Culture And Cultural Studies - Syllabus. Culture is the pattern of human behavior that includes thought, speech, action, and artifacts. Culture reflects the human capacity for learning and the devolution of knowledge to succeeding generations including intellectual and artistic activity and the works produced by it. Culture includes all socially transmitted behavior patterns, arts, beliefs and institutions. Culture also includes customary beliefs, social forms, and material traits of a racial, religious, or social group.

Culture And Cultural Studies - Syllabus

A Baseline Definition of Culture
People learn culture. That, we suggest, is culture's essential feature. Many qualities of human life are transmitted genetically—an infant's desire for food, for example, is triggered by physiological characteristics determined within the human genetic code. An adult's specific desire for milk and cereal in the morning, on the other hand, cannot be explained genetically; rather, it is a learned (cultural) response to morning hunger. Culture, as a body of learned behaviors common to a given human society, acts rather like a template (i.e., it has predictable form and content), shaping behavior and consciousness within a human society from generation to generation. So culture resides in all learned behavior and in some shaping template or consciousness prior to behavior as well (that is, a "cultural template" can be in place prior to the birth of an individual person).

“This primary concept of a shaping template and body of learned behaviors might be further broken down into the following categories, each of which is an important element of cultural systems:
systems of meaning, of which language is primary
ways of organizing society, from kinship groups to states and multi-national corporations
the distinctive techniques of a group and their characteristic products

“Several important principles follow from this definition of culture:

“If the process of learning is an essential characteristic of culture, then teaching also is a crucial characteristic. The way culture is taught and reproduced is itself an important component of culture.

“Because the relationship between what is taught and what is learned is not absolute (some of what is taught is lost, while new discoveries are constantly being made), culture exists in a constant state of change.

“Meaning systems consist of negotiated agreements—members of a human society must agree to relationships between a word, behavior, or other symbol and its corresponding significance or meaning. To the extent that culture consists of systems of meaning, it also consists of negotiated agreements and processes of negotiation.

“Because meaning systems involve relationships which are not essential and universal (the word "door" has no essential connection to the physical object—we simply agree that it shall have that meaning when we speak or write in English), different human societies will inevitably agree upon different relationships and meanings; this a relativistic way of describing culture.”
wsu.edu:8001/vcwsu/commons/topics/culture/culture-definition.html

“If it is true that culture, at least in its more complex and elaborated forms, is a distinctly human characteristic, the question remains: Why? Why is cultural behavior so uniquely important to human beings? How and why did it develop? What is its role in our lives?” (.wsu.edu/gened/learn-modules/ top_longfor/phychar/culture-humans-1one.html)

“How was the creativity of the black woman kept alive, year after year and century after century, when for most of the years black people have been in America, it was a punishable crime for a black person to read or write? And the freedom to paint, to sculpt, to expand the mind with action did not exist.” (Alice Walker, In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens)
(.wsu.edu/gened/learn-modules/ top_culture/culture-definitions/walker.html)

“Part of the debate about culture revolves around issues of perspective and ownership. Within a nation such as the United States—a nation whose cultural heritage includes elements from every corner of the world—there are a great many perspectives coexisting and intertwining in the cultural fabric. When we all ask ourselves as individuals, ‘what belongs to me, to my culture?’ we are rewarded with a spectacular variety of responses; in this way, different perspectives and ownership of different cultural traditions enriches everyone.”
(.wsu.edu/gened/learn-modules/ top_culture/culture-definitions/whose-text.html)

“What belongs to me, to my culture?” We will do this in a variety of ways, foremost through the use of the book, The Artist’s Way, by Julia Cameron. Used by diverse groups of people from artists to business people, this book offers “the basic principle that creative expression is the natural direction of life, [and] leads the reader through a comprehensive three-month program to recover creativity.”

