Overview
This is a 8-page paper in which you will utilize theories and concepts from the course to analyze a specific text, cultural practice, space, or idea. In addition to making use of course materials, I expect you to do a substantial amount of research and to utilize academic materials in your analysis i.e. peer-reviewed journals and books. Think of it as a more advanced version of the 'case study' you did in your
Introduction to Cultural Studies course (for those of you who wrote one).
- Due on the Friday after our last class meeting.
- You must send me a copy of your paper via email (.doc -or- .pdf attachments are preferable). The document should have your last name as the title, for example: Jones.doc -or- Furness.pdf (it saves me the hassle of re-formatting your papers when I put them into folders on my computer).
- I will not accept late papers.
- Failure to turn in a final paper will result in an automatic 'F' for the course.
- Papers should be 12 pt Times New Roman font, standard margins, double-spaced.
- The only information you need to include at the top of your paper is your name, the date, and the title of your paper. Please do not give me a cover sheet, plastic binders or anything else...a staple in the corner works just fine, and feel free to print on the back of old assignments, show flyers, etc (just put an 'X' through the old material to avoid confusion).
General Information and Sample Papers
Here are links to Case Study papers written by previous students in my
Cultural Theories course (on
news coverage of Katrina, and
Reggae) and in my
Introduction to Cultural Studies course (on the
Virgin of Guadalupe, and
'Ethnic' Dance). I’m giving them to you because they are all good examples of how to do a ‘cultural studies’ analysis of a concise, workable topic. In each of these papers, the authors examine specific cultural phenomena—news coverage, music, religious icons, dance (respectively)—and they all use theoretical concepts to frame their arguments. You should pay particular attention to the way the authors do the following things:
- They each formulate a clear thesis.
- They make use of research materials from scholarly resources (particularly the Cultural Theories sample paper on Katrina news coverage).
- They effectively apply theoretical concepts from the course.
When I talk about making 'effective' use of people's theories and concepts--such as Gramsci's notion of 'hegemony' or Edward Said's description of 'orientalism'--I mean using other people’s ideas/arguments to support your position...not the other way around. That is to say, your paper is not simply a place for you to restate what an author already says. Instead, you need to integrate an author's ideas and specific points into your own argument.....and you need to do so by paraphrasing and making use of direct quotations (both of which need to be accurately cited). With respect to the general requirements, it should go without saying that I expect your paper to be well-written, free from spelling errors and major grammatical errors, coherently organized, and rigorously proofread.
Selecting Your Topic
I’m more than happy to help you develop your paper and/or formulate your analysis. I’m also willing to help you come up with ways to shape, or direct, your topic. What I am not willing to do is to simultaneously provide you with a topic, an argument, a way to organize your paper, and a list of resources to use. In short, you need to put some effort into thinking through your topic and your argument. Consequently, if you need to get in touch with me about your topic, make sure that you can at least answer the three most basic questions that I would ask you myself:
- What is your topic and why are you interested in writing about it?
- What do you want to say about it, specifically? In other words, what are the main questions you hope to address in your paper?
- What concept(s) from the course are going to be the most useful in framing your analysis?
If you can’t answer these questions then you need to spend some time figuring it out. From there, I can help direct you to readings and I can also help you develop some questions or points to investigate in your paper. Coming up with a topic and a theoretical framework (meaning the strategic use of a concept, or set of concepts) is part of the assignment. If that seems difficult, it is supposed to be…it’s college, remember?
Format
I don't care what citation format you use in your paper, just stick with one throughout the paper (either Chicago Humanities style footnotes or MLA parenthetical citations). Make sure to include specific page numbers in your citations (unless it's an Internet resource) and also be sure to include a formatted bibliography of the sources you used in the paper. Not citing your sources and/or not turning in a bibliography will earn you an automatic 'F' for the paper.
If you make use of materials from the Internet--i.e. articles that are only available online and not in print--make sure to include the following information in your bibliography: the author, the title of the article or post, the main website from where an article was found, the date when the piece was originally written or posted (if/when available), and finally, the address itself. I do not care about the date when you accessed the article. Here are some sample citation and a corresponding bibliographic entry:
- Footnote: April Streeter, "B-Cycle Bike Sharing Has Plans for Denver...and a U.S. City Near You?," TreeHugger.com, March 13, 2009, Online.
- Parenthetical citation: (Streeter, 2009)
- Bibliography entry: Streeter, April. "B-Cycle Bike Sharing Has Plans for Denver...and a U.S. City Near You?" TreeHugger.com, March 13, 2009. http://www.treehugger.com/files/2009/03/bcycles-big-bike-share-plans.php
More Specifics About Doing Research
I’m not going to put a quota on how many resources you are suppose to use for the case study but a good rule of thumb is to have at least one scholarly resource for every page of your paper (i.e. a five-page paper would have at least five sources, in addition to the main article or articles that you are using to build your analysis). However, it all depends upon the quality of your sources. For example, citing three different articles in the
Chicago Sun-Times doesn’t count as doing scholarly research. Newspapers and other reference materials are immensely useful, but they are not a replacement for primary research, which should consist of:
- Class readings
- Scholarly, peer-reviewed articles (i.e. found in journals like Media, Culture & Society, Cultural Studies, Signs, Cultural Anthropology, International Journal of Zizek Studies, etc)
- Books written for a college audience (university presses are an easy indicator)
The best place to start looking for these resources is by using the ‘Cultural Studies’ link via the Columbia College library webpage (you can access it through our blog). JSTOR and EBSCO are both great search engines, and if you have never done research before, you should ask the librarians specific questions when you are stuck…that’s what they are there for. And, of course, I'm more than happy to help you with research...I have hundreds of PDFs from every major cultural/social theorist of the last 100 years. This blog also has lots of links to websites that feature dozens of Cultural Studies resources and articles online: I suggest you take a look around at some of them.
