Contemporary Cultural Studies (COM 6345) -- Fall 1999 -- Syllabus

Communication 6345
Contemporary Cultural Studies
Fall 1999

Prof. Gil Rodman
Office Hours: Tu, Th 2-3p and by appointment
CIS 3040 // gbr@kcii.com // 813-974-3025

course website:
http://scholar.acomp.usf.edu:90/courses/COM6345/index.html

course description and objectives
The past decade or so has seen the "cultural studies" label being used to describe an ever-expanding range of scholarly books, journals, conferences, courses, job descriptions, and even entire academic programs. In spite (because?) of the widespread use of the label, there's also widespread confusion as to just what this thing called "cultural studies" really is. To a certain extent, this uncertainty can be traced to the relative newness of cultural studies to many people, but a great deal of it is actually intrinsic to the field. From the very beginning, the range of intellectual projects that has traveled under the cultural studies banner has been too diverse to make simple and straightforward definitions of the field possible. While cultural studies isn't completely unbounded, it also doesn't have (and never has had) a clearly identifiable center: there is no single object of study, no body of theory, and no methodological paradigm that defines cultural studies neatly or completely.

What this means for this course is that we won't be able to map out all of the issues and subjects that currently occupy the attention of cultural studies scholars, though we will give detailed attention to some of the most important of these. We won't be able to examine cultural studies' tangled and fractious history in its entirety, but we will trace out enough of that history to help explain how the field came to be what and where it is today. And ultimately we won't be able to define cultural studies in any exhaustive fashion, but we will sketch out some of the boundaries suggested for the field in the past and address the question of where cultural studies might -- and, perhaps more importantly, where it should -- head in the future. The best way to think of this course, then, is not so much as a source of definitive answers, but as an opportunity to wrestle with productive and important questions.

required course materials

Books
- Lawrence Grossberg, Bringing It All Back Home
- Lawrence Grossberg et al., eds., Cultural Studies
- Cary Nelson and Dilip Gaonkar, eds., Disciplinarity and Dissent in Cultural Studies
- John Storey, ed., What Is Cultural Studies?
All four titles are available at Inkwood Books, 216 S. Armenia, Tampa (253-2638, inkwoodbks@aol.com).
Photocopied essays
In the past, my graduate classes have established cooperative photocopying "trees" to facilitate the distribution of photocopied essays. Participation in the tree is optional, but strongly encouraged, as it's proven to be a cheaper, quicker, and more efficient way for the whole class to get the non-book readings.
Access to the World Wide Web
We'll conduct a significant amount of course discussion and business online using an instructional software package called "CourseInfo." In theory, the CourseInfo interface should function with any web browser that supports frames, Java, and Javascript. Versions 4.0 or later of Netscape and Internet Explorer should both work fine, as should version 3.60 of Opera (my browser of choice) -- though it's possible that one or more of these will have minor problems handling certain pages and/or features. AOL's most recent browser (4.0) should also handle CourseInfo properly, but you have to configure it to cope with Java first (if you want/need to know how to do this, let me know I'll send you a copy of Academic Computing's instructions on how to do this).

Those of you who don't already have access to the Web at home or work can use any of the Internet-enabled terminals in the USF Library or on-campus computer labs to access the course's website. Free Internet accounts are also available to USF students from Academic Computing (LIB 608).

papers/presentations
Choose one of the following two options:

One (1) 25-30 page research paper on a cultural studies related topic, due by Tuesday, 7 December. Those choosing this option need to submit a 1-2 page proposal for the project to me no later than 12 October. Ideally, the finished product should be suitable for submission to a conference or a refereed journal.
Three (3) 8-10 page critical response papers. The due dates for these papers are:

paper # due date course sections

1 5 October 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

2 2 November 6, 7, 8, 9

3 7 December 10, 11, 12, 13, 14

You are free to write on whatever topic(s) you like from the material covered during the course sections associated with each paper. These essays should be thoughtful, critical engagements with the course material in question; they should not be mere summaries of the readings or regurgitation of our in-class/online conversations.