“Creative expression takes many forms through the arts and language —forms directly shaped by the cultures in which they are created. . . . making art is a fundamental human activity, so that in order to more fully understand any culture one must look at its art.” (.csf.edu/sf/pages/75.html#maps11)

"It is your ability as a creative person to envision positive change that will make a difference." (Patricia Johanson) (.artheals.org/power.html)

“Former Secretary of Defense of the United States, Robert McNamara, commenting on wars of the 20th century, wrote: ‘In retrospect, we can now understand these catastrophes for what they were: essentially the products of a failure of the imagination.’ Seeing Peace was born out of an understanding that this failure of the imagination is the missing link in most institutional responses to conflict and hostility in the world. That without the imagination, without ability to ‘think outside the box,’ without a vision from our creative community, our responses to war and aggression will only institute more wars and aggressions.” (.richardkamler.org/seeingpeace/intro.html)

“‘At the deepest level, the creative process and the healing process arise from a single source. When you are an artist, you are a healer; a wordless trust of the same mystery is the foundation of your work and its integrity.’” (Rachel Naomi Remen, MD) (.artheals.org/power.html)

Class participants will be asked to complete The Artist’s Way as we go through the class, starting the third week of classes. The actual “artist’s pages” that you keep will remain private and will be seen only by you, however, you will be asked to comment on the process of keeping the pages as we go through the course. For example, “What are you discovering? Is the process helpful to you? Why, or why not? What is the effect of doing these activities on your understanding of culture, and of conflict? Does your work on The Artist’s Way impact your perceptions of the various perspectives that we will consider throughout the semester (for example, the quotes at the beginning of this syllabus, and additional perspectives that will be presented throughout the course)?”

The second strand of the course looks at culture and the similarities and differences between cultures from a group perspective, rather than an individual one. We will be reading the book by Kevin Avruch, Culture and Conflict Resolution, as well as related readings from internet sources and readings that course participants suggest in the process of presenting their projects on an particular culture or group.

Soc 250, Sociology of Culture, Course Outline - uvm.edu -syllabus

Douglas E. Foley, "The Great American Football Ritual," from Learning Capitalist Culture: Deep in the Heart of Tejas, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1990, pp. 28-62.
Kathryn Fox, "Real Punks and Pretenders: The Social Organization of Counterculture," Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, Vol. 16, No. 3, Oct. 1987, pp. 344-370.
David Brooks, "Business Life" (on "Burlington, Vermont and other Latte Towns"), from Bobos in Paradise: the New Upper Class and How They Got There (Simon & Schuster: 2000), pp. 103-112.

What is Culture and Why Does it Matter?
The Arnoldian Answer
NEIL POSTMAN, Chapter 1 from Building a Bridge to the 18th Century: How the Past Can Improve Our Future, 1999: .nytimes.com/books/first/p/postman-bridge.html
Matthew Arnold, excerpts from Culture and Anarchy in John Storey (ed.), Cultural Theory and Popular Culture: A Reader 2nd edition (Univ. of Georgia Press, 1998) pp. 7-12.

The Anthropological Answer
Clifford Geertz, "Deep Play: Notes on the Balinese Cockfight," in Rethinking, pp. 239-277. (from The Interpretation of Cultures, 1973.)
Lawrence W. Levine, "William Shakespeare and the American People: A Study in Cultural Transformation," in Rethinking, pp. 157-197.

Critical Theory and Culture

Anthony Giddens, "Conclusion," from New Rules of Sociological Method, (1st edition), pp. 155-161.
Raymond Williams, "Culture" from Marxism and Literature, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977, pp. 11-20.
Richard Johnson, "What is Cultural Studies Anyway?" Social Text, Winter 1986/87, pp. 38-80.
Gina Marchetti, "Action-Adventure as Ideology," in Ian Angus & Sut Jhally (eds.), Cultural Politics in Contemporary America, New York: Routledge, 1989, pp. 182-197
Raymond Williams, "Base and Superstructure in Marxist Cultural Theory," in Rethinking, pp. 407-423.
T. J. Jackson-Lears, "The Concept of Cultural Hegemony: Problems and Possibilities." The American Historical Review, 90:3, June 1985, pp. 567-593.

The Analysis of Form: Semiotics, Structuralism, and Ideology

Semiotics and Media Web Site, .uvm.edu/~tstreete/semiotics_and_ads/index.html
Student semiotic analyses: Hanna Gregory, Brita Wanger, and Jeff Henry.
Roland Barthes, "Written Clothing," in Rethinking, pp. 432-445.

Class and Culture

Video, Media Education Foundation, "Class Dismissed: How TV Frames the Working Class"
E. P. Thompson, "Preface," from The Making of the English Working Class (Vintage: 1966), pp. 9-14.
John Berger, "The Suit and the Photograph," in Rethinking, pp. 424-431.
Roy Rosenzweig, "The Rise of the Saloon," in Rethinking, pp. 121-156
Stanley Aronowitz, "Working Class Culture in the Electronic Age," in Ian Angus & Sut Jhally (eds.), Cultural Politics in Contemporary America, New York: Routledge, 1989, pp. 135-150.
E. P. Thompson, "Time, Work-discipline, and Industrial Capitalism," Past and Present, No. 38, 1967, pp. 56-97.
Paul DiMaggio, "Cultural Entrepreneurship in Nineteenth Century Boston: The Creation of an Organizational Base for High Culture in America," in Rethinking, pp. 374-397

Gender

Video: Dreamworlds: Desire/Sex/Power in Rock Video (written & directed by Sut Jhally)
Thomas Streeter, Nicole Hintlian, Samantha Chipetz, and Susanna Callender, "A Web Essay on the Male Gaze, Fashion Advertising, and the Pose," .uvm.edu/%7Etstreete/powerpose/
John Berger, Chapter 3 of Ways of Seeing, New York: Penguin/BBC, 1972, pp. 45-64.
Janice Radway, "Interpretive Communities and Variable Literacies: the Functions of Romance Reading," in Rethinking, pp. 465-486.
Rachel Bowlby, Just Looking: Consumer Culture in Dreiser, Gissing, and Zola, NY: Methuen, 1985, pp. 1-34.

Race and Ethnicity

Video: Stuart Hall, "Race, the Floating Signifier"
Michael Omi, "In Living Color: Race and American Culture," in Ian Angus & Sut Jhally (eds.), Cultural Politics in Contemporary America, New York: Routledge, 1989, pp. 111-122
Ellen Seiter, "Different Children, Different Dreams: Racial Representation in Advertising," Journal of Communication Inquiry, Vol. 14, No. 1, Winter 1990, pp. 31-47.

Consumer Culture

Thorstein Veblen, excerpts regarding "Conspicuous Consumption," from The Theory of the Leisure Class: An Economic Study of Institutions, 1953 [1899].
Susan G. Davis, "Shopping," in Richard Maxwell (ed.), Culture Works: the Political Economy of Culture, University of Minnesota Press, 2001, pp. 163-196.
Colin Campbell, "Modern Autonomous Imaginative Hedonism," pp. 77-95, and "Conclusion," pp. 202-227, from The Romantic Ethic and the Spirit of Modern Consumerism, Basil Blackwell, 1987.
Rosalind Williams, "The Dream World of Mass Consumption," in Rethinking,pp. 198-235.

Culture, Power, and Identity

Ira Glass, "Family Physics: Act One. Occam's Razor." This is a segment of an NPR radio show called This American Life. There are two ways to listen, online at 207.70.82.73/ra/214.ram or by paying four dollars and downloading the show into your iPod at this link. In either case, listen to the first segment ("Act One") which runs from about 7 minutes to 38 minutes.
Sut Jhally, "'Free at Last': Sponsorship, Fanship & Fascism" .sutjhally.com/lectures/lectures_frame.html

Michel Foucault, "What is an Author?" in Rethinking, pp. 446-464.
Stuart Hall, "Minimal Selves," in Gray and McGuigan (eds.), Studying Culture: An Introductory Reader (New York: Edward Arnold, 1993), pp. 134-138.
Stuart Hall, "Culture, Community, Nation," Cultural Studies, Oct. 1 1993, v. 7 n. 3, pp. 349-363.

