Cultural Theories

Week One (May 23) - Mapping Cultural Theory

Introduction to the course!
In-class excercise: Foucault & Deleuze conversation about theory and practice
In-class group reading: Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed (chapter 2)

Week One (May 25) - Marxism, Ideology & Hegemony

Readings for today:

Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, "The Ruling Class and the Ruling Ideas."
Louis Althusser, "Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses"
Raoul Vaneigem, "Introduction," The Revolution of Everyday Life (Rebel Press, 2001).
Hegemony (definition from Cultural Theory: The Key Concepts)

Reading Questions & Guides:

Guide: More on Althusser - ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses (click here for the print version)
Guide: Lecture notes on Marxism and Ideology
Guide: 'Hegemony' entry in The Dictionary of Marxist Thought
Guide: Marx's "Real Basis of Ideology" (you can download a print copy here).
Guide: Marx's take on 'commodity fetishism'

Soundtrack (just for fun):

Billy Bragg, "The World Turned Upside Down"
The Broadways, "15 Minutes"
Dillinger Four, "Minimum Wage is a Gateway Drug"
The Strike, "Kicking Ass (For the Working Class)"
"The Internationale" (Spanish version)

For further reading/research:

Karl Marx, excerpts from The German Ideology (written in 1845-1846). First Premises of the Materialist Method; History: Fundamental Conditions; Private Property and Communism, from The German Ideology.
C.L.R James, "They Showed the Way to Labor Emancipation: On Karl Marx and the 75th Anniversary of the Paris Commune," Labor Action, March 18, 1946.
Raymond Williams, "Hegemony," in Marxism and Literature (Oxford: 1977) pp 108-114.
David Harvey's online course on Marx's Capital (video lectures).
Paul Smith, "A Memory of Marxism" (1993).
Georg Lukacs, "What is Orthodox Marxism?," History & Class Consciousness.
Stuart Hall, "Gramsci's Relevance for the Study of Race and Ethnicity."
Professor Ron Strickland's lecture on 'commodity fetishism', from his online course in Cultural Theory (YouTube video).
Income inequality in the United States (a pictorial), Salon.com

Week Two (May 30) - NO CLASS

Week Two (June 1) - The Frankfurt School

Readings for today

Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno, "The Culture Industry," from ed. Simon During, The Cultural Studies Reader, Third Edition (Routledge: 2007).
Walter Benjamin, "The Work of Art in the Age of its Technological Reproduction," from ed. Simon During, The Cultural Studies Reader, Third Edition (Routledge: 2007).
"Frankfurt School" in John Storey, Cultural Theory and Popular Culture: An Introduction. NOTE: You can access a PDF copy of the entire book (Cultural Theory and Popular Culture) HERE.
FIRST RESPONSE PAPER DUE TODAY! (on any of the readings thus far)

Reading Questions & Guides:

Questions: Horkheimer & Adorno, Benjamin, Frank (NOTE: ignore the ones on Frank)
Guide: Horkheimer & Adorno on the 'culture industry'.
Guide: A quick overview on Adorno.
Guide: The Culture Industry: a slide lecture (open w/ Internet Explorer) by Prof. Warner at UC Santa Barbara.
Guide: Introduction to Walter Benjamin: a slide lecture (open w/ Internet Explorer) by Prof. Warner at UC Santa Barbara.

For further reading/research:

Professor Ron Strickland's lecture on Frankfurt School Critical Theory, from his online course in Literary and Cultural Studies (YouTube video).
David Barsamian, "Public Relations, Corporate Spin and Propaganda: An interview with Stuart Ewen," Z Magazine, May 2000.
Thomas Frank, "Why Johnny Can't Dissent," from Commodify Your Dissent.
Guy Debord, Society of the Spectacle, Translated by Ken Knabb, London: Rebel Press, 2004 (Originally published as La Société du Spectacle in 1967).
Stuart Ewen, "The Unseen Engineers: Biography of an Idea," from PR! A Social History of Spin. pp. 146-173.
Theodor W. Adorno, "Culture Industry Reconsidered," New German Critique, No. 6 (Autumn, 1975), pp. 12-19.
Adam Curtis' The Century of the Self
Douglas Kellner, "The Frankfurt School Revisited: A Critique of Martin Jay's The Dialectical Imagination," New German Critique, No. 4, Winter 1975, pp. 131-152.
Angela McRobbie, “The Passagenwerk and the Place of Walter Benjamin in Cultural Studies: Benjamin, Cultural Studies, Marxist Theories of Art,” Cultural Studies, Vol. 6, No. 2, May 1992, pp. 147-169.
Naomi Klein, "Alt.Everything," from No Logo, Picador: 2000, pp. 63-85 (Chapter 3).
Jon Goss, "Geographies of Consumption: The Work of Consumption," Progress in Human Geography, Vol. 30, No. 2, 2006; pp. 237-249.