N.B.: I will assume that anyone who hasn't turned in a critical response paper by 5 October has opted to do the research paper instead.

paper #	due date	course sections
1	5 October	1, 2, 3, 4, 5
2	2 November	6, 7, 8, 9
3	7 December	10, 11, 12, 13, 14

CourseInfo Discussion Board participation
The course's CourseInfo site is located at:

http://scholar.acomp.usf.edu:90/courses/COM6345/index.html
[N.B.: This is a case-sensitive URL, so "COM" needs to be entered in "ALL CAPS" and the rest of the address needs to be in lowercase.]

The server will ask for your "User Name" and "Password." Your user name will be your first initial and your last name, typed without spaces and completely in lowercase letters (e.g., if your name is Terry Johnson, your user name will be "tjohnson"). Your initial password is your social security number, typed without spaces or hyphens. Once you've logged in, you can change your password from within the system -- and I would strongly recommend that you do so ASAP.

The primary purpose of the Discussion Board is to provide an informal space that's always available for discussion of the issues raised by the assigned readings and in our class sessions. Prompts intended to spur on the dialogue will be posted as necessary. As a rough guideline, ten substantial (i.e., more than a paragraph long) posts spread out over the course of the semester is considered a satisafctory level of participation.

Occasionally, the CourseInfo site will be used to make course-related announcements (e.g., "please add the collected works of Stuart Hall and Meaghan Morris to next Tuesday's reading") or to pass word on about other topics that may be of interest to the class (e.g., calls for papers, upcoming conferences, recently published articles and books, etc.). So check the site at least once per week (and preferably more often).

grading policy
Those of you who've had classes with me before know that I'm not a big fan of grades at the graduate level. Presumably, your main reason for being here is that you have a genuine desire to learn something about cultural studies, not whether you can maintain a 4.0 GPA. Assuming you show up for class consistently, participate in our discussions (both in class and online) on a regular basis, and complete the assigned papers in satisfactory fashion, you should get an A. That being said, in cases where people are clearly slacking off, I reserve the right to go deeper into the alphabet when I fill out my final grade sheet (and I've actually done so in the past). Under such unfortunate circumstances, your grade will be calculated as follows:

Attendance/participation	10%
CourseInfo Discussion Board participation	15%
Paper(s)
Option 1 (research paper)	75%
Option 2 (three short papers)	25% each

miscellaneous
The last version of this course that I taught included a class listserv -- CULTSTUD-L -- that has since gone on to be a publicly accessible listserv devoted to cultural studies. You're more than welcome to join the list, but are under no formal obligation to do so. If you're interested, you should read the list's FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) first to (1) find out how to subscribe and (2) learn the basic rules of conduct for the list. The FAQ is available online at:

http://www.cas.usf.edu/communication/rodman/cultstud/faq.html

N.B. -- Readings taken from the required texts are coded as follows:

BIABH -- Grossberg, Bringing It All Back Home
CS -- Grossberg et al., eds., Cultural Studies
D&D -- Nelson & Gaonkar, eds., Disciplinarity and Dissent in Cultural Studies
WICS -- Storey, ed., What Is Cultural Studies?

24 August
0: Introduction and overview

no readings

31 August
1: Defining cultural studies

BIABH -- "The Circulation of Cultural Studies"
BIABH -- "Cultural Studies: What's in a Name (One More Time)"
CS -- Nelson, Treichler, and Grossberg, "Cultural Studies: An Introduction"
WICS -– Johnson, "What Is Cultural Studies Anyway?"
WICS -- Nelson, "Always Already Cultural Studies: Academic Conferences and a Manifesto"
WICS -- Frow and Morris, "Australian Cultural Studies"
Bérubé, "Pop Goes the Academy: Cult Studs Fight the Power"

7 September
2: Historicizing cultural studies

BIABH -- "The Formations of Cultural Studies: An American in Birmingham"
CS -- Hall, "Cultural Studies and Its Theoretical Legacies"
CS -- Steedman, "Culture, Cultural Studies, and the Historians"
WICS -- R. Williams, "The Future of Cultural Studies"
WICS -- Sparks, "The Evolution of Cultural Studies . . ."
WICS -- Hall, "Cultural Studies: Two Paradigms"
Hall, "The Emergence of Cultural Studies and the Crisis in the Humanities"
Gibson and Hartley, "Forty Years of Cultural Studies: An Interview With Richard Hoggart"
Morris, "History in Cultural Studies"