Syllabus: Popular Culture
Instructor: Phil Rutledge, Email: prutledg@email.uncc.edu
.uncc.edu/socant/syllabi/ spring2004/ socy2112-001.doc

TEXTS:
'MEDIA/SOCIETY: Industries, Images, and Audiences' by David Croteau and William Hoynes. Third Edition. Pine Forge
Press, Ca.; 2003; ISBN: 0-7619-8773-p.

'TELEVISION MYTH AND THE AMERICAN MIND' by Hal Himmelstein. Second Edition. Praeger, Conn.; 1994. ISBN:
0-275-93157-9

'UNDERSTANDING POPULAR CULTURE', by John Fiske. Unwin Hyman; Boston. 1989.

'READING THE POPULAR', by John Fiske. Unwin Hyman; Boston. 1989.

Download my lecture notes at .zaxistv.com/sociology.htm. These notes are essential material, especially during the first
weeks of class.

INTRODUCTION:
Popular culture typically refers to what we do in our leisure time. In this society, much of what we do involves consumption. We are a culture of mass consumers. Almost every aspect of our modern leisure lifestyle (i.e., music, TV, sports, nightlife, etc) is based on purchasing something that was initially made by someone else (probably on an assembly line) and is then sold to us.
Historically, this is new, because in less technologically advanced societies people must know how to make or produce much of what they consume - including their own leisure entertainment. What is also new to our society is the rise of powerful, influential private corporations driven by the primary goal of making a profit through the encouragement of (mass) consumption of their (mass-made) products.
The study of leisure in a mass society requires the study of the mass media - perhaps the primary agent of 'massification.' We live in a society saturated by mass media. Virtually all forms of leisure have been affected by this increasingly powerful agent of socialization. Of all forms of mass media, television has emerged to become the most powerful media. This course examines popular culture in context of mass society, mass media and the television in particular, and the issues raised by mass society leisure patterns: In a mass society, who influences the forms of entertainment that are made available to the 'mass' public? What messages and ideologies are promoted by mainstream television and radio - and how are they helpful or harmful to certain groups? How are some subcultures seeking their own voices in defiance of the dominant culture? These and other questions are
the subject of this class.
This course is partly designed to introduce the student to a sociological approach to the study of how the production of desire brought by industrialism, capitalism, and the mass media have influenced our lives. These influences are pervasive, influencing ideas about 'success', 'beauty', 'romance', 'happiness', and even what it means to be an 'American.' The study of popular culture requires an examination of the larger social and economic forces that influence our lives, particularly the rise of industrial capitalism and a mass media which is driven by capitalism. At the center of this study is a debate over the extent of this influence and its effects on our social and value systems, and particularly over how to understand our modern leisure activities.

SCHEDULE:
The course will be divided three sections.

The first section of the course will review important sociological issues and cover a basic introductory perspective of popular culture. The theme of these introductory lectures relates to the emergence by the 1920's in the U.S. of a mass consumer society in which entertainment and leisure activities are heavily influenced by private corporations, their advertisements, and the specific values they promote. The first test will cover these introductory lectures and videos. The 'Media/Society' text is important throughout the term but is especially useful for the first test.

The second section of the course directly addresses the theme of popular culture as driven by the force of mass consumption and the interests of industrial capitalists. According to 'mass culture' theorists, cultural institutions - be they aesthetic, political, or
whatever - have been transformed by the force of industrial capitalism and its commodification mechanisms. Artists, athletes, entertainers, and other cultural actors (such as politicians) serve potentially contradictory interests in our modern society: the
desire to remain authentic to themselves and their indigenous culture versus their increased dependency upon profit-interested corporations for survival in a culture dominated by the powerful interests of industrial capitalists. This raises the concern that our cultural institutions are being co-opted by the the force of commodification. In the mass culture model, people are viewed largely as 'massified', opiated spectators who consume that which corporations choose to offer us. Corporate elites are 'all-powerful' in
determining the shape of popular (mainstream) culture. To these theorists, popular culture is really a 'mass culture' brought to us by the 'mass media' which reinforces the dominant values of consumer capitalism, materialism, patriarchy, racism, etc. The second section of the course will utilize Himmelstein's book on this theme, along with the Media/Society text.