Week Three (June 6) - Lanugage, Discourse and Power

Readings for today

Roland Barthes, excerpt from "Myth Today."
Michel Foucault, "On Method." in the RED book
John Storey, Chapter 6 in Cultural Theory and Popular Culture. Click HERE for the book.

Reading questions & guides:

Guide: 'Structuralism' from the Cultural Theory: The Key Concepts
Guide: 'Post-structuralism' from the Cultural Theory: The Key Concepts
Guide: 'Deconstruction' from the Cultural Theory: The Key Concepts
Guide: An overview of post-structuralism

For further reading/research:

Michel Foucault, excerpts on 'discourse', power/knowledge, and structuralism.
David Gunkel, "Deconstruction for Dummies" from Hacking Cyberspace.
John Storey, "Structuralism & Post-Structuralism" (Chapter 6) in Cultural Theory and Popular Culture.
An interview with Michel Foucault entitled "Body/Power," from Power/Knowledge, Selected Interviews and Other Writings 1972-1977.
Peter Dews, "Power and Subjectivity in Foucault," New Left Review, Issue #144, March-April 1984, pp. 72-95.
Very useful lecture notes and outlines on Michel Foucault from Professor John Protevi (Louisiana State University). In particular, take a look at his outlines on Discipline and Punish and The Subject and Power. Also see his lecture notes on 'Situating Foucault'
Claude Levi-Strauss, "Structural Analysis in Linguistics and in Anthropology," Structural Anthropology (1958).
Notes on Claude Levi-Strauss' "The Structural Study of Myth."
Raymond Williams, "Marxism, Structuralism and Literary Analysis," New Left Review, Issue #129, September-October 1981, pp. 51-66.
Chris Weedon, "Feminist Principles of Poststructuralism" in the RED book

Week Three (June 8) - Psychoanalysis & Cultural Critique

Readings for today:

Laura Mulvey, "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema."
Lacan's key terms (Imaginary, Symbolic, Real)
Dino Felluga, "Modules on Lacan: On Psychosexual Development," (links to all four sections are in the menu on the left)

Reading questions:

Questions: Psychoanalysis and Cultural Critique

For further reading and research:

Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks (1952).
Slavoj Žižek, speaking at Cooper Union in New York City (2009).
Louis Althusser, "Freud and Lacan," New Left Review, Issue #55, May-June 1969, pp. 49-65.
Žižek's key ideas, concepts and terms.
Laura Mulvey, "Afterthoughts on 'Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema'"
Jacques Lacan, "Of Structure as the Inmixing of an Otherness Prerequisite to Any Subject Whatever."
Julia Kristeva, "Approaching Abjection," (excerpt) from Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection, trans. Leon S. Roudiez, Columbia University Press: 1982.
Notes on Kristeva: Dino Felluga, "Modules on Kristeva: On the Abject." Introductory Guide to Critical Theory.

Week Four (June 13) - Cultural Studies, Part I

Readings for today:

NOTE - Copies of the readings for this week are on my office door (13N, 624 S. Michigan)
Dick Hebdige, excerpt from Subculture: The Meaning of Style (1979).
Raymond Williams, "The Analysis of Culture."
EP Thompson, "Preface from the Making of the English Working Class."
READING RESPONSE PAPER DUE TODAY!

Reading Questions & Guides:

Guide: Stuart Hall, "On the Origins of Cultural Studies," (video)
Guide: Norma Schulman, "Conditions of Their Own Making: An Intellectual History of the Center for Contemporary Cultural Studies at the University of Birmingham." Canadian Journal of Communication, Vol 18, No. 1 (1993).
Guide: Daniel Chandler, "Semiotics for Beginners: Encoding/Decoding" (online)
Guide: Professor Ron Strickland's lecture on British Cultural Studies (via YouTube)

For further reading/research:

Raymond Williams, "Culture is Ordinary," in The Everyday Life Reader, ed. Ben Highmore (New York & London: Routledge) 2002, pp. 91-100.
Raymond Williams, "Analysis of Culture," in The Long Revolution, 1961, pp. 57-70.
Stuart Hall, "Cultural Studies and Its Theoretical Legacies." Originally published in Cultural Studies, ed. Lawrence Grossberg, Cary Nelson, Paula Treichler (New York & London: Routledge) 1992, pp. 277-294.
Stuart Hall, "The Emergence of Cultural Studies and the Crisis of the Humanities," October, Vol. 53, 1990, pp. 11-90.
Stuart Hall, "Cultural Studies: Two Paradigms," Media, Culture and Society 2 (1980): pp. 57-72.
Marquard Smith, "On the State of Cultural Studies: An Interview with Paul Gilroy," Third Text, No. 49, Winter 1999-2000, pp. 15-26.
Henry Giroux, "Cultural Studies, Public Pedagogy and the Responsibility of Intellectuals," Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies Vol. 1, No. 1, March 2004, pp. 59-79.
Alan O’Connor, "Who’s Emma and The Limits of Cultural Studies," Cultural Studies, Vol. 13 (4) 1999 , pp. 691-702.
Stuart Hall, "Culture, Community, Nation," Cultural Studies, Vol. 7, No. 3 (1993): 349-363.

