Cultural Studies

e583-001

Course Policies and Assignments

Required Texts

Cultural Studies and the Study of Popular Culture: Theories and Methods; Storey
Studying Culture: An Introductory Reader; Gray and McGuigan
Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison; Foucault

Course Description

The course will provide you with a basic overview of the field of cultural studies, its research methods, and its terms.

Since the 1950s, scholars in English studies have been interested in expanding the range and kinds of texts available for study. World War II, which effectively ended literature’s modern period, dramatically altered the social landscape in other ways. In this new social context, drawing on studies from NAZI era Germany, British graduate students from working-class backgrounds began to challenge the exclusive emphasis in English studies on canonical, high-culture texts. Since then, objects of study have expanded to include the areas of television, film, advertising, fashion, sexuality, gender, race, and others. In the last ten years, as so many of our most innovative cultural artifacts have been produced for digital delivery, cultural studies has examined these new media. Our aim in this course will be to study the history and development of cultural studies as an academic discipline and its proliferation in English departments.

You’ll be asked to write one major essay, which can either be a paper about cultural studies or the study of some aspect of contemporary culture that interests you. I recommend that you plan this project as a presentation for a national or regional popular culture association conference. I also suggest that you subscribe to the listserv or look at the calls for papers before you begin your essay. Information about current topics of research in the field will be enormously valuable as you begin your own research. Conference presentations are usually about 10 pages of text plus a visual element. Papers for journal submission usually run about 20 pages. You will present your research during weeks 11 or 12 of the semester. I recommend and will provide support for digital texts (Web sites, digital videos, digital images, collages, remixes) but you can write in conventional formats as well.

Course Requirements	Due Date	Grade Weight
Abstracts and Summaries (5 of varying lengths)	varying	25% (5% each)
You are free to decide which of the assigned articles and books you would like to summarize or abstract. (Most of the articles in the class call for abstracts, not summaries. Abstract articles that present an argument or arguments; summarize those that are themselves summaries.) The detailed requirements for abstracts have already been provided to you. There are two key features to these abstracts: the description of the article and the comments and questions. The description of the article should provide a concise description of the author's argument; the comments and questions should trace that argument and articulate questions you have about the text.
Proposal (500 words) (proposal conferences weeks 7 and 8)	October 7	10%
The purpose of the proposal is to let me know the object of your study, your working thesis, and the research methods you plan to use. If you have completed any preliminary research, you will also want to contextualize your argument within the arguments made by other scholars. If you are targeting this proposal to a Call for Proposals for a conference or a book, please make that call available to me (an e-mailed copy, a print copy, or a URL). If the CFP requests a proposal of less than 500 words, you still need to complete the 500 word proposal to meet the requirements of this class. The proposal should provide a fairly detailed introduction to the presentation you plan to give and to the essay you plan to write. You are free to draw from the proposal--to include it, in its revised or original format--in both the presentation and the final essay. The form of your proposal is up to you. Traditionally, you would write it up in MLA format and attach it as a Word document to an e-mail. You might also, though, consider making non-traditional arguments in non-traditional forms. How might you represent your argument visually in a digital environment? How might you combine visuals and textual elements to describe your working thesis?
Presentation (10-15 minute presentation followed by questions)	November 6, 8, 13, 15	15%
The presentation is the next step in your process. At this point, 4 weeks after you have submitted your proposal, you should be fairly well into your research. The project will allow you to share with the class the object of your study, your working thesis, and what you have learned so far. If it's relevant, you might also want to tie your research into the articles we will have read/will be reading in class. You working thesis might have changed by the time you reach the presentation; you might want to tell the class why. Be prepared to answer our questions about your thesis and your research. In effect, you'll be leading our study during your presentation; you'll be the expert in this area. You'll be evaluated on how well you present the material (which will depend to some extent on how far along you are in your research). I'll consider, for example, the presentation itself--do you seem prepared to talk about the subject, or does the material seem disorganized and chaotic? Does the class get a clear sense of your working thesis and understand the direction of your research? Have you considered ways of making the presentation clearer (by including, or not including, visuals and sound, for instance)? Has the student kept the presentation under 15 minutes?
Essay (varying lengths)	December 20	40%
The essay is the culmination of all the work you've done this semester. You are free to incorporate your proposal and your presentation, or elements of them, into the essay. The final form--Word document, .PDF, Web site, blog--is up to you, but should be chosen with an eye toward your audience. For example, it makes no sense to create a Web site if you're planning to send your article to a print journal.
Final Reflection (varying lengths; composed on a computer during the final exam period; no notes or texts).	December 20	10%
The purpose of the final reflection is to give you an opportunity to look back over the texts we've read this semester and to think about them in light of what you've learned. You'll be expected to have a reasonably strong understanding of the basic premises of the articles we've read over the course of the semester. You should prepare for this reflection by reading over the abstracts you and others have written. If you have kept good notes, you won't need to look very closely at the texts themselves, though you will probably need to scan them. You will not be expected to quote texts verbatim. You'll be asked to reflect, based on our reading assignments, on the field of Cultural Studies as you understand it. You will have more than one question to choose from. You will not be expected to know publication dates.