Cultural Studies
What does it mean to respect the boundaries of a discipline and of the disciplines (including the "arts")?  What is the relation between this disciplining, political power, and morality?  How does this relation shape our experience of the world?
You will have to use a variety of texts from the class for your essay. 


Questions from Previous Semesters:

Cultural Studies
Using the articles by John d'Emillio, Cornel West, and Stuart Hall as well as the other readings for the course, discuss the current status of Cultural Studies and its potential tendencies in the future, if any.  Rants or expressionistic self-indulgence will not be sufficient for your argument.

Political Institutions
Murray Edelman writes that an administrations policies are "semantically created as value-laden interpretations of differences in action and in language.  A 'policy,' then, is a set of shifting, diverse, and contridictory responses to a spectrum of poitical interests."  (pg 16).  Choose a specific significant public policy and examine it in light of Edelman's discussion of the construction of social problems, leaders, enemies, and spectacles.

The History of Science and the Origins of Race

Given the arguments for and against understanding race as a scientific ideology, imagine that we encounter a new hominid (say the island of Thule suddenly emerged), would it be possible to study them without the concept of racial superiority or inferiority?  What would we do with them? and What if they could study, classify, and dominate (which are really all the same thing) us.  What treatment should we expect or demand?
Remember that chimps and Neanderthals are 99.5% identical to humans, could or should we see them as humans?  If not, what are they and what should be done with them?