14 September
3: Placing cultural studies

Schwarz, "Where Is Cultural Studies?"
Alasuutari, "Cultural Studies as a Construct"
Horak, "Cultural Studies in Germany (and Austria): And Why There Is No Such Thing"
Ang, "Doing Cultural Studies at the Crossroads: Local/Global Negotiations"
Wright, "Dare We De-centre Birmingham?: Troubling the ‘Origin' and Trajectories of Cultural Studies"
McNeil, "De-centring or Re-focusing Cultural Studies: A Response to Handel K. Wright"
Tomaselli, "Recovering Praxis Studies in Africa: The Unnaming Continues"

21 September
4: Disciplining cultural studies

WICS -- Rooney, "Discipline and Vanish: Feminism, the Resistance to Theory, and the Politics of Cultural Studies"
WICS -- Pfister, "The Americanization of Cultural Studies"
D&D -- Nelson and Gaonkar, "Cultural Studies and the Politics of Disciplinarity: An Introduction"
D&D -- Dominguez, "Disciplining Anthropology"
D&D -- Grossberg, "Toward a Genealogy of the State of Cultural Studies: The Discipline of Communication and the Reception of Cultural Studies in the United States"
Bennett, "Cultural Studies: A Reluctant Discipline"
Newton, Kaiser, and Ono, "Proposal for an MA and PhD Programme in Cultural Studies at UC Davis"

28 September
5: Defending cultural studies

BIABH -- "Introduction: ‘Birmingham' in America?"
BIABH -- "Where Is the ‘America' in American Cultural Studies?"
D&D -- Gray, "Is Cultural Studies Inflated? The Cultural Economy of Cultural Studies in the United States"
Morris, "Truth and Beauty in Our Times"
Morris, "The Truth Is Out There . . ."
Rodman, "Subject to Debate: (Mis)Reading Cultural Studies"

5 October
6: A detour through theory
Response paper #1 due

BIABH -- "Strategies of Marxist Cultural Interpretation"
R. Williams, "Culture Is Ordinary"
Hall, "Encoding/Decoding"
Hall, "Reflections Upon the Encoding/Decoding Model"
Hall, "On Postmodernism and Articulation: An Interview With Stuart Hall"
Hebdige, "From Culture to Hegemony"
Grossberg, "Mapping Popular Culture"
Seigworth, "Sound Affects"

12 October
7: Race
Research paper proposals due

WICS -- Diawara, "Black Studies, Cultural Studies: Performative Acts"
WICS -- Hall, "Race, Culture, and Communications: Looking Backward and Forward at Cultural Studies"
CS -- Chabram-Dernersesian, "I Throw Punches for My Race, but I Don't Want to Be a Man: Writing Us -- Chica-nos (Girl, Us)/Chicanas -- Into the Movement Script"
CS -- Gilroy, "Cultural Studies and Ethnic Absolutism"
CS -- hooks, "Representing Whiteness in the Black Imagination"
CS -- Wallace, "Negative Images: Towards a Black Feminist Cultural Criticism"
D&D -- Valaskakis, "Indian Country: Negotiating the Meaning of Land in Native America"
D&D -- Berlant, "The Face of America and the State of Emergency"

19 October
8: Gender

WICS -- Franklin, Lury, and Stacey. "Feminism and Cultural Studies: Pasts, Presents, Futures"
WICS -- Long, "Feminism and Cultural Studies"
CS -- Mani, "Cultural Theory, Colonial Texts: Reading Eyewitness Accounts of Widow Burning"
CS -- Martin, "Body Narratives, Body Boundaries"
CS -- Kipnis, "(Male) Desire and (Female) Disgust: Reading Hustler"
CS -- Warner, "Spectacular Action: Rambo and the Popular Pleasures of Pain"
Stabile, "'A Garden Inclosed Is My Sister': Ecofeminism and Eco-Valences"
Stabile, "Erasing Racism: Murphy Brown, Dan Quayle and the L.A. Riots"

