Week 3 Tuesday, January 31 Communication and Culture
Textbook: Fiske, J., Introduction, “What Is Communication”; Chapter 1, “Communication Theory”
Reader: Sardar, Z. “What Is Culture?” in Introducing Cultural Studies, (New York: Totem Books, 1997) pp. 4-5.
Geertz, C., “Thick Description: Towards an Interpretive Theory of Culture,” in Interpretation of Culture, (New York: Basic Books, 1973) pp. 3-7.
Hall, E., “Context and Meaning,” in Beyond Culture, (New York: Anchor Book, 1976) pp. 74-90. Thursday, February 2 The Korean Language
Reader: Korean Overseas Information Service, “People and Language,” in A Handbook of Korea, (Seoul: KOSI, 1993.) pp. 45-52.
Connor, M., “Korean Language, Food, and Etiquette,” in The Koreas, (Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO, 2002), pp. 241-246
Lee, J. W. “How We Got Wired,” Time, Dec. 11, 2000.

Week 4 Tuesday, February 7 Korean Music (Guest Lecturer: Anderson Sutton, Professor of Ethnomusicology)
Reader: Lee, B. “Concept and Aesthetics in Traditional Music,” pp. 28-35.
Han, M. “What Makes Korean Music Different?” pp. 36-41. Howard, K., “Exploding Ballads: The Transformation of Korean Pop Music,” pp. 80-95.
KOTRA, “BoA Is Big,” Invest Korea Journal, January/ February 2004. Audio-visual Materials: Music files at Learn@UW. Thursday, February 9 Television as Culture
Textbook: Fiske, J., Chapter 3, “Communication, Meaning, and Signs” pp. 39-62.
Reader: Fiske, J. “Chapter 1: Some Television, Some Topics, and Some Terminology,” in Television Culture, (London and New York: Routledge, 1987), pp. 1-20. Hua, V., “South Korea Soap Operas Find Large Audiences,” San Francisco Chronicle, August 28, 2005.
Lee, D., “Why Is Winter Sonata a Big Hit in Asia?” Koreanfilm.org, Sept. 10, 2003.
Veneto, A., “World Peace via Korean Soap Operas,” Smart TV, Vol. 1, Issue 7, June 27, 2005.
Wan, F. W. “Palace Malice,” eCentral, Oct. 23, 2005.

Presentation I: Music

Week 5 Tuesday, February 14 Historical Background
Textbook: Cumings, B., Chapter 1, “The Virtues,” pp. 26-85.
Reader: Murphey, R., Chapter 8, “Early, Classical, and Medieval Japan and Korea” in East Asia: A New History, pp. 171-174.; Chapter 18, “Korea and Southeast Asia in the Modern World,” pp. 404-412.
Paquet, D., “History of Korean Film,” Koreanfilm.org, Feb. 17, 2005.
Lee, H, Chapter 1, “The Creation of National Identity,” in Contemporary Koran Cinema: Identity Culture Politics, (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000) pp. 45-63.
Thursday, February 16 Film as Social Practice
Textbook: Fiske, J., