MDST401-1 (Schedule # 11751)
University of Virginia
Spring 2005
M 1:00pm-3:30pm (Clemons 322A)
Mr. David Golumbia
Office: 304B Bryan
Spring 2005 Office Hours: Tues 2-5 & by appt

Fourth-Year Seminar

Our reading this year will be largely derived from core texts in cultural studies of media, with special attention to the class bases of cultural production and consumption, as well as the role of the cultural and personal imagination, gender and racial representations, and the relationship between popular and elite or "high" culture. We will look in particular at formations of subjectivity, and for the last third of the class will read closely some poststructuralists, including Baudrillard, Deleuze and Guattari, Foucault, and Virilio. Students will summarize each reading as we move through discussion. Written requirements for the class include two 4-5pp. response papers and a final 13-15pp. paper. In addition, before spring break groups will prepare 15-minute presentations on media objects chosen from different genres (tv, film, radio, and several others) that reflect on the questions raised by the reading, and after spring break we will spend the second half of each class listening and responding to these presentations as a group.

Required texts (available at UVa Bookstore)

• Jean Baudrillard, Simulations
• Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, Nomadology: The War Machine
• Michel Foucault, Power (indicated in syllabus below as P)
• John Storey, ed., Cultural Theory and Popular Culture (indicated in syllabus below as CT)
• Paul Virilio and Sylvere Lotringer, Pure War

Recommended texts (available at UVa Bookstore)

• Gilles Deleuze, Francis Bacon: The Logic of Sensation
• Michel Foucault, Fearless Speech

Texts on toolkit

• Judith Butler, "Imitation and Gender Insubordination"
• Louis Althusser, "Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses: Notes toward an Investigation"
• Gilles Deleuze, Francis Bacon: The Logic of Sensation (excerpts on toolkit)

Evaluation

Evaluation will be largely based on written exercises as follows:

• 4-5pp. response papers (2): 20% each (total 40%)
• Final 13-15pp. paper 40%
• Participation, including all in-class work, your attendance and participation in discussion and in solo and group projects: 20%

Week-by-Week Syllabus

Mon Jan 24. Class 1. Introduction: Theory of Culture

• Raymond Williams, "The Analysis of Culture" (CT)
• Stuart Hall and Paddy Whannel, "The Young Audience" (CT)
• E. P. Thompson, "Preface to The Making of the English Working Class" (CT)

Mon Jan 31. Class 2. Cultural Reception

• Richard Hoggart, "The Full Rich Life and the Newer Mass Art" (CT)
• Matthew Arnold, "Culture and Anarchy" (CT)
• F. R. Leavis, "Mass Civilization and Minority Culture" (CT)
• Dwight Macdonald, "A Theory of Mass Culture" (CT)

Mon Feb 7. Class 3. Cultural Form

• Roland Barthes, "Myth Today" (CT)
• Will Wright, "The Structure of Myth and the Structure of the Western" (CT)
• Pierre Macherey, "Jules Verne: The Faulty Narrative" (CT)
• Mikhail Bakhtin, "Carnival and Carnivalesque" (CT)
• Response paper 1 due before class

Mon Feb 14. Class 4. The Subject in/of Culture

• Sigmund Freud, "The Dream-Work" (CT)
• Louis Althusser, "Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses: Notes toward an Investigation" (CT; complete version on toolkit)
• Michel Foucault, "Method" (CT)
• Chris Weedon, "Feminism and the Principles of Poststructuralism" (CT)
• Judith Butler, "Imitation and Gender Insubordination" (toolkit)

Mon Feb 21. Class 5. Class and Culture

• Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, "Ruling Class and Ruling Ideas" (CT)
• Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, "Base and Superstructure" (CT)
• Frderick Engels, "Letter to Joseph Bloch" (CT)
• Theodor W. Adorno, "On Popular Music" (CT)
• Antonio Gramsci, "Hegemony, Intellectuals, and the State" (CT)

Mon Feb 28. Class 6. Class Distinctions

• Tony Bennett, "Popular Culture and the 'turn to Gramsci'" (CT)
• Pierre Boudieu, "Distinction and the Aristocracy of Culture" (CT)
• Stuart Hall, "Notes on Deconstructing 'the Popular'" (CT)
• Terry Lovell, "Cultural Production" (CT)
• John Fiske, "The Popular Economy" (CT)
• Response paper 2 due before class

Mon Mar 7. No class. Reading period.

Mon Mar 14. Class 7. Gender and Cultural Form

• Ian Ang, "Dallas and the Ideology of Mass Culture" (CT)
• Lana F. Rakow, "Feminist Approaches to Popular Culture" (CT)
• Yvonne Tasker, "Feminist Crime Writing: The Politics of Genre" (CT)
• Morag Shiach, "Feminism and Popular Culture" (CT)
• Ian Ang, "Feminist Desire and Female Pleasure" (CT)
• Meaghan Morris, "Feminism, Reading, Postmodernism" (CT)
• Group media presentation 1

Mon Mar 21. Class 8. Races in/and Modernity

• Barbara Creed, "From Here to Modernity: Feminism and Postmodernism" (CT)
• Paul Gilroy, "'Get Up, Get Into It, Get Involved': Soul, Civil Rights, and Black Power" (CT)
• Cornel West, "Black Postmodern Practices" (CT)
• bell hooks, "Postmodern Blackness" (CT)
• Dick Hebdige, "Postmodernism and 'the Other Side'" (CT)
• Group media presentation 2

Mon Mar 28. Class 9. Power 1

• Foucault, "Preface to Anti-Oedipus" (P)
• Foucault, "Truth and Power" (P)
• Foucault, "Questions of Method" (P)
• Foucault, "Interview with Michel Foucault" (P)
• Foucault, "The Subject and Power" (P)
• Group media presentation 3

Mon Apr 4. Class 10. Power 2

• Foucault, "Governmentality" (P)
• Foucault, "Space, Knowledge, and Power" (P)
• Foucault, "The Risks of Security" (P)
• Foucault, "The Political Technology of Individuals" (P)
• Foucault, "Letter to Certain Leaders of the Left" (P)
• Foucault, "So Is It Important to Think?" (P)
• Foucault, "The Moral and Social Experience of the Poles..." (P)
• Foucault, "Confronting Governments: Human Rights" (P)
• Group media presentation 4

Mon Apr 11. Class 11. Simulacra

• Baudrillard, Simulations
• Group media presentation 5

Mon Apr 18. Class 12. War and Representation 1

• Deleuze and Guattari, Nomadology
• Group media presentation 6

Mon Apr 25. Class 13. War and Representation 2

• Virilio and Lotringer, Pure War
• Group media presentation 7

Mon May 2. Class 14. Summary and Final Discussion

• Deleuze, Francis Bacon (excerpts on toolkit)
• Final papers due at beginning of class. No late papers or extensions will be accepted.

Last updated January 23, 2005 .