The last section will examine John Fiske's model of popular culture. Fiske disagrees with the mass cultural view which tends to be promoted by Himmelstein, preferring to view popular culture as something distinct from 'mass culture.' Fiske argues that, while the force of commodification is great, many people still choose to make their own entertainment - and to make their own expressions of cultural identity - rather than merely consume an instant, prefabricated or ready-made culture manufactured on some 'assembly line' by corporations interested mainly in making money and reinforcing the dominant ideologies that support their system. Fiske is interested in those who are 'marginalized' by various cultural pecking orders (such as by race, ethnicity, wealth, sex, age, etc) and how they use their own cultural expressions to assert themselves against the dominant culture that holds them down in some way. He explores peoples' everyday efforts as creative participants (as opposed to 'opiated spectators') in what he considers the truly 'popular' culture.

Adorno on “Culture Industry”
Instructor: Christopher Cutrone
Course title:
Adorno on “Culture Industry:” Critical Theory of Art as Social Subjectivity
Instructor: Chris Cutrone (e-mail: ccutrone@speedsite.com)
Course description:
Theodor W. Adorno has been best known for his scathing critique of “culture industry.” What is usually missed is that Adorno’s critique of 20th Century cultural forms was dialectical, concerned with their critical potential for both emancipation and domination, and sought to comprehend modern practices of both “hermetic” art and “popular” culture, implicating reflexively the categories and concerns of his own cultural criticism, and thus anticipating issues in “post”-modernism. For Adorno, reflecting critically upon the significance of modern aesthetic forms such as those of the media of cinema, radio, television (and now, the internet) involves the critical theory of the viewer/listener/subject, common to both “high” art and “culture industry.”
In this course we address the Frankfurt School critical theory of the historical transformations of experience and aesthetic subjectivity in modern social life in context, reading works of the 1920s-30s by Siegfried Kracauer and Walter Benjamin, and then focusing on works by Adorno in considering the analytical and explanatory as well as critical power of certain enduring if problematic and contested categories such as “commodification” and “democratization” for a dialectic of modern forms of art and culture as forms of social subjectivity.

Course books:
Adorno, Critical Models: Interventions and Catchwords [Columbia Univ. Press, 1998 / 2005: ISBN 0231076355 (1998) / 023113505X (2005)] - $23.00 ($23.00) / $24.50 ($24.50)
Adorno, The Culture Industry: Selected Essays on Mass Culture [Routledge, 2002: ISBN 0415253802] - $18.00 ($13.00)
Adorno, Essays on Music [Univ. of California Press, 2002: ISBN 0520231597] - $40.00 ($36.00)
Horkheimer and Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment: Philosophical Fragments, trans. Edmund Jephcott [Stanford Univ. Press, 2002: ISBN 0804736332] - $25.00 ($17.00)
Siegfried Kracauer, The Mass Ornament [Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press, 1995]
Georg Luk�cs, History and Class Consciousness [Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1971]
Leon Trotsky, Literature and Revolution (1924) [Ann Arbor, MI: Univ. Michigan Press, 1960]
Robert C. Tucker, ed., Marx-Engels Reader [New York: Norton, 1978]

