HU Credits: 4

Degree/Cycle: 2nd degree (Master)

Responsible Department: program in cultural studies

Semester: Yearly

Teaching Languages: hebrew

Campus: Mt. Scopus

Course/Module Coordinator: Dr. Carola Hilfrich

Coordinator Email: hilfrich@mscc.huji.ac.il

Coordinator Office Hours: Semester 1, Tuesday, 14.30-15.30
Semester 2, Wednesday, 13.00-14.00

Teaching Staff:
Dr. Carola Hilfrich

Course/Module description:
In this seminar we study traditional critical theories which understand "culture" in terms of domination/resistance and commodification/ 'authenticity' as well as advanced or more recent approaches which claim a complex texture of innovation, creativity, and restructured power relations. The seminar enables you to discern the implications of different ways to criticize and theorize "culture" for the analysis of specific cultural situations. Special attention is given to studies of the colonial situation and of everyday life and how these studies rework traditional notions of cultural critique/criticism and theory-making.

Course/Module aims:
Enable students to apply critical thought to cultural analysis

Learning outcomes - On successful completion of this module, students should be able to:
• Combine various paradigms of critical thought
• Critically analyze specific cultural practices, objects, or institutions
• Discuss possibilities and limitations of cultural theory
• Adapt theoretical concepts to specific situations or locations of culture
• Question the relations of cultural theory and praxis/practice

Attendance requirements(%):
100 %

Teaching arrangement and method of instruction: Lectures, debate, close reading, written responses, class presentations, final paper

Course/Module Content:
1/ Opening: Theory, Critique, Culture
2/ Stuart Hall, “Cultural Studies and its Theoretical Legacies,” in: Cultural Studies, ed. by L. Grossberg, C. Nelson, P. Treichler. London:Routledge 1992: 277-294
[http://cultstud.blogspot.com/2007/09/stuart-hall-cultural-studies-and-its.html
3/ Karl Marx, Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, Henry Lefebvre, Marxism (excerpts)
4/ Marx, "Alienated Labor"
5/ Marx, ''The Mystery of the Fetishistic Character of Commodities," Capital, William Pietz, "The Problem of the Fetish I, II," Res 9, Spring 85: 5-17, and Res 13, Spring 87: 23-46
6/ Movie Screening, Jane Campion, "The Piano" (1993)
Discussion
7/ Discussion
8/ Catharine A. MacKinnon,”Feminism, Marxism, Method and the State: An Agenda for Theory” Signs 7,3 (1982):514-544; “Towards Feminist Jurisprudence,”Signs 8, 4 (1983): 635-658
9/ Sigmund Freud, "Mass Psychology and the Analysis of the I"
10/ Theodor W.Adorno and Max Horkheimer, The Culture Indusry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception," Dialectic of Enlightenment
11/ Janice Radway, “Mail-Order Culture and Its Critics: The Book-of-the-Month Club, Commodification and Consumption, and the Problem of Cultural Authority,” in: Cultural Studies, ed. by L.Grossberg, C.Nelson, P.Treichler. London:Routledge 1992: 512-530 4.1.2012
12/ Raymond Williams, ”Structures of Feeling,” in: Marxism and Literature. Oxford & New York: Oxford University Press 1977: 128-135, “Bertolt Brecht,” in: Drama from Ibsen to Brecht. London: Chatto & Windus 1968: 316-332
13/ continuation
14/ Joan W. Scott, “The Evidence of Experience,” Critical Inquiry Vol 17, No 4, Summer 1991: 773-797
----------------------------------
15/ Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks
16/ Continuation
17/ Homi Bhabha, “Remembering Fanon. Self, Psyche and the Colonial Condition,” (&eq; Foreword to Black Skin, White Masks, pp. vii-xxv
18/ Jean Rhys, Wide Sargasso Sea, London: Deutsch 1966 (excerpts), Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, “Three Women’s Texts and a Critique of Imperialism,” Critical Inquiry Vol 12, No 1, Autumn 1985: 243-261
19/ Movie Screening, Katja Esson, Ferry Tales (2003)
20/ Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life, Berkeley: University of California Press 1984, xi-60
21/ Meaghan Morris, “Things to do With Shopping Centres (1988),” in: Simon During (ed.), The Cultural Studies Reader,, 2nd edition, London and New York: Routledge 1999: 391-408, Marianne Conroy, “Discount Dreams: Factory Outlet Malls, Consumption, and the Performance of Middle Class Identity,” in: Social Text, No. 54, Spring 1998: 63-83
22/ James C. Scott, “Normal Exploitation, Normal Resistance,” in: Weapons of the Weak. Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance, New Haven: Yale UP1985: 28-47
23/ John Fiske, “Cultural Studies and the Study of Everyday Life,” in: Cultural Studies, ed. by L.Grossberg, C.Nelson, P.Treichler. London:Routledge 1992: 154-173
24/ Laurie Langbauer, “Cultural Studies and the Politics of the Everyday,” in: Diacritics, Vol 22, 1992 (spring), no. 1: 47-65
25/ Janice Radway, “The Readers and Their Romances,” from: Reading the Romance: Women, Patriarchy and Popular Literature, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press 1984 (repr. in Feminisms. An Anthology of Literary Theory and Criticism. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press 1997): 574-608
26/ Discussion
27/ Presentation of individual projects
28/ Final discussion

Required Reading:

