Culture is a site of struggle, over meanings, values, history, and reality. This course introduces students to cultural studies as a conceptual, interpretive, and interdisciplinary approach to the role that culture plays in defining reality and to the possibilities for contesting those definitions. Through exploring the rituals and practices of culture that shape our perceptions of the world, often in ways we take for granted, the course seeks to develop a critical understanding of the relationships between individual and society, representation and reality, as well as theory and practice.

What is literature? Today the term literature embraces all things printed, from fiction to nonfiction to advertising (yes, even your junk mail), from highbrow to low. This course will take a comparative view of the term literature as well as its ideas, practices, and forms. Given that literature historically has been tied to writing, to print, or to the book, what does it mean to study literature today?in an age when the book (and possibly print itself) may be vanishing?

Introduction to the critical study of the visual in modernity, presented through sustained analysis of the cinema and cinematic codes. Emphases on formal film analysis and major film movements and conventions in the international history of cinema. Students develop a vocabulary for formal visual analysis and explore major theories of the cinema. *Students will not receive credit for CSCL 1201W if they have already taken SCMC 1201W, CSCL 1201V, SCMC 1201V, ARTH 1921W, CSCL 1921W, CSCL 1201 or SCMC 1201

Introduction to the critical study of the visual in modernity, presented through sustained analysis of the cinema and cinematic codes. Emphases on formal film analysis and major film movements and conventions in the international history of cinema. Students develop a vocabulary for formal visual analysis and explore major theories of the cinema. *Students will not receive credit for CSCL 1201W if they have already taken SCMC 1201W, ARTH 1921W, CSCL 1921W, CSCL 1201 or SCMC 1201

Introduction to the critical and theoretical study of media and technology from Aristotle to the modern world. The first half of the course emphasizes theoretical readings in dialogue with historical apparatuses (printing press, photography, radio, cinema, television) and various expressive objects (the bible, early film, ethnographic sound recordings). The second half turns to the modern culture industry since World War II, and introduces students to the critical study of mass culture, the concept of ideology, and of the relationship between corporate power and media conglomerates.

Introduction to the critical and theoretical study of media and technology from Aristotle to the modern world. The first half of the course emphasizes theoretical readings in dialogue with historical apparatuses (printing press, photography, radio, cinema, television) and various expressive objects (the bible, early film, ethnographic sound recordings). The second half turns to the modern culture industry since World War II, and introduces students to the critical study of mass culture, the concept of ideology, and of the relationship between corporate power and media conglomerates.

Culture and cultural conflict. Reading cultural theory/texts such as film, literature, music, fashion, commercial art, and built environment.

How can we read/understand different ways that literature is meaningful? Emphasizes practice in reading a broad spectrum of world literature, literary theory.

What is history? How can we understand its meanings/uses? Emphasizes practice in reading cultural texts from various historical perspectives.

Exploration of concepts and problems foundational to the practice of critique. Focus on paradigmatic concerns and shifts underpinning humanistic inquiry, from the past to the present, such as representation, narrative, ideology, subjectivity, power and violence, and transformation. Groundwork for understanding the European critical tradition and key challenges from non-European sources.

This course begins by asking what this strange thing we call literature is, this six-thousand year old form of writing that brings into existence, each time a work is read, a world that did not previously exist. Sometimes that world is one in which we long to live, sometimes it is dark and foreboding, all death and despair; sometimes we seek it out as an escape from our daily lives, sometimes we enter it to be able to better understand those same lives, to come back to them refreshed, not just emotionally but intellectually -- for if literature does involve an immersion in the not-actually-existent, a departure from the everyday world, it does so by engaging us from within the world and in such a way that it is able to recast our everyday world and make us think it in new ways. And literature does all this with that most everyday of things, language. By attending to the ways authors and scholars mobilise language?s expressive, analytic and conceptual resources, with this course we shall learn various methods of critically appreciating and engaging complex literature, while gaining insight into how the practices of literary criticism and theory relate to, and help us understand, the world in which we live, how language shapes and forms that world and literature?s unique place and role in that world and its forming.

