This is a course in the politics of modern graffiti culture, from its emergence as a kind of criminal mischief or gang-related boundary keeping to its current acclaim in art, fashion, and film, from Cope 2’s bombed-out subway cars to Shepard Fairey’s mass-marketed Obey T-shirts. Which is another way of saying that while graffiti is often viewed as a critique and refusal of the conditions of urban existence, corporate crime, the military state, the death of the public sphere, and the inequality of property laws, it is also increasingly becoming big and mainstream business. The aim of this course is to show how Cultural Studies work may be useful to developing a political analysis of the everyday culture around us, using the fortunes of
graffiti sub-cultural practice as a case study of sorts.

We will begin by simply familiarizing ourselves with the general history of modern graffiti as we develop a foundational sense of what it was or is that makes graffiti or street art (these terms, sometime interchangeable, are also the subject of some debate) seem like a distinctive form of writing or expression. Then we’ll move on to consider various forms of graffiti, including paste-ups and knit bombing, as well as the different political and national contexts that impact the approach to and meaning of graffiti writing. At this stage, a few key theories of urban spaces and sub-culture style may prove useful to unpacking the specific effects of graffiti. Finally, we will try to assess in what ways the myriad of graffiti practices has been useful for contesting social and political inequalities, as well as the ways graffiti might exclude or obscure certain questions of inequality.

Note: While the work we will discuss in class is not local, I am always open to considering local sites and cases too.