26 October
9: Popular culture and cultural hierarchies

CS -- Penley, "Feminism, Psychoanalysis, and the Study of Popular Culture"
CS -- Radway, "Mail-Order Culture and Its Critics: The Book-of-the-Month Club, Commodification and Consumption, and the Problem of Cultural Authority"
Hall, "Notes on Deconstructing 'The Popular'"
Frith, "The Good, the Bad, and the Indifferent: Defending Popular Culture From the Populists"
Bérubé, "Entertaining Cultural Criticism"
Rodman, "Elvis Culture"
Michaels, "Bad Aboriginal Art"

2 November
10: Media studies and audience ethnography
Response paper #2 due

CS -- Brunt, "Engaging With the Popular: Audiences for Mass Culture and What to Say About Them"
WICS -- Fiske, "British Cultural Studies and Television"
WICS -- Morris, "Banality in Cultural Studies"
Radway, "Reception Study: Ethnography and the Problems of Dispersed Audiences and Nomadic Subjects"
BIABH -- "Wandering Audiences, Nomadic Critics"
Walkerdine, "Video Replay: Families, Films and Fantasy"
Nightingale, "What's 'Ethnographic' About Ethnographic Audience Research?"

9 November
11: Everyday life and lived experience

CS -- Clifford, "Traveling Cultures"
CS -- Fiske, "Cultural Studies and the Culture of Everyday Life"
CS -- Frith, "The Cultural Study of Popular Music"
Seigworth, "Everyday Life Is Always Somewhere Else"
Morse, "An Ontology of Everyday Distraction: The Freeway, the Mall, and Television"
Morris, "Things to Do With Shopping Centers"
Grossberg, "From Media to Popular Culture to Everyday Life"

16 November
12: The University and other cultural institutions

CS -- Bennett, "Putting Policy Into Cultural Studies"
Striphas, "The Long March: Cultural Studies and Its Institutionalization"
Morris, "Publishing Perils, and How to Survive Them: A Guide for Graduate Students"
Nelson and Bérubé, "A Report From the Front"
Nelson and Watt, "Between Meltdown and Community: Crisis and Opportunity in Higher Education"
Stabile, "Another Brick in the Wall: (Re)contextualizing the Crisis"
Pratt, "Humanities for the Future: Reflections on the Western Culture Debate at Stanford"

23 November
13: Pedagogy

CS -- Giroux, "Resisting Difference: Cultural Studies and the Discourse of Critical Pedagogy"
BIABH -- "Bringing It All Back Home: Pedagogy and Cultural Studies"
O'Shea, "A Special Relationship?: Cultural Studies, Academia and Pedagogy"
Henderson, "Communication Pedagogy and Political Practice"
hooks, "Engaged Pedagogy"
Ellsworth, "Why Doesn't This Feel Empowering?: Working Through the Repressive Myths of Critical Pedagogy"
Jay and Graff, "A Critique of Critical Pedagogy"

30 November
14: Public intellectuals

CS -- Grover, "AIDS, Keywords, and Cultural Work"
CS -- West, "The Postmodern Crisis of the Black Intellectuals"
D&D -- Penley, "From NASA to The 700 Club (With a Detour Through Hollywood): Cultural Studies in the Public Sphere"
D&D -- Hanchard, "Cultural Politics and Black Public Intellectuals"
Moran, "Cultural Studies and Academic Stardom"
Morris, "Politics Now (Anxieties of a Petty-Bourgeois Intellectual)"
Graff, "Academic Writing and the Uses of Bad Publicity"
Bérubé, "Bite Size Theory: Popularizing Academic Criticism"
Bérubé, "Cultural Criticism and the Politics of Selling Out"

7 December
Research paper due
Response paper #3 due

Bibliography of photocopied articles
Alasuutari, Pertti. 1999. Cultural studies as a construct. European Journal of Cultural Studies 2(1): 91-108.