History/theory of 'close reading' (i.e., the most intense encounter between reader and text) exemplified through critical texts. Students perform close readings of various texts.

Examines the status of "poetry" in several cultures of the Americas bringing together techniques of close reading and broad cultural inquiry.

Movements that emerge when a group of writers, filmmakers, artists, composers, or musicians puts forth a new definition of literature, film, art, or music?and sets in motion new relations (aesthetic and social) of word, image, sound. Manifestos?statements of position?that articulate or counter such definitions. Movements created by scholars or critics after the fact. Focuses on one or two related movements (e.g., romanticism and realism, surrealism and negritude, new wave and third cinema).

Readings in colonial/postcolonial literatures/theory from at least two world regions: Africa, the Americas, the Arab world, Asia, Europe, and the Pacific. Cultural/psychological dynamics and political economy of world under empire, decolonization, pre- vs. post-coloniality, globalization.

What makes some jokes so funny? And why do we laugh? In this course, we will approach the topic of comedy from every angle. We will study theories and philosophies of humor, and will survey many different forms of the genre?film, television, viral web videos, internet memes, stand-up, improv, sketch comedy, absurdist theater, and political satire. And, of course, we will write and perform our own comedy in the classroom. By studying the history and formations of comedy, we will think about how jokes can help us change the rules of everyday life and imagine a new way forward.

This course explores Global and Transnational Cinemas as alternative traditions to the dominant Hollywood-centered accounts of film history. Students will grapple with the historical, social, and political motivations of cinematic projects that critique traditions of national cinema, or that resist the hegemonic force of neocolonial cultural centers. Italian Neo-realism and the French New Wave will be examined as movements that challenge politics and mass culture. Third Cinema in Latin America and pan-African cinematic movements will be examined through their struggles with both colonialism and the rise of post-colonial dictatorships. Indian and Japanese cinemas of the 50s & 60s will mark out new possibilities of filmmaking and distribution. Finally, counter-hegemonic and experimental movements in U.S.-based film, such as the L.A. Rebellion and Fluxus, will allow students to understand how opposition to Hollywood style could exist within the very centers of cultural power while also reaching out to larger global communities.

This course explores the ethics and aesthetics of documentary cinema, arguably the very first genre of film. We will track the way documentary has widened from largely instructional and experimental uses early in its history to become a distinct genre among today?s familiar feature films. We will screen early documentaries, which may include shocking ethnographies (Nanook of the North, The Mad Masters). Over the course of the term, the syllabus makes its way to recent exemplars of the genre (films may include: Amy, American Teen, I Am Not Your Negro, A Jihad for Love, Generation Wealth, Fetish, Blackfish and so on). One of our aims will be to explore students? relations as viewers and documentarians themselves (via smartphones, Instagram, etc.) to this participatory, revelatory, and always controversial, politically fraught film practice. Documentary Cinema includes both full class lectures and discussions as well as small group discussion of films and readings, and may include the opportunity for students to create their own personal documentary. Intellectually, the course balances out a study of the grammar of documentary as an artistic practice with explorations of the ways the genre reflects broader currents of cinematic and cultural history. By the end of the semester, students should have a stronger understanding of the ways documentary cinema opens our senses to the world around us.

We will study writings on television and specific TV shows from a variety of angles to understand the rise of American broadcast technologies, how race and class are crafted on TV, representations of gender and the home, postmodernity and late capitalism, the rise and demise and of taste, global television and the public sphere, the production of ?reality? in our present historical moment, and changes in televisual technologies. Throughout the course, we will also consider what constitutes television?the technology, the form, and the content?and learn to read these three facets of it concurrently.

Close examination of widely varying musical forms and styles, "classical" and "popular," in relation to human subjectivity and configurations of culture, ideology, and power.

The cinema as a social institution with emphasis on the complex relations it maintains with the ideological practices that define both the form and the content of its products. Specific films used to study how mass culture contributes to the process of shaping beliefs and identities of citizens.

The cinema as a social institution with emphasis on the complex relations it maintains with the ideological practices that define both the form and the content of its products. Specific films used to study how mass culture contributes to the process of shaping beliefs and identities of citizens.