As far as Internet resources go, make sure to evaluate their credibility....just because it's online doesn't mean that it's not junk (duh). Also, a final note on Internet publications:
Wikipedia is not a legitimate resource. If you are wondering why, please click
here to see what I stumbled across when I looked up Simon Bolivar on Wikipedia in 2008 (I took a screenshot). So take it from Mr. T:
"I pity the fool who cites Wikipedia!"
Doing research means that you will undoubtedly have to spend some time wading through resources that may turn out to be irrelevant to your topic, your argument, or the specific points you want to make in your paper. Unfortunately, that’s just how it goes. The right resources for your case study will not always be the most obvious ones, so make sure to give yourself plenty of time to do research. I've tried to offer a variety of articles on each week's topics that should be helpful to you: I posted links to articles or book chapters that are either (1) written by folks who are 'big' names in their specific field of study (i.e. influential scholars) or (2) written in such a way that they help to explain difficult concepts and/or theorists. If nothing else, the bibliographies from these articles will be good places to look for relevant articles and books.
Examples of Case Studies in Scholarly Journals
The following are some great examples of cultural studies 'case studies'. I don't expect any of your papers to be as long or as developed as those listed below, but I do expect you to familiarize yourself with some of the conventions that these authors use in their work. Namely, the ways that each author begins his/her paper by clearly defining both the object of study (the topic) and the specific theoretical framework being used in the paper.
Production and Consumption Case Studies
- Carol Stabile, “Nike, Social Responsibility, and the Hidden Abode of Production,” Critical Studies in Media Communication, Vol. 17, No. 2 (2000), pp. 186-204.
- Shane Gunster, “‘You Belong Outside’: Advertising, Nature, and the SUV,” Ethics & the Environment, vol. 9, no. 2 (2004), pp. 4-32.
- Jonathan Sterne, “Sounds like the Mall of America: Programmed Music and the Architectonics of Commercial Space,” Ethnomusicology, Vol. 41, No. 1 (1997), pp. 22-50.
- Karen DeBres, “Burgers for Britain: A Cultural Geography of McDonald’s UK,” Journal of Cultural Geography, Vol. 22, No. 2 (2005), pp. 115-139.
- Andy Opel, “Constructing Purity: Bottled Water and the Commodification of Nature,” Journal of American Culture, vol. 22, no. 4 (1999): 67-76.
Feminism and Gender Case Studies
- Carol Stabile, "‘Sweetheart, This Ain’t Gender Studies’: Sexism and Superheroes."
- Thomas P. Oates, “The Erotic Gaze in the NFL Draft,” Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies, Vol. 4, No. 1, March 2007, pp. 74-90.
- R. Anthony Slagle, “Queer Criticism and Sexual Normativity: The Case of Pee-wee Herman,” Journal of Homosexuality, Vol. 45, Nos. 2–4 (2003), pp. 129-146.
- D. Marie Ralstin Lewis, "The Continuing Struggle against Genocide: Indigenous Women’s Reproductive Rights," Wacazo Sa Review, Spring 2005, pp. 71-95.
- Pancho Mcfarland, "Hyper- Masculine and Misogynist Violence in Chicano Rap," Bad Subjects #61, 2002.
Nations & Nationalism Case Studies
- Ryan Edwardson, “The Many Lives of Captain Canuck: Nationalism, Culture, and the Creation of a Canadian Comic Book Superhero,” The Journal of Popular Culture, vol. 37, no. 2 (2003) pp. 184-201.
- Phillip M. Bratta, “Flag Display Post-9/11: A Discourse on American Nationalism,” The Journal of American Culture, Vol. 32, No. 3 (2009), pp. 232-243. (NOTE: Phil was a Cultural Studies major at Columbia and this article is a revision of his senior capstone thesis).
- Demetrius W. Pearson and C. Allen Haney, “The Rodeo Cowboy as an American Icon: The Perceived Social and Cultural Significance,” Journal of American Culture, vol. 22, no. 4 (1999): 17-22.
- Cory Pillen, “See America: WPA Posters and the Mapping of a New Deal Democracy,” Journal of American Culture, vol. 31, no. 1 (2008): 49-65.
Post-colonial Case Studies
- Johan Hoglund, "Electronic Empire: Orientalism Revisited in the Military Shooter," Game Studies, Vol. 1, No. 1 (2008).
- Sunaina Maira, "Belly Dancing: Arab-Face, Orientalist Feminism and U.S. Empire," American Quarterly (2008), pp. 317-345.
- Adria Imada “Hawaiians on Tour: Hula Circuits through the American Empire,” American Quarterly, vol. 56, no. 1 (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.
Psychoanalysis Case Studies
- Slavoj Žižek,"The Matrix, or, the Two Sides of Perversion," a paper presented at the Inside the Matrix: International Symposium at the Center for Art and Media Conference, Karlsruhe, October 28, 1999.
- Richard Pope, “Realizing the Scene: Punk and the Evacuation of Meaning and Fantasy,” International Journal of Žižek Studies, Vol. 3, No. 1 (2009).
Semiotics Case Studies
- Stuart Hall, "The Determinations of News Photographs," Working Papers in Cultural Studies, No.3. Reprinted in S.Cohen and J.Young (eds), The Manufacture of News (London: Constable, 1973).
- Lu Xing-Hua, “A Political Semiotic Reading of Three Propaganda Posters of the Chinese Cultural Revolution,” Semiotica, Vol. 157, Nos. 1-4 (2005), pp. 213–232.
Identity & Cultural Production Case Studies
- Ross Haenfler, "Rethinking Subcultural Resistance: Core Values of the Straightedge Movement," Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, Vol. 33 No. 4 (2004), pp. 406-436.
- Sunaina Maira, “Henna and Hip Hop: Cultural Production and the Work of Cultural Studies,” Journal of Asian American Studies, Vol. 3, No. 3 (2000), pp. 329-369.
- Daniel S. Traber, “L. A.’s ‘White Minority’: Punk and the Contradictions of Self-Marginalization," Cultural Critique, No. 48. (Spring, 2001), pp. 30-64.
- Stephen Duncombe, “Identity” in Notes From Underground: Zines and the Politics of Alternative Culture (New York: Verso, 1997).
- Dennis Cutchins, “‘So That the Nations May Become Genuine Indian’: Nativism and Leslie Marmon Silko’s Ceremony," Journal of American Culture, vol. 22, no. 4 (1999): 77-89.
Technology Case Studies
- Lynn Spigel, “The Home Theater,” Make Room for TV, pp. 99-139.
- Fred Turner, "Where the Counterculture Met the New Economy: The WELL and the Origins of Virtual Community," Technology and Culture, vol. 46 (2005): 485-512.
- David Gartman, "Three Ages of the Automobile: The Cultural Logics of The Car," Theory, Culture & Society, vol. 21, nos. 4/5 (2004): 169–195.
- Anne Balsamo, "On the Cutting Edge: Cosmetic Surgery and the Technological Production of the Gendered Body," Camera Obscura, 28, January 1992, pp. 207-238.
- Lila Abu-Lughod, “Bedouins, Cassettes and Technologies of Public Culture,” Middle East Report, No. 159, (Jul-Aug, 1989), pp. 7-11 & 47.
Space and Place Case Studies
- Setha Low, "The Edge and the Center: Gated Communities and the Discourse of Urban Fear," American Anthropologist, Vol. 103, No. 1 (2001), pp. 45-58.
- Ann Hetzel Gunkel, "The Sacred in the City: Polonian Street Processions as Countercultural Practice," Polish American Studies, Vol. 60, No. 2 (2003), pp. 7-23.
- Murray Forman,"'Represent': Race, Space and Place in Rap Music," Popular Music, Vol. 19, No. 1, (2000), pp. 65-90.
- Don Mitchell, “The End of Public Space? People's Park, Definitions of the Public, and Democracy,” Annals of the Association of American Geographers, Vol. 85, No. 1 (1995), pp. 108-133.
- Iain Borden, “A Performative Critique of the American City: the Urban Practice of Skateboarding, 1958-1998.” Skateboard Directory, May 2001.
Mobility Case Studies
- Cotten Seiler, “'So That We as a Race Might Have Something Authentic to Travel By': African American Automobility and Cold-War Liberalism," American Quarterly, Vol. 58, No. 4 (2006), pp. 1091-1117.
- Gary Allan Tobin, “The Bicycle Boom of the 1890’s: The Development of Private Transportation and the Birth of the Modern Tourist,” Popular Culture, 7, 1974.
- Tim Cresswell, “Mobility as Resistance: A Geographical Reading of Kerouac’s On the Road,” Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, Vol. 18, No. 2 (1993), pp. 249-262.
Postmodernism Case Studies
- Giuliana Bruno, "Ramble City: Postmodernism and Blade Runner", October, vol. 41 (1987), pp. 61-74.
- George Lipsitz, “Cruising around the Historical Bloc: Postmodernism and Popular Music in East Los Angeles,” Cultural Critique, No. 5 (Winter, 1986-1987), pp. 157-177.
- Umberto Rossi, "From Dick to Lethem: The Dickian Legacy, Postmodernism, and Avant-Pop in Jonathan Lethem's 'Amnesia Moon'," Science Fiction Studies, Vol. 29, No. 1 (2002), pp. 15-33.