Ang, Ien. 1998. Doing cultural studies at the crossroads: Local/global negotiations. European Journal of Cultural Studies 1(1): 13-31.

Bennett, Tony. 1998. Cultural studies: A reluctant discipline. Cultural Studies 12(4): 528-545.

Bérubé, Michael. 1994. Bite size theory: Popularizing academic criticism. In Public access: Literary theory and American cultural politics, 161-178. New York: Verso.

Bérubé, Michael. 1994. Pop goes the academy: Cult studs fight the power. In Public access: Literary theory and American cultural politics, 137-160. New York: Verso, 1994.

Bérubé, Michael. 1995. Entertaining cultural criticism. Paper presented to the Unit for Criticism and Interpretive Theory Monthly Colloquium Series, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, March.

Bérubé, Michael. 1998. Cultural criticism and the politics of selling out. In The employment of English: Theory, jobs and the future of literary studies, 216-242. New York: New York University Press.

Ellsworth, Elizabeth. 1989. Why doesn't this feel empowering?: Working through the repressive myths of critical pedagogy. Harvard Educational Review 59(3): 297-324.

Frith, Simon. 1991. The good, the bad, and the indifferent: Defending popular culture from the populists. diacritics 21(4): 102-115.

Gibson, Mark, and John Hartley. 1998. Forty years of cultural studies: An interview with Richard Hoggart. International Journal of Cultural Studies 1(1): 11-23.

Graff, Gerald. 1992. Academic writing and the uses of bad publicity. South Atlantic Quarterly 91(1): 5-17.

Grossberg, Lawrence. 1991. From media to popular culture to everyday life. Reprinted (1997) in Dancing in spite of myself: Essays on popular culture, 270-284. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

Grossberg, Lawrence. 1992. Mapping popular culture. In We gotta get out of this place: Popular conservatism and postmodern culture, 69-87. New York: Routledge.

Hall, Stuart. 1980. Encoding/decoding. In Culture, media, language: Working papers in cultural studies, 1972-79, ed. Stuart Hall, Dorothy Hobson, Andrew Love, and Paul Willis, 128-138. Boston: Unwin Hyman.

Hall, Stuart. 1981. Notes on deconstructing "the popular." In People's history and socialist theory, ed. Raphael Samuel, 227-240. London: Routledge.

Hall, Stuart. 1986. On postmodernism and articulation: An interview with Stuart Hall. Journal of Communication Inquiry 10(2): 45-60.

Hall, Stuart. 1990. The emergence of cultural studies and the crisis in the humanities. October 53: 11-23.

Hall, Stuart. 1994. Reflections upon the encoding/decoding model. In Viewing, reading, listening: Audiences and critical reception, ed. Jon Cruz and Justin Lewis, 253-274. Boulder: Westview.

Hebdige, Dick. 1979. From culture to hegemony. In Subculture: The meaning of style, 5-19. New York: Methuen.

Henderson, Lisa. 1994. Communication pedagogy and political practice. Journal of Communication Inquiry 18(2): 133-152.

hooks, bell. 1994. Engaged pedagogy. In Teaching to transgress: Education as the practice of freedom, 13-22. New York: Routledge.

Horak, Roman. 1999. Cultural studies in Germany (and Austria): And why there is no such thing. European Journal of Cultural Studies 2(1): 109-115.

Jay, Gregory, and Gerald Graff. 1995. A critique of critical pedagogy. In Higher education under fire: Politics, economics, and the crisis of the humanities, ed. Michael Bérubé and Cary Nelson, 201-213. New York: Routledge.

McNeil, Maureen. 1998. De-centring or re-focusing cultural studies: A response to Handel K. Wright. European Journal of Cultural Studies 1(1): 57-64.

Michaels, Eric. 1988. Bad aboriginal art. Art and Text 28: 59-73.

Moran, Joe. 1998. Cultural studies and academic stardom. International Journal of Cultural Studies 1(1): 67-82.

Morris, Meaghan. 1988. Things to do with shopping centers. Reprinted (1998) in Too soon too late: History in popular culture, 64-92. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Morris, Meaghan. 1989. Politics now (anxieties of a petty-bourgeois intellectual). In The pirate's fiancée: Feminism, reading, postmodernism, 173-186. New York: Verso.