Screens increasingly define the ways that we communicate with one another and how we encounter the world. This course will offer a critical, historical approach to the emergence of ?screen cultures? from the beginning of photography and cinema to our own age of ubiquitous touch screen displays. We will pay a great deal of attention to the ways that such technologies drive our patterns of consumption and production as well as how they create and define our social environments.

Screens increasingly define the ways that we communicate with one another and how we encounter the world. This course will offer a critical, historical approach to the emergence of ?screen cultures? from the beginning of photography and cinema to our own age of ubiquitous touch screen displays. We will pay a great deal of attention to the ways that such technologies drive our patterns of consumption and production as well as how they create and define our social environments.

How discourse reproduces consciousness and persuades us to accept that consciousness and the power supporting it. Literary language, advertising, electronic media; film, visual and musical arts, built environment, and performance. Techniques for analyzing language, material culture, and performance. (previously 3173W)

Scientific and cultural theory concerning the organization of nature, human nature, and their significance for development of ethics, religion, political/economic philosophy, civics, and environmentalism in Western/other civilizations.

Science and technology engaged through historical and cultural manifestations from film, literature, and YouTube to scientific and philosophical essays. Relations among humanities, science, economics, politics, philosophy and history. Psychiatry and drugs, food and agriculture, sexuality, religion and science, climate change.

Historical/critical reading of figures (e.g., uncanny double, monstrous aberration, technological hybrid) in mythology, literature, and film, from classical epic to sci-fi, cyberpunk, and Web. (previously 3461)

In English, the word ?alien? designates both immigrants from other countries and beings from other worlds. Aliens of all sorts are everywhere; they tend to provoke fascination, fantasy, and for many, fear and anxiety. But the deeper philosophical significance of aliens says as much about us as it does about them. In this course, we will explore these questions through a range of novels, films, and artworks from the 1890s to the present day, with an emphasis on science fiction and American popular culture.

Western representation of the human body, 1500 to present. Body's appearance as a site and sight for production of social and cultural difference (race, ethnicity, class, gender). Visual arts, literature, music, medical treatises, courtesy literature, erotica. (previously 3458W)

Is there such a thing as global queer aesthetic? If so, how do various modes of representation and expression (novels, poetry, and sophisticated uses of language across film, television and video, digital media, pop music and punk) elaborate and enact queerness in particular material ways while also helping to create a larger, intermedial queer culture?

Historical/critical study of forms of modern sexuality (heterosexuality, homosexuality, romance, erotic domination, lynching). How discourses constitute/regulate sexuality. Scientific/scholarly literature, religious documents, fiction, personal narratives, films, advertisements.

Historical/critical study of forms of modern sexuality (heterosexuality, homosexuality, romance, erotic domination, lynching). How discourses constitute/regulate sexuality. Scientific/scholarly literature, religious documents, fiction, personal narratives, films, advertisements.

This course introduces students to influential thinkers in the field of critical theory, broadly conceived. Critical theory is similar to philosophy because it asks big questions that stretch the boundaries of human knowledge. But it is distinct in its focus on practical change?critical theory advocates for a more just and emancipated human world. Its key techniques are the diagnosis and critique of histories, systems, and ideologies of social power. Critical theory emerged from a group of Marxist intellectuals in the 1920s and 30s who were concerned about the rise of fascism, the staggering inequalities produced by industrial capitalism, the trauma of mass violence, and the numbing standardization of modern life. Since then, the field has expanded to encompass concerns about structural racism, gender inequality, the rise of neoliberalism, the expansion of modern carceral and mental health systems, and the ongoing inequities wrought by histories of slavery, colonization, and imperial conquest. Featured authors may include Sigmund Freud, W. E. B. Du Bois, Georg Simmel, Walter Benjamin, Max Horkheimer, Theodor Adorno, Frantz Fanon, Herbert Marcuse, Patricia Hill Collins, Malcom X, Jackie Wang, Angela Y. Davis, Sheldon George, Alfredo Carrasquillo, Joshua Javier Guzman, Willy Apollon, Jean Rouch, Michel-Rolph Trouillot, Saidiya Hartman, bell hooks, Édouard Glissant, Aurora Levins Morales, Michael Rothberg, Nelson Maldonado-Torres, Christopher Pexa, Yuichiro Onishi, Kwame Anthony Appiah, Lewis Gordon, and Barbara Christian.