Intention of the course:
This will be a reading-intensive course focusing on works by Theodor W. Adorno (1903-69) elaborating the concept of “culture industry,” a category of Frankfurt School Critical Theory for characterizing the social-historical context for the development and transformations of artistic forms and aesthetic subjectivity in the 20th Century. The category of “culture industry” will be considered through a sustained reading of Adorno’s writings on popular culture. Additional course readings will be selected from among Weimar- and Nazi-era writings by Walter Benjamin and Siegfried Kracauer.
We will address the origins of Adorno’s thought in what has been termed “Western” Marxism (contrasted with “Eastern,” or Russian-Soviet Marxism), in the context of issues of developments of “mass” society in the 20th Century. We will consider the seminal debate between Adorno and Benjamin on the social significance of modern popular cultural forms that continued to inform Adorno’s subsequent elaboration of a dialectic of modern aesthetic form as social form. We will evaluate the coherence, the analytical and explanatory as well as critical power for present-day, post-20th Century social life, of the attempt at a dialectic of “culture industry,” with such attendant critical concepts in Adorno’s writings as “authoritarian personality,” “eclipse of the individual,” etc., considered as being not merely “negative” or pejorative, but grasping emergent social-historical formation and its actual, determinate possibilities for transformation and emancipation. The latter part of the course will focus on Adorno’s work as exemplary of such a dialectic.

Note on Frankfurt School Critical Theory and Cultural Studies:
Frankfurt School Critical Theory developed after the failed and betrayed revolutions of 1917-19 in Russia, Germany and elsewhere, and sought to develop upon Marxist thought for a dialectic of 20th Century social forms. Frankfurt School critical theorists such as Adorno were concerned with how social discontents found expression through forms of the reconstitution of domination after struggles for emancipation were defeated, failed, or gave rise to highly ambiguous, contradictory and paradoxical outcomes.
Frankfurt School thought has served as an important if ambivalent foundation for the development of popular cultural studies in the aftermath of the 1960s. Perhaps the most widely read work in this founding tradition of cultural studies is the chapter on “The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception” from the book by Horkheimer and Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment: Philosophical Fragments (1944-47), a book which became influential for the post-WWII generation’s political discontents, and whose themes were elaborated in Marcuse’s writings of the ’60s such as One-Dimensional Man.
However, in the subsequent development of cultural studies, especially after the ebbing of the radicalism of the social upheavals of the 1960s-’70s, Adorno’s work in particular has suffered obscurity. Cultural criticism after the 1960s has taken a cue from Frankfurt School Critical Theory’s attention to so-called cultural determinants of social-historical continuity and change. But since Adorno’s critique of culture industry has been mistaken for an elitist rejection of popular culture, it remained a stumbling block to the intention of discovering an authentic democratic and egalitarian basis for the appeal of modern popular cultural forms. Since the ’80s, cultural studies approaches have emphasized the production of meaning in reception, in contrast to the formal analysis of cultural objects, which emphasizes problems of subjectivity.
This course will consider the continued relevance of the latter approach to problems of culture and society provided by Frankfurt School Critical Theory, especially through the work of Adorno, which seeks to apprehend, explore and socially-historically specify fundamental problems of subjectivity in transformations of the nature of social equality and democracy that might otherwise be taken for granted and naturalized, for a dialectic of emancipation and domination that constitutes social modernity.

Media and Cultural Studies - Syllabus
Dr. Ted Friedman
Email: tedf@gsu.edu; Phone: (404) 463-9522
Home Page: .tedfriedman.com

Course Description
What are the political dimensions of popular culture? How does culture reflect, influence, and embody structures of power?
Where does hegemony end and resistance begin? This class will engage the interdisciplinary field of Cultural Studies, which attempts to understand the relationship between culture and politics. We’ll be reading founding theoretical texts, current scholarship, and works which attempt to translate theory into action. We’ll address a range of media, from film and television to music, computer games and romance novels. We’ll look at multiple, intersecting structures of power, including class, nation, gender, and race.

Readings
Class readings will include books, a coursepack of articles, and news items distributed via the class email list.
• Thomas Frank, What’s the Matter With Kansas?
• Graeme Turner, British Cultural Studies: An Introduction
• Michael Denning, Culture in the Age of Three Worlds
• Suzanna Walters, Material Girls
• Michael Omi and Howard Winant, Racial Formation in the United States
• Arjun Appadurai, Modernity at Large
• Janice Radway, Reading the Romance
• Susan Douglas et al, The Mommy Myth
• Allan Badiner, ed., Mindfulness in the Marketplace
• Cary Nelson, Manifesto of a Tenured Radical
• Craig Seligman, Sontag & Kael: Opposites Attract Me
• Naomi Klein, No Logo.

