English 556A: Introduction to Cultural Studies
Spring 2010 course description
Tom Foster

In the contemporary academy, cultural studies is often confusingly used as an umbrella term encompassing at least three distinct knowledge projects, sometimes overlapping, sometimes contradictory to one another: a specific constellation of theoretical interests (the relation of post-structuralism to ideology critique or Marxism to multiculturalism, for instance); an object-driven approach, especially the study of popular or “mass” cultural forms, including their methodological and cross-disciplinary implications; and, finally, a focus on the cultural politics of the “new” social movements (feminism, queer theory, critical race, and/or post-colonial studies). This course will try to provide a map of these varied terrains by offering a historical introduction to the interdisciplinary cultural studies movement, grounded in the work of Stuart Hall and the Birmingham school at the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies, but also concerned with the generalization of this school and its reception elsewhere, especially in the U.S. The Birmingham school takes as its starting point changing definitions of “culture” (a concept which has its origin in ideologies of nationalism and national character), especially challenges to hierarchies of cultural value, of “high” and “low,” which result from the increasing importance of popular media and from anthropological work on everyday life as symbolically significant. We will begin by reading some reflections on the problem of definition faced by cultural studies, and from there we will jump to Stuart Hall and Lawrence Grossberg’s attempt to synthesize a methodology in the face of these problems, under the heading of “articulation theory.” We will then trace back the theoretical foundations and intellectual traditions that feed into this methodology, such as Marxist theories of hegemony and ideology critique, structuralist and post-structuralist theories of language and discourse analysis, ethnography and subculture studies, and the challenges to Marxism posed by “new” social movements. We will do some readings in the relation between disciplinarity and interdisciplinarity, to consider the effects of different disciplinary starting points (literary studies and methods of textual or rhetorical analysis, communications and media studies, anthropology) on cultural studies projects and the kinds of exchanges across disciplines that cultural studies has developed (reception studies, for instance). As time permits, we will probably end the course by considering how cultural studies has responded to the emergence of new objects of study and new conditions for knowledge production, with some readings in technoculture studies; posthumanisms; globalization and the changing status of the nation-state; and governmentality, empire, and societies of control (perhaps with specific reference to the 9/11 attacks and their aftermath).
Assignments will probably include 2 essays as well as class presentations (though it may be possible for students to work on longer projects).
I have not yet made final decisions about the books we will use, but they will probably be drawn from this list (note that we may only read selections from some of these works):

David Morley and Kuan-Hsing Chen, eds., Stuart Hall: Critical Dialogues in Cultural Studies
Lawrence Grossberg, We Gotta Get Out of This Place: Popular Conservatism and Postmodern
Culture
Simon During, ed., The Cultural Studies Reader, 2nd edition
Antonio Gramsci, Selections from The Prison Notebooks
Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality, vol. 1
Dick Hebdige, Subculture
Slavoj Zizek, ed., Mapping Ideology
Janice Radway, Reading the Romance: Women, Patriarchy and Popular Literature
Henry Jenkins, Textual Poachers: Television Fans and Participatory Culture
Scott McCloud, Understanding Comics
Gary Hall and Clare Birchall, eds., New Cultural Studies: Adventures in Theory