Undergraduate Course: Introducing Cultural Studies (Credit Plus) (LLLG07067)
Course Outline
| School | School of Literatures, Languages and Cultures |
College | College of Humanities and Social Science |
| Credit level (Normal year taken) | SCQF Level 7 (Year 1 Undergraduate) |
| Course type | Sandwich |
Availability | Not available to visiting students |
| SCQF Credits | 10 |
ECTS Credits | 5 |
| Summary | This course is for HSS International Foundation Programme students only; it is not available to undergraduate students.
Introducing Cultural Studies is designed to encourage critical thinking and to help students develop the analytical skills required to interpret and critically assess texts, images and objects across diverse media. The course will introduce key ideas and theories in the field of cultural studies, and the knowledge and skills developed will be transferable to a broad range of disciplinary contexts.
The course is based on the existing Open Studies 'credit plus' model, which combines academic content and study skills elements, helping students develop the academic skills required for successful undergraduate study in the humanities. |
| Course description |
There will be three 1.5 hour sessions per week, over 11 weeks. Each session will deal with a specific topic and will combine short lectures (with audio/visual materials), group tasks, and discussion. The first five weeks focus on key arguments and explicitly develop critical skills, in order to model good practice in close reading and analysis. Thereafter, study skills (analysis, argumentation, critical reading, etc.) will be embedded. The course material will be made available through Learn and links to external online sources will be given. Students will be expected to undertake reading/ viewing in preparation for classes.
1. Introduction
a. What is Cultural Studies?
b. The Object of Cultural Studies
c. Culture and Everyday Life
2. Reading Texts, Images and Objects
a. What are the differences between texts, images and objects?
b. Semiotics: Signs and their Role
c. Analysis 1: Advertising
3. High and Low
a. Culture, Tradition and the Role of Institutions
b. Taste and Distinction
c. Analysis 2: Art by Yasmin Reza
4. The Culture Industry
a. Mass Culture: Propaganda and Kitsch
b. Aestheticising Everyday Life
c. Analysis 3: Newspapers, Montage and Film
5. Counter Cultures
a. Avant-gardes and cultural resistance
b. Approaches to analysis 3: The Spectacle and the Gaze
c. Analysis 4: Public Events: The Olympics
a. Practice Unseen and Essay Planning Workshop
6 & 7: Digital Culture
b. The Internet and New Media
c Technology and the Body
a. Virtual identities and Social media
b. Gaming and Digital Ethics
c. Feedback and Essay Planning Session
8 & 9: Film, Music and Fashion
a. Gender and the gaze
b. Hollywood and Independent Films
c. Fan Culture
a. Fashion, Music and Rebellion
b. Fashion and Identity
c. Posters 1-6
a. Posters 7-12
10 & 11: Spaces, Places and Movement
b. Globalism and Post-Colonialism
c. Multiculturalism
a. Tourism and Travel
b. Pseudo-Spaces: Airports and Hotels
c. Unseen Assessment and Essay Guidance
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Entry Requirements (not applicable to Visiting Students)
| Pre-requisites |
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Co-requisites | |
| Prohibited Combinations | |
Other requirements | None |
Course Delivery Information
| Not being delivered |
Learning Outcomes
On completion of this course, the student will be able to:
- Identify and understand some of the central issues in cultural studies;
- Demonstrate their understanding both orally and in writing;
- Employ critical skills of interpretation, argument and analysis;
- Define a research question;
- Undertake further study in the humanities and engage confidently with a range of media and learning technologies.
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Reading List
Essential:
Bennett, Andy 2005. Culture and Everyday Life. London: Sage.
Recommended:
Adorno, T. W., 2001.The Culture Industry: Selected Essays on Mass Culture. London: Routledge.
Barthes, Roland 1972. Mythologies. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
Benjamin, Walter 2008. The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility, and Other Writings on Media. Ed. Michael Jennings, Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press.
Bennet, T. et al eds., 2005. New Keywords: A Revised Vocabulary of Culture and Society. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.
Bordieu, Pierre 1984. Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste. Cambridge MA: Harvard UP.
During, Simon ed., 1999. The Cultural Studies Reader. 2nd ed. London: Routledge.
Debord, Guy 2000. The Society of the Spectacle. Detroit: Black and Red.
Foucault, Michel 1995. Discipline & Punish: The Birth of the Prison. London: Vintage.
Jameson, Fredric 1990. Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. Durham: Duke University Press.
Mulvey, Laura 2009. Visual and Other Pleasures. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Turkle, Sherry 2012. Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other. New York: Basic Books.
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Additional Information
| Graduate Attributes and Skills |
The critical skills learnt through cultural analysis can be applied across the range of academic disciplines and beyond. In addition, the students will engage with a variety of learning technologies and develop their confidence in academic writing. |
| Special Arrangements |
Students must only be enrolled by the Office of Lifelong Learning |
| Keywords | Not entered |
Contacts
| Course organiser | Mrs Anthea Coleman-Chan
Tel: (0131 6)51 1589
Email: Anthea.Coleman-Chan@ed.ac.uk |
Course secretary | Mrs Diane Mcmillan
Tel: (0131 6)50 6912
Email: D.McMillan@ed.ac.uk |
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