COMM 519
Spring 2004
Mon. 3:45-6:45
Annenberg 240
Prof. Marita Sturken
office: ASC 321C
tel: 740-3950/sturken@usc.edu
office hours: Thurs. 10-12 and 1-2
and by appt.
Cultural Studies in Communication
Course description:
This class is an introduction to the theoretical foundations of
and contemporary work in cultural studies, with a particular emphasis
on the study of media, popular culture, and communication. As
an examination of cultural institutions, ideologies, artifacts,
and productions, work in cultural studies is concerned with the
integral relationship of cultural practices to relationships of
power. This course examines the foundations of cultural studies
in both its British, French, and American traditions, and focuses
on several of its fundamental points of inquiry -- power relations,
cultural production and consumption, identity and difference,
and subcultures as well as its investigation into questions of
academic disciplines and the various meanings of culture.
Course requirements:
Students are expected to do all readings in preparation for class,
to participate fully in class discussions, to actively participate
in online discussions, and to do one class presentation. Written
work for the class will consist of weekly writings on the readings
and topics, and bringing weekly questions on the readings and
topics to class. Finally, students will write a book review of
a book related to the class materials. Grades will consider weekly
writings, 30 %, class participation and presentations 30%, and
book review 40%.
Readings:
David Morley, Kuan-Hsing Chen, eds., Stuart Hall: Critical Dialogues
in Cultural Studies (SH)
Dick Hebdige, Subculture: The Meaning of Style
David Morley, Home Territories: Media, Mobility and Identity
Ellen Seiter, Television and New Media Audiences
Most of the class readings will be in a reader of articles is
available at University Graphics/Magic Machine in University Village.
(R)
Week 1, January 12: Introduction: A Genealogy of British and
American Cultural Studies
Reading:
Lawrence Grossberg, Toward a Genealogy of the State of Cultural
Studies
Michael Denning, Culture and the Crisis
Stuart Hall, Cultural Studies and its Theoretical Legacies (SH)
Week 2, January 19, no class, Martin Luther King Jr. Day
Week 3, January 26 Marxism and the
Study of Culture
Reading:
Louis Althusser, Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses
Stuart Hall, The Problem of Ideology: Marxism Without Guarantees
(SH)
Colin Sparks, Stuart Hall, Cultural Studies, and Marxism (SH)
Stuart Hall, Gramsci's Relevance for the Study of Race and Ethnicity
(SH)
Antonio Gramsci, Hegemony, Intellectuals, and the State
Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, Hegemony and Radical Democracy
Jennifer Daryl Slack, The Theory and Method of Articulation in
Cultural Studies (SH)
Week 4, February 2: From Leavis to
Williams: Prehistory and Origins of British Cultural Studies
Guest lecture: Dana Polan
Reading:
F. R. Leavis & Denys Thompson, Culture and Environment
Angus Calder and Dorothy Sheridan, Speak for Yourself
Raymond Williams, Culture is Ordinary
Raymond Williams, Our Debt to Dr. Leavis
Raymond Williams, Cambridge English: Past and Present
Richard Hoggart, The Uses of Literacy
Stuart Hall and Paddy Whannel, The Popular Arts
Week 5, February 9: Home, Media,
and Guest Lecture by David Morley
Reading:
David Morley, Home Territories, Chapters 1-7
Week 6, February 16, no class, President's
Day
Week 7, February 23: Foucault: Power, Knowledge, and Epistemology
Reading:
Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: Docile Bodies, Panopticism
Introduction to History of Sexuality
Truth and Power
The Archaeology of Knowledge: Introduction
On the Archaeology of the Sciences
Week 8, March 1: Modernity -- Postmodernity
Reading:
David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity
Anthony Giddens, The Consequences of Modernity excerpt
Slavoj Žižek, Looking Awry, excerpts
Fredric Jameson, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism
David Morley, Home Territories, Chapter 8
Stuart Hall, On Postmodernism and Articulation (SH)
David Morley, EurAm, Modernity, Reason and Alterity (SH)
Recommended: Lawrence Cahoone, From Modernism to Postmodernism:
An Introduction
Dick Hebdige, Postmodernism and the Other Side (SH)
Week 9, March 8: Cultural Memory
and Historiography
Reading:
Michel Foucault, Nietzsche, Genealogy and History
Lynn Spigel, "The Suburban Home Companion" and "White
Flight"
Marita Sturken, Tangled Memories excerpt
Hayden White, The Narrativization of Real Events
Pierre Nora, Between Memory and History
Kerwin Klein, On the Emergence of Memory in Historical Discourse
Susannah Radstone, Working With Memory
Spring Break, March 15-19
Week 10, March 22: Ethnography and
Media
Reading:
Ellen Seiter, Television and New Media Audiences, Chapters 1,2,3,6,7
Elizabeth Bird, The Audience in Everyday Life excerpts
Anne Gray, Articulating Experience
David Morley and Charlotte Brunsdon, The Nationwide Television
Studies excerpt
Week 11, March 29: Consuming Culture
Reading:
Dick Hebdige, Subculture
Stuart Hall, Encoding/Decoding
Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction and the Aristocracy of Culture
Michel de Certeau, Reading as Poaching
Janice Radway, Reading Reading the Romance
Week 12, April 5: Theorizing Consumerism
Reading:
Néstor Canclini, Consumers and Citizens excerpt
Guy Debord, Society of the Spectacle excerpt
Caren Kaplan, World Without Boundaries
Anne McClintock, Soft-Soaping Empire
Thomas Frank, The Conquest of Cool excerpts
Kalle Lasn, Culture Jam
Week 13, April 12: Theorizing Identities
Reading:
Stuart Hall, Who Needs Identity?
Stuart Hall, New Ethnicities (SH)
Judith Butler, Bodies that Matter excerpt
Chela Sandoval, Methodology of the Oppressed
Eric Lott, Love and Theft excerpt
Week 14, April 19: Cosmopolitans
and Traveling Theories
Reading:
James Clifford, Traveling Cultures
Amanda Anderson, Cosmopolitanism, Universalism, and the Divided
Legacies of
Modernity
Aihwa Ong, Flexible Citizenship Among Chinese Cosmopolitans
Craig Calhoun, The Class Consciousness of Frequent Travellers
David Morley, Home Territories, Chapters 9, 10
George Yudice, Comparative Cultural Studies Traditions: Latin
America and the US
Eric Kit-wai Ma, Peripheral Vision: Cultural Studies in Hong Kong
Week 15, April 26: The Politics of the Academy and the Public
Intellectual
Reading:
Gramsci, Intellectuals
Edward Said, Representations of the Intellectual
John Rowe, Edward Said and American Studies
Michael Hanchard, Cultural Politics and Black Public Intellectuals
Jennifer D. Slack and M. Semati, Intellectual and Political Hygiene:
The Sokal Affair
Cary Nelson, selections from Manifesto of a Tenured Radical
Andrew Ross, The Mental Labor Problem