Morris, Meaghan. 1997. "‘The truth is out there . . .'" Cultural Studies 11(3): 367-375.

Morris, Meaghan. 1998. History in cultural studies. In Too soon too late: History in popular culture, 1-28. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Morris, Meaghan. 1998. Truth and beauty in our times. In Our cultural heritage, ed. John Bigelow, 75-87. Canberra: The Australian Academy of the Humanities.

Morse, Margaret. 1990. An ontology of everyday distraction: The freeway, the mall, and television. In Logics of television: Essays in cultural criticism, ed. Patricia Mellencamp, 193-221. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Nelson, Cary, and Bérubé, Michael. 1995. A report from the front. In Higher education under fire: Politics, economics, and the crisis of the humanities, ed. Michael Bérubé and Cary Nelson, 1-32. New York: Routledge.

Nelson, Cary, and Stephen Watt. 1999. Between meltdown and community: Crisis and opportunity in higher education. In Academic keywords: A devil's dictionary for higher education, 1-14. New York: Routledge.

Newton, Judith, Susan Kaiser, and Kent A. Ono. 1998. Proposal for an MA and PhD programme in cultural studies at UC Davis. Cultural Studies 12(4): 546-570.

Nightingale, Virginia. 1989. What's "ethnographic" about ethnographic audience research? Reprinted (1993) in Australian cultural studies: A reader, ed. John Frow and Meaghan Morris, 149-161. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.

O'Shea, Alan. 1998. A special relationship?: Cultural studies, academia, and pedagogy. Cultural Studies 12(4): 513-527.

Pratt, Linda Ray. 1992. Humanities for the future: Reflections on the Western Culture debate at Stanford. In The politics of liberal education, ed. Darryl J. Gless and Barbara Herrnstein Smith, 13-31. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

Radway, Janice. 1988. Reception study: Ethnography and the problems of dispersed audiences and nomadic subjects. Cultural Studies 2(3): 359-376.

Rodman, Gilbert B. 1996. Elvis culture. In Elvis after Elvis: The posthumous career of a living legend, 130-180. New York: Routledge.

Rodman, Gilbert B. 1997. Subject to debate: (Mis)reading cultural studies. Journal of Communication Inquiry 21(2): 56-69.

Schwarz, Bill. 1994. Where Is cultural studies? Cultural Studies 8(3): 377-393.

Seigworth, Greg. 1994. Everyday life is always somewhere else. 13 Magazine (November): 18-19.

Seigworth, Greg. 1995. Sound affects. 13 Magazine (December): 21-23, 25.

Stabile, Carol A. 1995. Another brick in the wall: (Re)contextualizing the crisis. In Higher education under fire: Politics, economics, and the crisis of the humanities, ed. Michael Bérubé and Cary Nelson, 108-125. New York: Routledge.

Stabile, Carol A. 1992. Erasing racism: Murphy Brown, Dan Quayle and the L.A. riots. Paper presented to the conference, "Living and Working With Cultural Plurality," University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, October.

Stabile, Carol A. 1994. "A garden inclosed is my sister": Ecofeminism and eco-valences. In Feminism and the technological fix, 48-67. Manchester: Manchester University Press.

Striphas, Ted. 1998. The long march: Cultural studies and its institutionalization. Cultural Studies 12(4): 453-475.

Tomaselli, Keyan G. 1998. Recovering praxis studies in Africa: The unnaming continues. European Journal of Cultural Studies 1(3): 387-402.

Walkerdine, Valerie. 1986. Video replay: Families, films and fantasy. Reprinted (1990) in The media reader, ed. Manuel Alvarado and John O. Thompson, 339-357. London: BFI.

Williams, Raymond. 1958. Culture is ordinary. Reprinted (1989) in Resources of hope: Culture, democracy, socialism, 3-18. New York: Verso.

Wright, Handel K. 1998. Dare we de-centre Birmingham?: Troubling the "origin" and trajectories of cultural studies. European Journal of Cultural Studies 1(1): 33-56.