This course offers an introduction to cultural studies as an interdisciplinary form of knowledge production, one arising out of what Chela Sandoval has called “the global decolonizing processes of the 19th and 20th centuries.” In this sense, this course will pursue an investigation of the ways in which cultural studies methods of knowledge production interact with histories of political contestation and racialized domination.

In order to address these concerns, this course will firstly introduce students to key concepts and terms within the British cultural studies tradition with a particular emphasis on the relationship between racialization and cultural production. We will then resituate our lines of inquiry into a US context, where we will work through the different and related ways in which African American and Chicana/o histories of political struggle interact with cultural productions and engender critical studies of culture. In these terms, this course will ask students to consider the relationship between culture, nationalism, social movements, state power, and colonial histories of racialization. And it will think these connections through a variety of cultural sites and texts—from novels and film to short stories and hip hop, to name a few.

Book List:
Nella Larsen. Passing (1929)
Américo Paredes. With His Pistol in His Hand: A Border Ballad & its Hero (1958)
Angie Chabram-Dernersesian. The Chicana/o Cultural Studies Forum: Critical and Ethnographic Practices (2007)