A century and a half after the publication of Karl Marx?s Capital, Vol. 1 (1867), this course will reflect on the political urgency of our current moment in order to understand the relevance and complexity of Marx and the Marxist tradition. We will pursue an intensive study of primary readings written by Karl Marx himself, exploring the social, philosophical, and political history of Marxist thought and familiarizing ourselves with key concepts such as labor-power, primitive accumulation, the commodity, use value, exchange-value, surplus-value, crisis, money, and capital. As we study Marx as a theoretician, we will also examine his work as a political revolutionary, writer, and correspondent with many of the most important revolutionary figures of his day. Here we will foreground his analysis of the labor of enslaved Black persons in the plantation economies of the Southern United States?which he ties to the labor markets of capitalism in Europe?as well as his more explicit critiques of slavery and colonialism. Following this close reading of Marx and the Marxist tradition, we will consider the ways that critical thinkers and political activists, both in the United States and globally, continue to resist, create, and dream under the banner of Marxism throughout the twentieth century and into our own new century. We will center questions of racial justice through the writings of W. E. B. Du Bois and contemporary Marxist scholars of race, indigeneity, and diaspora, focusing on Du Bois?s attention to the links between race and social class in America. Alongside critical reappraisals of Marx?s thought, we shall think about the influence of Marx?s writings on political activists in the Black Panther Party and the American Indian Movement, and on American labor, as well as on South American revolutionaries like Carlos Marighella. We will then move to a study of Marxist feminism, linking race and gender in U.S. and global Marxisms through readings by Black Panther activist and intellectual Angela Davis, the social historian Nancy Fraser, and Italian Marxist feminist Silvia Federici. We will revisit the question of gender oppression and feminist resistance through a Marxist frame, with reference to the revival of socialist prospects in the work of Jodi Dean and Mackenzie Wark. Finally, we will examine the contemporary fight over reproductive rights and the history of the ?Wages for Housework? movement. From these readings and conversations we will think about how Marx?s ideas and their larger legacy can help us to understand our current moment and our political, social, and ecological futures. In as much as this is a course on theoretical perspectives, it will also be one that seeks to use Marx, and the Marxist tradition, to develop critical perspectives and solutions to pressing issues of racial injustice, social inequality, and environmental devastation.

The work of Sigmund Freud has withstood years of controversy to install itself as foundational to the way we understand the relationship between individual desires, social structures, and cultural practices. This is in part because Freud?s writings were not restricted to the domain of psychology. His writings also renewed grand philosophical questions in ways that dramatically transformed them. He asked: What is a human subject? What are the causes of her actions? What are the nature and motivations of her engagement with others? In the many decades since his early publications, Freud?s key concepts like the ego, the superego, the id, the unconscious, and the significance of dreams and jokes have had an enduring influence in Western culture. This course introduces students to a range of psychoanalytic writings from Freud?s early theories of mental structure and human development to contemporary applications, re-workings, and critiques of psychoanalysis. We will discuss concepts like the unconscious, sexuality, disavowal, repression, neurosis, melancholia, the pleasure principle and the death drive. By the end of the course, we will have developed a sense of the uses and limitations of psychoanalysis for understanding pressing global issues such as sexual identification and its formation, racism, neo-fascism, extreme political division, war and nationalism, climate change, and the destruction of democratic ideals. Authors read may include Melanie Klein, Franz Fanon, Jacques Lacan, Julia Kristeva, David Eng, Slavoj Zizek, Henry Stack Sullivan, Kalpana Sheshadri- Crooks and Margaret Mahler. Readings will be complemented with short stories, literary excerpts, film clips, as well as discussion of current political issues.

