Cultural Studies
SS 330.01 & .02
Pratt Institute
Spring 2004
Meetings & Rooms:
Section One: Tuesday 9:30-11:50
Section Two: Tuesday 2:00 - 4:20.
Room: TBA
Professor: Ric Brown
Office: Dekalb 419
Hours: TBA
Phone: 1.718.636.3533
Email: BRBrownIII@earthlink.net
URL: http://geocities.datacellar.net/brbgc
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Course Description
Our present era has been characterized as an age of global integration and the age of a true world economy, yet we can just as often hear Culture invoked as both an expression of this globalism and in opposition to it. Culture is not a new idea, and its full meaning is still a topic of fierce debate. Indeed, we can find a range of conflicting views regarding the meaning and role of “culture”. Obviously, the use of “culture” is not limited to any one part of the political spectrum. Cultural Studies is the emerging discipline that seeks to understand the social complexity and political uses of culture. From the existence of the “Underclass” to debates over “High & Low” art, the value of the artifacts of popular culture (television, music, etc.), or the investigation of authority and power in the social relations of everyday life, Cultural Studies examines and intervenes in some of the most pressing issues of the day. The class will explore how Cultural Studies contributes to these debates. We will further examine how Cultural Studies offers a critical understanding of what Max Horkheimer termed “life as it is lived”.
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Course of Study
Session One: Introduction to the Course
Session Two: What is Cultural Studies?
Stanley Aronowitz, “Introduction,” pgs. 1-20; “Origins of Cultural Studies,” pgs.85-108.
Documentary: Degenerate Art
Documentary: Michael Wood Hitler’s Search for the Holy Grail
Session Three:
Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno Dialectic of Enlightenment, “The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception,” pgs.129-167
Theodor Adorno “The Culture Industry Reconsidered” from Bonner and Kellner, Critical Theory: A Reader.
Stanley Aronowitz “Culture Between High and Low,” pgs.63-84
Supplemental Readings:
Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno Dialectic of Enlightenment, Introduction and The Concept of Enlightenment,” pgs.3-42
Stanley Aronowitz, “Origins of Cultural Studies,” pgs.85-108.
Session Four:
Umberto Eco “Casablanca” from Travels in Hyper-Reality
Casablanca
Session Five:
Stuart Hall in During, “Encoding, decoding,” pgs. 507-517.
Supplemental:
Dick Hebdige, “The Function of Subculture,” pgs.441-450
Raymond Williams in During, “Advertising,” pgs. 410-426.
Stanley Aronowitz, “British Cultural Studies,” pgs.105-130.
Session Six:
Stuart Hall in During, “Cultural Studies and its Theoretical Legacies,” 97-112
Lecture: Stuart Hall Representation and the Media.
Session Seven:
Francois Lyotard in During, “Defining the Postmodern,” pgs.170-176.
Jorge Luis Borges “Pierre Menard, Author of Don Quixote,” “The Library at Babel,” “The Garden of Forking Paths,” “The Babylon Lottery”
Immanuel Kant “What is Enlightenment?”
Michel Foucault “What is Enlightenment?”
Supplemental Readings:
Jurgen Habermas “Modernity: An Unfinished Project”
Stanley Aronowitz, “Cultural Study in Postmodern America,” pgs. 167-202.
Journals Due
Session Eight:
Cornel West in During, “The New Cultural Politics of Difference,” pgs. 203-220.
Stuart Hall “What is this ‘Black’ in Black Popular Culture?”
Gilles Deleuze “Postscript on the Societies of Control”.
Supplemental Reading:
Karl Marx “Introduction” Grundrisse
Session Nine
John d’Emillio “Capitalism and Gay Identity”
Session Ten:
Brazil
Michel Foucault in During “Space, Power and Knowledge,” 134-141.
Session Eleven:
Herbert Marcuse “New Forms of Control” from One Dimensional Man, pgs. 1-19.
Franz Kafka “In the Penal Colony” from The Penal Colony
Session Twelve:
Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno, “Juliette or Enlightenment and Morality,” pgs.81-119.