Stuart Hall, “Cultural Studies and its Theoretical Legacies,” in: Cultural Studies, ed. by L. Grossberg, C. Nelson, P. Treichler. London:Routledge 1992: 277-294
[http://cultstud.blogspot.com/2007/09/stuart-hall-cultural-studies-and-its.html
Karl Marx, Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, Henry Lefebvre, Marxism (excerpts)
Marx, "Alienated Labor"
Marx, ''The Mystery of the Fetishistic Character of Commodities," Capital, William Pietz, "The Problem of the Fetish I, II," Res 9, Spring 85: 5-17, and Res 13, Spring 87: 23-46
Catharine A. MacKinnon,”Feminism, Marxism, Method and the State: An Agenda for Theory” Signs 7,3 (1982):514-544; “Towards Feminist Jurisprudence,”Signs 8, 4 (1983): 635-658
Sigmund Freud, "Mass Psychology and the Analysis of the I"
Theodor W.Adorno and Max Horkheimer, The Culture Indusry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception," Dialectic of Enlightenment
Janice Radway, “Mail-Order Culture and Its Critics: The Book-of-the-Month Club, Commodification and Consumption, and the Problem of Cultural Authority,” in: Cultural Studies, ed. by L.Grossberg, C.Nelson, P.Treichler. London:Routledge 1992: 512-530 4.1.2012
Raymond Williams, ”Structures of Feeling,” in: Marxism and Literature. Oxford & New York: Oxford University Press 1977: 128-135, “Bertolt Brecht,” in: Drama from Ibsen to Brecht. London: Chatto & Windus 1968: 316-323
Joan W. Scott, “The Evidence of Experience,” Critical Inquiry Vol 17, No 4, Summer 1991: 773-797
Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks
Homi Bhabha, “Remembering Fanon. Self, Psyche and the Colonial Condition,” (&eq; Foreword to Black Skin, White Masks, pp. vii-xxv
18/ Jean Rhys, Wide Sargasso Sea, London: Deutsch 1966 (excerpts), Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, “Three Women’s Texts and a Critique of Imperialism,” Critical Inquiry Vol 12, No 1, Autumn 1985: 243-261
Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life, Berkeley: University of California Press 1984, xi-60
Meaghan Morris, “Things to do With Shopping Centres (1988),” in: Simon During (ed.), The Cultural Studies Reader,, 2nd edition, London and New York: Routledge 1999: 391-408, Marianne Conroy, “Discount Dreams: Factory Outlet Malls, Consumption, and the Performance of Middle Class Identity,” in: Social Text, No. 54, Spring 1998: 63-83
James C. Scott, “Normal Exploitation, Normal Resistance,” in: Weapons of the Weak. Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance, New Haven: Yale UP1985: 28-47
John Fiske, “Cultural Studies and the Study of Everyday Life,” in: Cultural Studies, ed. by L.Grossberg, C.Nelson, P.Treichler. London:Routledge 1992: 154-173
Laurie Langbauer, “Cultural Studies and the Politics of the Everyday,” in: Diacritics, Vol 22, 1992 (spring), no. 1: 47-65
Janice Radway, “The Readers and Their Romances,” from: Reading the Romance: Women, Patriarchy and Popular Literature, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press 1984 (repr. in Feminisms. An Anthology of Literary Theory and Criticism. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press 1997): 574-608

Additional Reading Material:
Bhabha, Homi, “The Commitment to Theory,” Locations of Culture, London and New York: Routledge 1994, 19-39
Douglas, Mary, How Institutions Think. London: Routledge and K.Paul 1987
פנון, עור שחור, מסכות לבנות, (תרגום: תמר קפלנסקי), ת"א: ספרית מעריב, 2004
Godzich, Wlad,” Foreword: ‘The Tiger on the Paper Mat.’” In Paul de Man: The Resistance to Theory. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press 1986, ix-xviii
Gramsci, Antonio, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, edited and translated by Q. Hoare and G.N. Smith, New York: International Publishers 1971
גרמשי, אנטוניו, על ההגמוניה. מבחר מתוך "מחברות הכלא",תל אביב: רסלינג 2005
Hall, Stuart (Ed.), Culture, Media, Language: Working Papers in Cultural Studies, 1972-79, London: Hutchinson and CCCS 1981
Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, Duke University Press 1991
Nelson, Cary and Dilip Parameshwar Gaonkar, Disciplinarity and Dissent in Cultural Studies, New York: Routledge 1996
Turner, Graeme, British Cultural Studies, London and New York: Routledge1996
Williams, Raymond, The Long Revolution: An Analysis of the Democratic, Industrial, and Cultural Changes Transforming Our Society, New York: Columbia University Press 1961
--------”Conclusion,” Culture and Society 1780-1950, London: Chatto and Windus, 1967: 295-338 [Moodle]
---------- Keywords. A Vocabulary of Culture and Society, Oxford University Press 1985

From The Point of Theory. Practices of Cultural Analysis, edited by M. Bal and I. E. Boer, New York: Continuum 1994:
1. Jonathan Culler, Introduction: “What’s the point?” 13–17
2. Marianne Hirsch, “Masking the Subject: Practicing Theory,” 109-124

From Culture / Power / History, edited by N.B.Dirks, G.Eley, S.B.Ortner. Princeton: Princeton University Press 1994:
1. Linda Alcoff, “Cultural Feminism versus Post-Structuralism: The Identity Crisis in Feminist Theory,” 96 – 122
2. Pierre Bourdieu, “Structures, Habitus, Power: Basis for a Theory of Symbolic Power,”
155-199
3. Stuart Hall, “Cultural Studies: Two Paradigms,” 520-538

Course/Module evaluation:
End of year written/oral examination 80 %
Presentation 20 %
Participation in Tutorials 0 %
Project work 0 %
Assignments 0 %
Reports 0 %
Research project 0 %
Quizzes 0 %
Other 0 %

Additional information:
none