Discourses of Culture, Media and Technology (core theory)
CCT 797: Jeffrey Peck

Texts ordered: T. Eagleton, Literary Theory. An Introduction; C. Belsey, Critical Practice; M. Foucault, History of Sexuality, Vol. 1. The first two texts must be read, although they will not be discussed specifically. I encourage you to read them before class begins. The rest of the texts will be on electronic reserve in the Lauinger Library under my name.

Tentative Schedule

Week 1, Introduction

Week 2, (Em)Powering/ Disciplining/Defining the Discipline of Cultural Studies

Texts: M. Foucault, “Docile Bodies” in Discipline and Punish and “The Subject and Power;” L. Grossberg, C. Nelson, P. Treicher, “Cultural Studies: An Introduction,” in Cultural Studies; L. Grossberg, “Cultural Studies: What’s in a Name?;” D. Bathrick, “Cultural Studies.”

Week 3, Authors, Texts, Readers/Audiences and the Practices of Interpretation

Texts: M. Foucault, “What is an Author?;” R. Barthes, “From Work to Text;” W. Iser, “Interaction Between Text and Reader;” S. Fish, “Literature and the Reader: Affective Stylistics” in Is There a Text in This Class?; R. Palmer, “Toward Reopening the Question: What is Interpretation?” and “Thirty Theses on Interpretation.”(on hermeneutics)

Week 4, Historical, Social, Political Contexts and Interests: Ideology, Hegemony, and the State

Texts: K. Marx, “The German Ideology,” in The Grundrisse; F. Fanon, “On National Culture” in The Wretched of the Earth; A. Gramsci, “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses;” J. Habermas, “Knowledge and Human Interests;” B. Anderson, Imagined Communities (Ch.1-3); P. Bourdieu, Reproduction in Education, Society and Culture (selections).

Week 6, Race and Ethnicity

Texts: F. Fanon, “Black Skin, White Masks”; b. hooks, “Eating the Other: Desire and Resistance;” H.L. Gates, The Signifying Monkey (Intro., Part I); S. Hall, “Old and New Identities, Old and New Ethnicities;” G. Anzaldua, “The Homeland, Aztl�n” and “Towards a New Consciousness” in Borderlands/La Frontera; S. Gilman, “Black Bodies, White Bodies,” in Race, Writing and the Difference It Makes; Trin Minh Ha, Woman/Native/Other (Ch. 2, 3).

Week 8, (Post)Colonialism

Texts: E. Said, Orientalism (selections); G. Spivak, “Can the Subaltern Speak?;” H.Bhaba, “Interrogating Identity;” and “The Postcolonial and the Postmodern: the Question of Agency;” C. Mohanty, “Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourses.”

Week 10, Gender and Sexuality

Texts: S. Freud, “Introduction, The Interpretation of Dreams” and “Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality;” J. Lacan, “The Mirror Stage” and “The Function of the Letter;” M. Foucault, The History of Sexuality, Vol. 1; E.K. Sedgwick, “Introduction” and “The Epistemology of the Closet;” D. Haraway, “A Cyborg Manifesto;” J. Butler, Gender Trouble (selections).

Week 12, Semiotics and (Post)Structuralism

Texts: F. de Saussure,”Course in General Linguistics;” R. Barthes, “The Structuralist Activity” and Mythologies (selections); C-L. Strauss, “The Structural Study of Myth;”

J. Culler, Structuralist Poetics (Ch. 1, 2); J. Derrida, “Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences” in Writing and Difference; M. Foucault, “The Discourse on Language;” J. Harari, “Critical Factions/Critical Fictions,”(Introduction) in Textual Strategies: Perspectives in Post-Structuralist Criticism.

Week 14, Technology and Representation

Texts: W. Benjamin, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction;” M. Horkheimer and T. Adorno, “The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception;” J. Habermas, “The Public Sphere: An Encyclopedia Article;” L. Mulvey, “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema;” J. Johnston and F. Kittler, Friedrich A. Kittler Essays (Intro, Ch. 1); R. Debray, Media Manifestos (selections); H.M. Enzensburger, “Constituents of a Theory of Media;” J. Baudrillard, “The Precession of Simulacra.”

Comparative Studies in Emerging Media - Syllabus
In the past ten years, the expansion of the internet and the digitization of culture have vastly changed the way Americans, and people all over the world, share information. Libraries of data can now be accessed and exchanged instantaneously from terminals around the globe. Any blogger with a keyboard can weigh in on the issues of our times to an international audience,
and hope to build a readership based on nothing other than strength of ideas. Digital production technologies make the tools of the Hollywood pros available to anybody with a Mac. And new models of “open source” software distribution challenge the inequities of the global capitalist economy.

But if new media technology today offers a host of utopian promises, it also inspires dystopian fears: of technology making jobs obsolete, of ubiquitous governmental and corporate surveillance, of the consequences of the pervasive digital divide between the info-haves and -have-nots.

Meanwhile, the American media landscape is in the midst of major transitions:

Traditional news-gathering organizations have been challenged by bloggers, who, scouring the ‘net in their pajamas, are often more informed than the high-powered journalists with the greatest insider “access.”

Television networks continue to lose market share to cable, and now have begun selling episodes through DVD, pay per view, and iTunes.

Movie studios now make over two-thirds of their grosses from DVD sales rather than box office receipts. Box office declined 5% in the US in 2005, as studios began discussing the option of releasing films simultaneously in theaters and on DVD, which could lead to the end of the American custom of going to the movies.

CD sales have been dropping for years, but the music industry now makes billions on ringtone sales, and Apple’s iPod has become on of the most successful consumer products in global history.
Even as the public sphere grows more capacious, the ownership of production and distribution grows more concentrated, as a small number of multinational corporations more powerful than many nation-states continue to expand their mass media oligopolies.

Moore’s Law states that the pace of growth in computing power continuously accellerates. It’s not surprising, then, that the pace of technological change continues to pulse faster and faster.

In the thick of the moment, how can we gain perspective on the present, and insight into the future? One way is to turn to the past, to look at our circumstances in the light of earlier transitional moments. Examining the introduction of the telegraph can help us gain perspective on the rise of the internet. At the same time, studying our projections of the future can also help us
understand our present obsessions.

This class, then, will bounce between the past, present and future. At the same time, it will engage a range of methodologies, including cultural studies, social history, journalism, futurism, science studies, science fiction, blogging and Buddhist philosophy.

Course Description: This course aims to introduce students to Korean popular culture and its roots. Rather than present a compilation of factual information, the course will seek to develop an understanding of modern Korea by making an interdisciplinary approach to cultural, social, and political issues of Korean society.

This course will combine lectures with discussions of the readings. Audio-visual materials including television dramas, movies, music, and documentaries will be used in conjunction with them.

Korea’s ancient history, philosophy, and religion will be discussed, but they are introduced as background information to provide students a better understanding of today’s Korean society.

Course Objectives: Students who take this course will:

be able to examine and analyze Korean film, television, music, art, and literature, situating them in their social and historical contexts;

explore the various issues of modern Korea from the perspectives of several disciplines including sociology, political science, cultural theory, and media studies;

identify the relevant patterns of cultural construction in the major aspects of history, philosophy, religion, and social life;
4. critically examine and evaluate the social, political and economic influence of media representations in a globalizing world.

Korean Popular Culture:

Course Materials: Required Textbook: John Fiske, Introduction to Communication Studies, (London and New York: Routledge, 1990). Bruce Cumings, Korea’s Place in the Sun: A Modern History, (New York: W. W. Norton, 2005 Updated Edition). Available at Rainbow Bookstore Cooperative, 426 W. Gilman (located off State Street at the first cross street after Lake Street).

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