This course required for all students. This course will offer an overview of the contemporary situation of cultural studies and assess the possibilities for its future development. Introduction to research methods in cultural studies. Specific topics vary. Forum for the presentation of original and current research in cultural studies.
Students register for one credit per semester over a three-semester period.
Theories of production and consumption are central to contemporary cultural studies, and how the relationship of culture to mode of production is framed distinguishes key theoretical currents in the field. This course examines theories of visual culture, covering such topics as film, video, visual arts, music, display, ritual, performance, performativity, theories of the aesthetic, as well as their production, consumption, and reception. Key readings from theorists such as Adorno, Artaud, Benjamin, Brecht, Bryson, Doane, Fiske, Heath, Marcuse, Merleau-Ponty, Sartre. From the work of Freud, with its positing of sexuality at the heart of individual subjectivity, to contemporary feminisms and lesbigay studies, sexuality and gender have come to be seen as irreducible components of the relation between the individual subject and socio-cultural structure. The course will interrogate the various ways in which the notion of gender functions both in the maintenance and in the analysis of issues of social and cultural power.