Week Four (June 15) - Cultural Studies, Part II

Readings for today:

Stuart Hall, "Negotiating Caribbean Identities."
Sunaina Maira, “Henna and Hip Hop: Cultural Production and the Work of Cultural Studies.”
Recommended: Paul Gilroy, "'Get Up, Get Into It and Get Involved': Soul, Civil Rights and Black Power," from Ain't No Black in the Union Jack.

Reading Questions & Guides:

Questions: On Race & Ethnicity

For further reading/research:

Paul Gilroy, "British Cultural Studies and the Pitfalls of Identity," MCS 381-395.
Ward Churchill, "The Crucible of American Indian Identity," from Z Magazine, January 1998.
Paul Gilroy, The Black Atlantic (excerpt).
Stuart Hall, "Whose Heritage?: Un-settling 'the heritage', Re-imagining the Post-nation," Third Text, Vol. 13, No. 49 (1999): 3-13.
Winston James, "Migration, Racism and Identity: The Caribbean Experience in Britain," New Left Review, Issue #193, May-June 1992, pp. 15-55.
Edward Said, "On Palestinian Identity: A Conversation with Salman Rushdie," New Left Review, Issue #160, November-December 1986, pp. 63-80.
Henry Giroux, "Living Dangerously: Identity Politics and the New Cultural Racism (Towards a Critical Pedagogy of Representation)," Cultural Studies, Volume 7, No. 1, January 1993 , pp. 1-27.
Patrick Brantlinger, "Forgetting Genocide: Or, the Last of The Last of the Mohicans," Cultural Studies, Volume 12, No. 1, January 1998, pp. 15-30.
Pancho Mcfarland, "Hyper- Masculine and Misogynist Violence in Chicano Rap," Bad Subjects #61, 2002.
Mimi Nguyen, "Orientalist Kitsch," Pop Politics.
Mimi Nguyen, "It's (Not) a White World: Looking For Race in Punk," Punk Planet, No. 28, November/December 1998.
C.L.R. James, "Black Power," a talk given in London, 1967.
Black Panther Party, "Ten-Point Program."

Week Five (June 20) - Thinking/Doing Gender

Readings for today:

Judith Butler, Preface to Gender Trouble (1999).
Angela McRobbie, “Post-feminism and Popular Culture,” Feminist Media Studies, Vol. 4, Issue 3, November 2004, pp. 255-264.

Reading questions & guides:

Guide: Judith Butler on gender & sex by Dean Felluga
Guide: Judith Butler on performativity by Dean Felluga
CLICK HERE for more readings on feminism & gender.

For further reading/research:

Robin DG Kelley, "This Battlefield Called Life: Black Feminist Dreams," in Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination, pp. 135-156.
Adrienne Rich, "Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence," Signs, Vol. 5, No. 4, Women: Sex and Sexuality. (Summer, 1980), pp. 631-660.
Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, "Introduction," From Between Men, 1985.
Chandra Talpade Mohanty, excerpt from "Under Western Eyes:Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourses,"
Anne Balsamo, "Feminism and Cultural Studies," The Journal of the Midwest Modern Language Association, Vol. 24, No. 1, (Spring, 1991), pp. 50-73.
Judith Lorber, “'Night to his Day': The Social Construction of Gender," excerpts from Paradoxes of Gender.
Mattilda, aka Matt Bernstein Sycamore, “Gay Shame: From Queer Autonomous Space to Direct Action Extravaganza."
R. Anthony Slagle, "Queer Criticism and Sexual Normativity: The Case of Pee-wee Herman," Journal of Homosexuality, Vol. 45, No. 2/3/4, 2003, pp. 129-146.
Stephen Maddison (2000) Fags, Hags and Queer Sisters: Gender Dissent and Heterosocial Bonds in Gay Culture, Macmillan & St. Martin’s Press (chapter 2) [available online at http://www.opengender.org.uk/node/108 ]
Paula Graham (2002) ‘Buffy Wars: The Next Generation’ Rhizomes issue 4, http://www.rhizomes.net/issue4/graham.html

Week Five (June 22) - Postcolonial Theroy

Readings for today:

Edward Said, excerpt from Orientalism.
Sunaina Maira, "Belly Dancing: Arab-Face, Orientalist Feminism and U.S. Empire," American Quarterly (2008), pp. 317-345.
READING RESPONSE PAPER DUE TODAY!

