement that has had an impact across a range of disciplines, national contexts, and research fields, looking for what these various approaches might have in common, as well as some key debates and controversies within the field.

This course attempts to focus on what it might mean to engage cultural studies as a form of practical politics, particularly as it relates to earlier historical work that connected political and social theories with broader concerns for understanding how those in the academe and others might rewrite the role of cultural politics and reinvigorate the possibility for addressing social problems, democratic practices, identities, institutional relations, and new power formations.

Grading

Materials

REQUIRED READING:

REQUIRED READING NOTES: