ICS 251 Introduction to Cultural Studies Theory

Winter 2004

Dr. Phillip McArthur

Office:  McKay 108B, Phone:  293-3907

 

 

Course Objectives:  This course will provide an introductory survey to the theoretical territory of cultural studies.  This includes developing familiarity with key theories and terminologies, critical thinking and dialogue, and the integration of the three sub-fields, humanities (the intellectual and aesthetic heritage, or “what we have done”), anthropology (an understanding of “what ‘other’ cultures have done and do”, and the nature of society and culture itself) and communications (an exploration of the processes by which meaning and culture is constituted, or “how we do it”). Our project has less to do with specific “cultures” and more to do with “culture” as a process, symbol, and complex configuration of ideas, social relations, and expressions.  It is my desire that we come to a more complex understanding of the cultural process that will inform the rest of your studies in the ICS program.

 

Texts:

 

*All readings can be found on the Blackboard except the terms from the Glossary and where indicated.

 

Course Requirements:

  1. Five Essays:  Two essays will explore your understanding of foundational theoretical principles, and three essays will explore your understanding of the three sub-fields of ICS and their integration into a cultural studies perspective.  Each essay must be typed and double-spaced.
  2. Two Exams:  Midterm (over general theory parts I and II) and Final (over three sub-fields and comprehensive).  Final:  Friday, April 16th, 11:00 a.m.—2:00 p.m.
  3. Participation:  I will note who comes to class each day having read the assignment and prepared to engage in the discussion.

 

Five Essays                  55 points possible

Two Exams                   33 points possible (will be converted from percentages)

Participation                  11 points possible

                        Total                             99 points possible

           

               


Foundational Theory Part I

 

Herder on Culture and 18th Century Nationalism

(Glossary: Nationalism, Culture, Ethnicity, Imperialism)

*William Wilson, “Herder, Folklore and Romantic Nationalism”

Hegel’s Dialectic

(Glossary: Dialectics)

*D. Palmer, from “The 19th Century” (on Georg W. F. Hegel)

Marx on the Production of Social Relations and Culture

(Glossary I: Marxism, Alienation, Base and Superstructure, Production, Class, Ideology, Consciousness))

*D. Palmer, from “The 19th Century” (on Karl Marx)

Gramsci on Hegemony

(Glossary: Hegemony, Common Sense, Civil Society, Community, Cultural Materialism))

*Raymond Williams, “Base Structure and Superstructure in Marxist Cultural Theory”

Gilman on Women and Economy

*Charlotte Gilman, “Women and Economics”

Adorno on the Culture Industry

(Glossary: Critical Theory, Commodity Fetishism, Culture Industries, Consumerism)

*T. Adorno & M. Horkheimer, “The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception”

 

 

Foundational Theory Part II

 

Freud on the Psyche

(Glossary: Unconscious, Psychoanalysis, Condensation and Displacement, Oedipal Complex, Dream work, Phallus, Fetishism)

*S. Freud, “The Relation of the Poet to Day-Dreaming”

Nietzsche’s Subversive Subjectivity

*D. Palmer, “The 19th Century” (on F. Nietzsche)

Structuralism

(Glossary: Structuralism, Sign, Difference/différance, Bricolage)

*D. Palmer, “ Structuralism and Poststructuralism” (on Saussure & Levi-Strauss)

Semiotics

(Glossary: Semiology/Semiotics, Code)

*John Fiske, “Communication, Meaning, and Signs”

(Glossary: Connotation/Denotation)

*John Fiske, “Signification”

Poststructuralism

(Glossary: Poststructuralism, Imaginary/Symbolic/Real, Deconstructionism, Modernity, Postmodernism)

*D. Palmer, “Structuralism and Poststructuralism” (on Lacan, Derrida)

 

 

Humanities

 

(Glossary: Aesthetics, Genre, Enlightenment, Canon, Humanism, Modernism, Avant-garde, Montage)

*William Matthews & F. Dewitt Platt, “The Age of Early Modernism” (Res.)

*William Matthews & F. Dewitt Platt, “The Age of the Masses and the Zenith of Modernism”  (Res.)

(Glossary: Postmodernism, Text/Textuality, Intertextuality, Hermeneutics, Historicism, Pastiche)

*William Matthews & F. Dewitt Platt, “The Age of Anxiety and Beyond” (Res.)

*Jean-Francois Lyotard, “Defining the Postmodern”

(Glossary: Gender, Patriarchy, Body)

*Sue Thornham, “Thinking Back Through our Mothers: Writing as a Woman and the Politics of Culture”

(Glossary: Pop, Popular, Representation)

*Stuart Hall, “Notes on Deconstructing the “Popular’”

 

Anthropology

 

(Glossary: Ethnocentrism, Local, Race)

*Raymond Scupin, “Culture” from Cultural Anthropology: A Global Perspective

*Raymond Scupin, “Anthropological Explanations” from Cultural Anthropology: A Global Perspective

*Raymond Scupin, “Analyzing Socioultural Systems” from Cultural Anthropology: A Global Perspective

*Clifford Geertz, “Deep Play: Notes on the Balinese Cockfight”

*bell hooks, “feminism: a transformational politic”

 

 

Communications (14-26)

 

(Glossary: Communication, Addresser/Addressee, Audience, Message)

*W. Barnett Pearce, “Introduction” from Communication and the Human Condition

Glossary: Interpretive Communities, Mass, Network)

*W. Barnett Pearce, “The “Discovery’ of Communication” from Communication and the Human Condition

(Glossary: Globalization, Virtual Reality)

*Joshua Meyrowitz, “Introduction: Behavior and Its Place” from No Sense of Place..

*Joshua Meyrowitz, “Media and Behavior: A Missing Link”  from No Sense of Place..

 

Post-Colonialism (1-5)

 

(Glossary: Post-Colonialism, Imagined Community, Eurocentrism, Hybridity)

*Frantz Fanon, ‘National Culture”

(Glossary:, Disavowal, Diaspora)

*Hommi Bhabha, “Dissemination: Time, Narrative, and the Margins of the Modern Nation”

(Glossary: Orientalism)

*Edward Said, “Orientalism”

(Glossary: Subaltern)

*Gayatri Spivak, “Can the Subaltern Speak?”

 

 

 

Special Needs

Brigham Young University-Hawai'i is committed to providing a working and learning atmosphere, which reasonably accommodates qualified persons with disabilities.  If you have any disability that may impair your ability to complete this course successfully, please contact the students with Special Need Coordinator, Leilani A'una at 293-3518. Reasonable academic accommodations are reviewed for all students who have qualified documented disabilities.  If you need assistance or if you feel you have been unlawfully discriminated against on the basis of disability, you may seek resolution through established grievance policy and procedures.  You should contact the Human Resource Services at 780-8875.

 

Preventing Sexual Harassment

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