Comm/EPS 475-G  McCarthy
Proseminar in Cultural Studies and Critical Interpretation      3-4:50
MW, 336 Gregory Hall

This course will offer students the opportunity to become familiar with the history, applications and limitations of several theoretical and methodological approaches to the study of contemporary culture and popular media that have been developed in the emergent research field known as cultural studies. It is intended to provide students with analytical frameworks for understanding contemporary cultural life. Debates and issues within cultural studies and debates between cultural studies and other schools of thought will serve as the organizing agenda for exploring the relationships between culture, experience and unequal social relations of gender, race, class, nation, and sexuality; youth cultures, resistance through rituals; popular culture, power and public policy; cultural imperialism and center-periphery relations; poststructuralism and its implications for the study of culture; and the impact of cultural studies across the disciplines. This course is interdisciplinary and should be of interest to students with backgrounds in several different areas, including a) research methods that combine textual analysis of contemporary popular media and culture with sociological analysis; b) theoretical encounters and bridges between continental thought and American traditions; c) feminist theory, poststructuralism, semiotics, cultural geography, psychoanalysis, queer theory, marxist political economy analysis, postcolonialism and critical race theory; and d) the application of literary and rhetorical theories to the media and popular culture. The pro-seminar will meet twice per week (for approximately 2 hours per session).