| Course
Objectives: |
| This course introduces students to cultural studies in communication research. This field is unwieldy; it has many variants, and engages with a host of disciplines. In this class, we hew very closely to the central topic of conversation in this tradition. That topic involves modernity's challenge to Enlightenment ideals of freedom and reason, and focuses on the role of communication generally, and of mass media specifically, in posing and/or overcoming that challenge. With respect to this material, students should expect to be able to do the following by the end of the course:
· Name and define key concepts and terms of cultural studies
· Compare and contrast different approaches to culture in cultural studies
· Arrange and assemble the history of cultural studies as a field of inquiry
· Explain and appraise central questions in the field of cultural studies
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| Instructor: |
| My goal is for you to never feel that you cannot get hold of me when needed. My office is MC 229B, upstairs in the Mass Communication Building, and down the right hallway past the Siegenthaler Offices. My office hours this semester are Wednesdays, 10-1 pm. I am sometimes also available for instant messaging via MSN:messenger. To access this service, you must go to Microsoft.com and download MSN: messenger. You may then set up your program and add my e-mail address to your buddy list. When we're both on-line, don't hesitate to chat! At all times, the quickest way to get hold of me is by e-mail: dryfe@mtsu.edu. I can usually respond to e-mail messages within an hour or two during the week. |
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| Texts/Resources: |
A reader for this course is available at Franklin's Print Shop, 212 Academy Street, 895-0651 (from the College of Mass Communication, take E. Main St. towards downtown, Left at S. Academy Street. Up one Block, on your right). Please call head to ensure that a copy of the reader is available for pickup when you arrive.
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| Course
Calendar: |
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Project/Date
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Topic
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To
Do
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| Week 1 |
Introduction |
Come to class. Make sure to put your name on the sign-in sheet. Before the next class period you will want to do the following: get the reader from Franklin's Print Shop; do the relevant reading for next week; complete the homework assignment and make a copy to hand in to me; download MSN: messenger and set up the program.
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| Week 2 |
The Enlightenment and Its Legacy |
Reading:
Immanuel Kant, "An Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment?" In Perpetual Peace and Other Essays, Trans. & Intro. by Ted Humphrey, (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 1992), 41-49.
Isiah Berlin, "The Counter-Enlightenment," in Berlin, Against the Current (Viking, 1980), 1-24.
Raymond Williams, "Culture," in Keywords: a vocabulary of culture and society, (NY: Oxford, 1983), 87-93.
Click here to get the homework assignment |
| Week 3 |
Modernity and Its Discontents |
Reading:
Karl Marx, Communist Manifesto (Part 1).
Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1904-05) (NY: Scribner's Sons, 1958), 13-19, 180-183.
Georg Simmel, "Metropolis and Mental Life," In Kurt Wolff, ed., The Sociology of Georg Simmel (Free Press, 1950), 409-424.
Click here to get the homework assignment.
Here are links to the websites I ask you to visit in your homework assignment for this week.
Westinghouse Factory
Victorian Web
New York City circa 1900
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| Week 4 |
Social Science as Natural Science |
Reading:
Emile Durkheim, Rules of Sociological Method (Free Press, 1938), pp. xliii-liii, 1-13, 27-46.
Click here to get this week's homework assignment.
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| Week 5 |
Social Science as Critical Science |
Reading:
Karl Marx, "On German Ideology" in Robert Tucker ed., The Marx-Engels Reader (NY: Norton, 1978).
Antonio Gramsci, "Culture and Ideological Hegemony," in Gramsci, The Prison Notebooks , (NY: Int'l Publishers, 1982), 323-335.
Peter Brooker, "Ideology" and "Hegemony" in A Glossary of Cultural Studies (London, Routlege, 2003).
Click here to get the homework assignment for this week. |
| Week 6 |
The Frankfurt School |
Reading:
Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno "The Culture Industry: enlightenment as mass deception" in Dialectic of Enlightenment (1944).
Theodor Adorno, "How to Look at Television," The Quarterly Journal of Film, Radio, and Television," 8(1954), 213-235.
Click here to get the homework assignment for this week. |
| Week 7 |
Structuralism |
Reading:
Claude Levi-Strauss, "The Structural Study of Myth," In Levi-Strauss, Structural Anthropology , NY: Basic Books, 1963, pp. 206-231.
Roland Barthes, "Rhetoric of the Image," In Barthes, Image-Music-Text, NY: Hill & Wang, 1977, pp. 32-51.
Click here to get the homework assignment for this week.
Midterm Assigned (due Week 8 in class)
Click here to get the midterm. |
| Week 8 |
British Cultural Studies |
Reading:
Raymond Williams, "Base and Superstructure" in Marxism and Literature (Oxford, 1977).
Dick Hebdige, excerpts from Subculture: the meaning of style (London: Metheun, 1979).
Stuart Hall, "Encoding/Decoding" in Culture, Media, Language (Hutchison/Routledge, 1980).
Click here to get the homework assighment. |
| Week 9 |
A Key Debate: Audiences |
Reading:
Dallas Smythe, "On the Audience Commodity and Its Work," In Dependency Road: communications, capitalism, consciousness, and Canada, (Norwood: Ablex, 1981), 22-51.
Peter Golding and Graham Murdock, "Ideology and Mass Media: the question of determination," In Michele Barrett, et. al, eds., Ideology and Cultural Production , (NY: St. Martin's, 1977), 198-224.
John Fiske, "Television: Polysemy and Popularity," Critical Studies in Mass Communication 3(1986), 391-408.
David Morley, The Nationwide Audience: structure and decoding , (London: BFI, 1980), excerpts.
Click here to get the homework assignment. |
| Week 10 |
Habermas and the Public Sphere |
Reading:
Jurgen Habermas, "The Public Sphere: An encyclopedia article," New German Critique , 3(1974). Available here.
Jurgen Habermas, "Further Reflections on the Public Sphere," In Craig Calhoun, ed., Habermas and the Public Sphere, Cambridge: MIT Press, pp. 421-461.
Click here to get the homework assignment. |
| Week 11 |
Post-Marxism |
Reading:
Pierre Bourdieu, "The Field of Cultural Production, or: The Ecomic World Reversed," In Bourdieu, The Field of Cultural Production , NY: Columbia University Press, 1993, pp. 29-73.
Bourdieu, "Sport and Social Class," In Chandra Mukerji and Michael Schudson, Eds., Rethinking Popular Culture , Berkeley: UC Press, 1991, pp. 357-373.
Click here to get this week's homework assignment. |
| Week 12 |
Postmodernism/Post-Structuralism |
Reading:
Michel Foucault, "Two Lectures" in Foucault, Power/Knowledge , edited by Colin Gordon, (NY: Pantheon, 1980), 78-108.
Michel Foucault, "What is Enlightenment?" in Paul Rabinow, Ed., The Foucault Reader , NY: Pantheon, 1984, pp. 32-50.
Click here to get this week's homework assignment. |
| Week 13 |
Media and Empire |
Reading:
Herbert Schiller, Mass Communications and American Empire (Boulder: Westview Press, 1992), 123-136, 153-169.
Edward Said, "American Ascendancy: The Public Space at War," In Said, Culture and Imperialism , NY: Alfred E. Knopf, 1993, pp. 282-303.
Click here to get the homework assignment. |
| Week 14 |
Globalization |
Reading:
Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities (excerpts).
Arjun Appadurai, Modernity at Large: cultural dimensions of globalization (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996), chapter two, "Global Disjuncture and Cultural Difference." Instead, click here to get the final exam assignment. |
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| Copyright
©2004 by David Ryfe. You can contact me at dryfe@mtsu.edu. |
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