First of a two-semester course. European thought in its historical/cultural context. Emphasizes development of philosophical/scientific thought, its relation to thinking about the individual and the community. Readings from original sources.

Second of a two-semester course. European thought in its historical/cultural context. Emphasizes development of philosophical/scientific thought, its relation to thinking about the individual and the community. Readings are from original sources.

First of a two-semester course. European thought in its historical/cultural context. Emphasizes development of philosophical/scientific thought, its relation to thinking about the individual and the community. Readings from original sources.

Guided individual reading or study. Prereq-instr consent, dept consent, college consent.

Topics vary by instructor and semester

Society, ideology, and aesthetic value considered in light of recent critical theories of visual art, music, and literature. Meditations of place, social class, gender and ideology on aesthetic judgment in post-Renaissance Western culture.

Central role of vision/visuality in modernity. Modern age as scopic regime. Ways that ideas/ideologies of perception have shaped aesthetic experience within social existence.

Comparative study of the novel, 18th century to present. Its relations to ordinary language practices, emergent reading publics, technologies of cultural dissemination, problems of subjectivity, and its role in articulating international cultural relations.

Intellectual map of the creation of cultural studies as a unique approach to studying social meanings. Key figures and concepts, including nineteenth- and early twentieth century precursors.

In 1939, the art critic Clement Greenberg defined avant-garde art in opposition to the ?kitsch? of mass-produced culture. To what extent does this conception of the avant-garde apply to the cinema?an institution and art form that supposedly requires machines and industrial modes of production? This course introduces students to key works of avant-garde and experimental film made by artists working on the margins of commercial film and mainstream art institutions. From the first half of the twentieth century, we will consider influential films made under the banners of Futurism, Constructivism, Surrealism, and Dada, and discuss their complex relation to Hollywood commodities. In the postwar period, we will explore a range of increasingly global experimental film practices, from the queer underground cinema in Latin America to the use of film projection in avant-garde performance. We will examine these practices in light of larger debates about medium specificity as well as the aesthetics and politics of the personal vs. the structural. In the final unit, we will reflect on the way contemporary artists, scholars, and curators have assembled a tradition of avant-garde cinema in the age of new media, and contemplate new directions we want it to take.

Problems of the nature of the sign; sign function; sign production; signifying systems as articulated in philosophy, linguistics, anthropology, psychoanalysis, and art theory. Application of semiotics to various signifying practices (literature, cinema, daily life).

Role of music in American/European film from early 20th century silent cinema to near present. Narrative features, shorts, documentary, horror, thriller, science fiction, comedy, cartoon. Film music as social/cultural practice and as part of political economy within culture industry.

Three thinkers who defined modernity: Marx, Freud, and Nietzsche. Central tenets of their thought/terms associated with their theories. Their careers portrayed against the background of their times; their place in intellectual history.

Topics specified in Class Schedule.

Guided individual reading or study. Prereq-instr consent, dept consent, college consent.

Readings in colonial/postcolonial literatures/theory from at least two world regions: Africa, the Americas, the Arab world, Asia, Europe, and the Pacific. Cultural/psychological dynamics and political economy of world under empire, decolonization, pre- vs. post-coloniality, globalization.

How discourse reproduces consciousness and persuades us to accept that consciousness and the power supporting it. Literary language, advertising, electronic media; film, visual and musical arts, built environment, and performance. Techniques for analyzing language, material culture, and performance. (previously 3173W)

This course explores the ethics and aesthetics of documentary cinema, arguably the very first genre of film. We will track the way documentary has widened from largely instructional and experimental uses early in its history to become a distinct genre among today?s familiar feature films. We will screen early documentaries, which may include shocking ethnographies (Nanook of the North, The Mad Masters). Over the course of the term, the syllabus makes its way to recent exemplars of the genre (films may include: Amy, American Teen, I Am Not Your Negro, A Jihad for Love, Generation Wealth, Fetish, Blackfish and so on). One of our aims will be to explore students? relations as viewers and documentarians themselves (via smartphones, Instagram, etc.) to this participatory, revelatory, and always controversial, politically fraught film practice. Documentary Cinema includes both full class lectures and discussions as well as small group discussion of films and readings, and may include the opportunity for students to create their own personal documentary. Intellectually, the course balances out a study of the grammar of documentary as an artistic practice with explorations of the ways the genre reflects broader currents of cinematic and cultural history. By the end of the semester, students should have a stronger understanding of the ways documentary cinema opens our senses to the world around us.