Freidrich Nietzsche “Second Essay” Genealogy of Morals
Supplemental Reading:
B. Ricardo Brown “The Foundations of Ethics: Marx on Epicurean Materialism and the Domination of Sensuous Experience.” Found Object, Winter/Spring, No. 2.
Session Thirteen:
Sigmund Freud Civilization and its Discontents
Herbert Marcuse, “The Reification of the Prolitariat,” from Bonner and Kellner, Critical Theory: A Reader.
Session Fourteen:
Gilles Deleuze and Michel Foucault “On Intellectuals”
Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari “Politics”
Gilles Deleuze “Postscript on Control Societies”
Final Session:
Review
Final Paper Due
Journal Due
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Course Requirements and Procedures
Class Participation
Education is not a one way street and we can not expect to simply passively receive knowledge. Participation is mandatory and will be factored into the final grade.
Journals
Written responses to the each weeks reading are required. These should take the form of “journal” responses to the readings. These will be collected and reviewed twice during the semester and are to be submitted along with the final paper.
Final Paper
One paper, 10-20 pages in length. All papers are to be typed and double-spaced on standard paper in a standard font. Handwritten papers will not be accepted. The paper will count for 75 percent of the final grade.
Absences and Lateness
Persistent absences or lateness will result in a reduction of your final grade.
Grades and Incompletes
Incompletes will be granted only in accordance with the established policy of the college. The request must be made in advance of exam week. It must be made in writing and the appropriate incomplete contract signed and filed with the department office.. An incomplete is “available only if the student has been in regular attendance, has satisfied all but the final requirements of the course, and has furnished satisfactory proof that the work was not completed because of illness or other circumstances beyond control” (Pratt Institute Bulletin). If you do not turn in your paper on time, and you do not have an approved incomplete, you will fail the course.
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Readings
The reading for the class will be drawn from these and other sources.
Required Texts:
Roll over Beethoven: The Return of Cultural Strife by Stanley Aronowitz
Wesleyan Univ Pr; ISBN: 0819562629; (April 1993)
The Cultural Studies Reader by Simon During (Editor)
Routledge; ISBN: 0415137543; 2nd edition (July 1999)
Dialectic of Enlightenment: Philosophical Fragments, by Max Horkheimer, Theodor Adorno editied by Gunzelin Schmid Noerr, translated by Edmund Jephcott.
Stanford University Press (2002). DO NOT ORDER THE OLDER EDITION PUBLISHED BY CONTINUUM.
Ficciones (English Translation) by Jorge Luis Borges, Anthony Kerrigan
(Editor), Anthony Bonner (Translator) Grove Press; ISBN: 0802130305;
(March 1989)
Civilization and Its Discontents by Sigmund Freud, James Strachey
(Editor), Introduction by Peter Gay, W.W. Norton & Company; ISBN: 0393301583; Reissue edition (July 1989)
It is highly recommended that you also purchase Nietzsche’s Genealogy of Morals and Ecco Homo, translated by Walter Kaufmann., Vintage Press.
You may purchase or order the books from many bookstores in the city, including St. Marks Books, Labyrinths Books, Barnes and Nobles on 5th Ave, Colosseum Books, etc. You may also purchase these books, online.
I suggest these sources for purchasing the readings:
The Advanced Book Exchange
abebooks.com - over 6,300 booksellers from around the gllobe with 20 million items listed.
The Strand
www.strandbooks.com – the huge second-hand store on 12th street.
Tattered Cover Bookstore
large independent bookseller specializing in new books.
www.tatteredcover.com
Powells
powells.com
Barnes and Nobles
Amazon.com http://www.amazon.com
Blake's Books
City Lights Books
www.citylights.com
Bookfinder
www.bookfinder.com - over 5,000 individual booksellers.
Borders
www.borders.com
You may also personally order the text from the Pratt bookstore.
Readings not in required texts:
The photocopies of these may be purchased from the Pratt copy center in Stuben.
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Cultural Studies (SS 330.01-.02), Pratt Institute, Spring 2004