Curriculum | Course Descriptions
Note: all of the following courses should become available over the course of a two-year cycle. 808 is offered every semester. Enrollments allowing, 802 and 806 will be offered every year.
- 802: Histories of Cultural Studies (3:3:0).
- This course required for all students. Prerequisites: Admission to program, to M.A. 'feeder' track, or permission of instructor. This course provides a historical survey of the principal works and theories of CS. From its multi-disciplinary roots in the Birmingham School where it was first named, and through its relationship to many other disciplines and schools (such as American Studies or the Frankfurt School), cultural studies has come to be constituted in many different and often competing strands. This course will offer an overview of the contemporary situation of cultural studies and assess the possibilities for its future development.
- 806: Research Seminar in Cultural Studies (3:3:0).
- Prerequisites: Admission to program and CULT 802. Introduction to research methods in cultural studies.
- 808: Student/Faculty Colloquium in Cultural Studies (1:1:0).
- Prerequisites: Admission to program or permission of instructor. Forum for the presentation of original and current research in cultural studies. Students register for one credit per semester over a three-semester period.
- 810: Culture and Political Economy (3:3:0).
- Prerequisites: Admission to program or permission of instructor. 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 is designed to survey many of the social science and humanities classics which relate cultural production and consumption to underlying political economic conditions: from Marx to Lukacs to the Frankfurt School, from work in semiotic neo-Marxism to 'productivist' theories of power indebted to Foucault, and taking in such diverse sources as Baudrillard, Bourdieu, Harvey, Jameson, Mauss, Mill, Polanyi, Sahlins, A. Smith, and Weber.
- 812: Visual and Performance Culture (3:3:0).
- Prerequisites: Admission to program or permission of instructor. 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.
- 814: Gender and Sexuality (3:3:0).
- Prerequisites: Admission to program or permission of instructor. 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. It also examines conflicting notions of sexuality and their role in cultural signification. At the same time the course will seek to explicate the relation between sexuality and gender.
- 816: Science/Technology (3:3:0).
- Prerequisites: Admission to program or permission of instructor. This course considers theories of and major debates about the culture of science, the social construction of nature, and the effects of technology on modern cultural forms-key concepts for many areas of cultural studies. Readings from such theorists as Nietzsche, Heidegger, Horkheimer, Feyerabend, Bahro, Haraway, Latour.
- 818: Social Institutions (3:3:0).
- Prerequisites: Admission to program or permission of instructor. This course considers theories of institutional practice and social structures, from Max Weber to Michel Foucault. It covers such key topics for cultural studies as prisons, bureaucracies, museums, schools, political parties, and social movements.
- 820: After Colonialism: Race, Ethnicity, Nationalism (3:3:0).
- Prerequisites: Admission to program or permission of instructor. Classical theories of social stratification across many disciplines have tended to emphasize social class, sometimes to the exclusion of other dimensions of social inequality. After Weber and with the rise of anti-colonial and anti-racist movements scholarship began to treat racial, ethnic, caste, and national stratification as integral parts of an ongoing global history. This course will survey the making of such identities in colonial contexts; the roles of scientific racism in both 'periphery' and 'core' sites; the subsequent history of race, ethnic, national identities and conflicts; as well as classical and contemporary texts by authors such as DuBois, Fanon, Gilroy, Spivak, etc.; and the particular place of issues of national, racial and ethnic identities in contemporary cultural studies.
- 860: Special Topics in Cultural Studies (1-3:1-3:0).
- Prerequisites: Admission to program or permission of instructor. Specialized interdisciplinary topics in cultural theory and analysis. Content varies. May be repeated.
- 870: Directed Readings (3:0:0).
- Intensive reading course aimed at developing comprehensive coverage for specific fields as agreed upon in consultation with student's advisors. May be repeated.
- 880: Independent Study (1-3:0:0).
- Reading and research on a specific topic, resulting in a written project. May be repeated.
- 998: Doctoral Dissertation Proposal (1-6:0:0).
- Work on a research proposal that forms the basis for the doctoral dissertation. Students enrolling in 998 must have completed all Cultural Studies course work, fulfilled the foreign language requirement, and passed the comprehensive examination. Course may be repeated once for credit.
- 999: Doctoral Dissertation (1-12:0:0).
- Prerequisites: Completion of CULT 998 and public presentation of the dissertation proposal. Doctoral dissertation research and writing under the direction of the student's dissertation committee.