This course introduces students to influential thinkers in the field of critical theory, broadly conceived. Critical theory is similar to philosophy because it asks big questions that stretch the boundaries of human knowledge. But it is distinct in its focus on practical change?critical theory advocates for a more just and emancipated human world. Its key techniques are the diagnosis and critique of histories, systems, and ideologies of social power. Critical theory emerged from a group of Marxist intellectuals in the 1920s and 30s who were concerned about the rise of fascism, the staggering inequalities produced by industrial capitalism, the trauma of mass violence, and the numbing standardization of modern life. Since then, the field has expanded to encompass concerns about structural racism, gender inequality, the rise of neoliberalism, the expansion of modern carceral and mental health systems, and the ongoing inequities wrought by histories of slavery, colonization, and imperial conquest. Featured authors may include Sigmund Freud, W. E. B. Du Bois, Georg Simmel, Walter Benjamin, Max Horkheimer, Theodor Adorno, Frantz Fanon, Herbert Marcuse, Patricia Hill Collins, Malcom X, Jackie Wang, Angela Y. Davis, Sheldon George, Alfredo Carrasquillo, Joshua Javier Guzman, Willy Apollon, Jean Rouch, Michel-Rolph Trouillot, Saidiya Hartman, bell hooks, Édouard Glissant, Aurora Levins Morales, Michael Rothberg, Nelson Maldonado-Torres, Christopher Pexa, Yuichiro Onishi, Kwame Anthony Appiah, Lewis Gordon, and Barbara Christian.

The work of Sigmund Freud has withstood years of controversy to install itself as foundational to the way we understand the relationship between individual desires, social structures, and cultural practices. This is in part because Freud?s writings were not restricted to the domain of psychology. His writings also renewed grand philosophical questions in ways that dramatically transformed them. He asked: What is a human subject? What are the causes of her actions? What are the nature and motivations of her engagement with others? In the many decades since his early publications, Freud?s key concepts like the ego, the superego, the id, the unconscious, and the significance of dreams and jokes have had an enduring influence in Western culture. This course introduces students to a range of psychoanalytic writings from Freud?s early theories of mental structure and human development to contemporary applications, re-workings, and critiques of psychoanalysis. We will discuss concepts like the unconscious, sexuality, disavowal, repression, neurosis, melancholia, the pleasure principle and the death drive. By the end of the course, we will have developed a sense of the uses and limitations of psychoanalysis for understanding pressing global issues such as sexual identification and its formation, racism, neo-fascism, extreme political division, war and nationalism, climate change, and the destruction of democratic ideals. Authors read may include Melanie Klein, Franz Fanon, Jacques Lacan, Julia Kristeva, David Eng, Slavoj Zizek, Henry Stack Sullivan, Kalpana Sheshadri- Crooks and Margaret Mahler. Readings will be complemented with short stories, literary excerpts, film clips, as well as discussion of current political issues.

Western representation of the human body, 1500 to present. Body's appearance as a site and sight for production of social and cultural difference (race, ethnicity, class, gender). Visual arts, literature, music, medical treatises, courtesy literature, erotica. (previously 3458W)

History/theory of 'close reading' (i.e., the most intense encounter between reader and text) exemplified through critical texts. Students perform close readings of various texts.

Historical/critical study of forms of modern sexuality (heterosexuality, homosexuality, romance, erotic domination, lynching). How discourses constitute/regulate sexuality. Scientific/scholarly literature, religious documents, fiction, personal narratives, films, advertisements.

Historical/critical study of forms of modern sexuality (heterosexuality, homosexuality, romance, erotic domination, lynching). How discourses constitute/regulate sexuality. Scientific/scholarly literature, religious documents, fiction, personal narratives, films, advertisements.