Soundtrack:

Fela Kuti, "Colonial Mentality"
Anti-Product, "It Festers in the Hearts"

Reading guides and/or questions:

Guide: Overview of Colonialism and Post-colonialism
Guide: Outline of Mohanty's "Under Western Eyes"

For further reading/research:

Frantz Fanon, "Reciprocal Bases of National Culture and the Fight for Freedom: A Speech to Congress of Black African Writers."
Che Guevara, "Colonialism is Doomed," A speech delivered on December 11, 1964 to the 19th General Assembly of the United Nations in New York.
Kwame Nkrumah, "Introduction", "The Mechanisms of Neo-Colonialism," "Conclusion," Neo-Colonialism: The Last Stage of Imperialism, Thomas Nelson & Sons Ltd: London, 1965.
Amilcar Cabral, "The Weapon of Theory," Address delivered to the first Tricontinental Conference of the Peoples of Asia, Africa and Latin America held in Havana in January, 1966.
Cultural Studies, Vol. 21, Nos. 2&3, 2007 (Special Issue: Coloniality of Power and De-colonial Thinking)
Gloria Anzaldua, Borderlands/La Frontera
Adria Imada “Hawaiians on Tour: Hula Circuits through the American Empire,” American Quarterly, Vol. 56, No. 1 (March 2004) pp. 111-149.
Adria Imada, “The Army Learns to Luau: Imperial Hospitality and Military Photography in Hawai'I,” Contemporary Pacific, Vol. 20, No. 2 (2008) pp. 329-361.
Edward Said, Culture and Imperialism
Ngugi Wa Thiong'o, Decolonizing the Mind
Stuart Hall, "Culture, Community, Nation," Cultural Studies, Vol. 7, No. 3, October 1993, pp. 349-363.
Stuart Hall, "Thinking the Diaspora: Home-Thoughts from Abroad," Small Axe #6, 1999, pp. 1-18.
Stuart Hall, "Whose Heritage? Un-settling 'The Heritage', Re-imagining the Post-Nation," Third Text, Vol. 13, Issue 49, Winter 1999, pp. 3-13.
Postcolonial studies at Emory University (relevant articles, links and glossaries).
The Post-Colonial Studies Reader
The Post-Colonial Question

Week Six (June 27) - Theorizing Space & Place

Readings for today:

Michel DeCerteau "Walking in the City," from The Practice of Everyday Life.
Luis Aponte-Pares, “Casitas Place and Culture: Appropriating Place in Puerto Rican Barrios,” Places, Vol. 11, No. 1, 1997.

Reading Questions & Guides

Guide: An overview on space & place (including notes on de Certeau's essay).

For further reading/research:

David Harvey, "Space as a Keyword" in Spaces of Capitalism (Verso, 2006)
Tim Cresswell, "Defining Place," in Place: A Short Introduction (chapter 1).
David Harvey and Raymond Williams, "Militant Particularism and Global Ambition: The Conceptual Politics of Place, Space, and Environment in the Work of Raymond Williams," Social Text, No. 42, Spring 1995, pp. 69-98.
Andy Merrifield, "The Dialectics of Dystopia: Disorder and Zero Tolerance in The City," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, June 2000, Vol. 24, Iss. 2; pg. 473-489.
Andy Merrifield, "The Urbanization of Labor: Living-Wage Activism in the American City," Social Text, March 2000, Vol. 18, Iss. 1; pg. 31-54.
David Nye, "Introduction" and "Constructing Nature: Niagara Falls and the Grand Canyon" in Narratives and Spaces, pp. 1-24.
Derek Gregory, "Between the book and the lamp: imaginative geographies of Egypt, 1849-50," Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, Volume 20, Number 1, March 1995 , pp. 29-57.
Espen Aarseth, "Allegories of Space: The Question of Spatiality in Computer Games." Cybertext Yearbook 2000. Ed. Markku Eskelinen, Raine Koskimaa. Jyväskylä, Finland: University of Jyväskylä, 2000.

Week Six (July 6) - Globalization

Readings for today

Arjun Appadurai, "Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Cultural Economy."
Douglas Kellner (with Richard Kahn), "Resisting Globalization."
FINAL PAPER PROPOSAL DUE TODAY! (SAME LENGTH AND TIGHT FOCUS AS YOUR RESPONSE PAPERS; INCLUDE A WORKING BIBLIOGRAPHY)

Reading Questions & Guides