SSC 334 Advanced Cultural Studies

Content

This course is devoted to Cultural Studies an academic discipline which combines anthropology, literary theory, sociology, political economy, social-science history, philosophy, to study cultural phenomena in societies. The course departs from basic theoretical distinctions such as postmodernism (social theory and systems of analysis), postmodernity (historical period or characteristics of society) and postmodern condition (new forms of knowledge), and will (re)introduce students to the work of leading modernist and postmodernist writers like Stuart Hall, Paul Willis, Dick Hebdige, Arjun Appadurai, Roland Barthes, Bakhtin, Walter Benjamin, Pierre Bourdieu, bell hooks, Richard Dyer, Michel Foucault, Donna Haraway, and others.

The increasingly plural and fragmenting social reality generates new topics for sociological analysis: space and time in the global world, cybercultural reality, cultural politics and political culture, new approaches to leisure, tourism, subcultures and cultural subversion, youth and adulthood in the consumerist society, gender as a social practice, gendered experience of the body as key elements of social persons, and visual culture and visual representation. This is stressed in a handbook and the two readers students have to study. Lectures, films and documentaries will supplement these readings.

Instructor

Dr. Herman Tak

Period

Fall / 2012

Course Material

• Elaine Baldwin (Editor), Brian Longhurst, Scott McCracken, Miles Ogborn, Greg Smith 2004. Introducing Cultural Studies. University of Georgia Press (pp.488) 
• Simon During 1999 The Cultural Studies Reader (second edition). London: Routledge (pp.608).
• Reader (PDF files Workspaces):

Prerequisites

One needs to have followed one of the following courses in order to take this course:

• A&H 136 Introduction to Literary Studies
• A&H 143 Introduction to Theatre and Media Studies
• A&H 185 Introduction to Cultural History and American Studies
• A&H 237 Life and Travel Writing
• A&H 243 Film in Context
• A&H 287 History of Women and Gender
• A&H 336 Critical Perspectives on Literary Meaning
• A&H 337 Film and Text
• ACC 320 Persuasion in Social Discourses
• SSC 111 Introduction to Sociology
• SSC 131 Introduction to Socio-Cultural Anthropology
• SSC 211 Modern Sociology
• SSC 215 Consumer Society and Media
• SSC 233 Religion and Modernization: An Anthropological Approach
• SSC 242 Cities: A Global Perspective
• SSC 332 The Dynamics of Globalization
• SSC 333 Anthropology of European Transition

Additional Prerequisites

In addition to the courses listed under prerequisites, students who have taken any other second or third-year SSC or A&H course can enrol after consulting with the instructor.