Spring 2005

ANT 394M • Cultural Studies

Course Description

This course is an introduction to graduate cultural studies. We will start by reading critical works that try to outline the projects and stakes of cultural studies. Most of the course will be spent immersed in examples, arguments, and experiments. Topics include various arenas into which cultural analysis has stretched such as culture and affect, race, gender and sexuality, science studies, various ways of conceptualizing agency and dominance and its opposition, media, public culture, nationalism and globalization, and consumption. Issues include questions of engaged research, post-positivism, new forms of cultural critique and modes of “reading” culture, the culture of everyday life, cultural imaginaries, desire, the body, and more.

Texts

Books Amitava Kumar. Passport Photos. Kim Fortun. Advocacy after Bhopal. Donna Haraway. The Companion Species Manifesto: Dogs, People, and Significant Otherness. Alphonso Lingis. Trust. Ann Weinstone. Avatar Bodies: a Tantra for Posthumanism. Ann Gray. Research Practice for Cultural Studies (introduction). Simon During, The Cultural Studies Reader (introduction) Articles Angela McRobbie. “The Place of Walter Benjamin in Cultural Studies” Stuart Hall. “Cultural Studies and Its Theoretical Legacies” Eric Lott “Racial Cross-Dressing and the Construction of American Whiteness” Michael Taussig. “Tactility and Distraction” (Cultural Anthropology). Stuart Hall: Encoding, Decoding Hamid Naficy: The Making of Exile Cultures: Iranian Television in Los Angeles Janice A. Radway: The Institutional Matrix of Romance Rey Chow: Listening Otherwise, Music Miniaturized: A Different type of question about revolution Eve Sedgwick, “Paranoid Reading and Reparative Reading; Or, You're so Paranoid, You Probably Think this Introduction is About You.” Homi K. Bhabha. “The Postcolonial and the Postmodern: The Question of Agency” David Forgacs. “National-Popular: Genealogy of a Concept” Richard Dyer. “Entertainment and Utopia” Donna Haraway. “A Cyborg Manifesto” Judith Butler “Subjects of Sex/Gender/Desire” Lauren Berlant and Michael Warner. “Sex in Public.” Homi Bhabha. “How Newness Enters the World: Postmodern Spaces, Postcolonial Times and the Trials of Cultural Translation.” Deutsche, Rosalyn. “Agorophobia.”. Edward Soja. “History: Geography: Modernity.” Michel de Certeau: Walking in the City Michel Foucault: Space, Power and Knowledge Jean-François Lyotard: Defining the Postmodern Ackbar Abbas: Building on Disappearance: Hong Kong Architecture and Colonial Space Meaghan Morris: Things to Do with Shopping Centres Raymond Williams: Advertising: The Magic System Simon Frith, "The Value Problem in Cultural Studies," Michael Jarrett, "Authenticity," Keith Negus, "Culture, Industry, Genre: Conditions of Musical Creativity,"

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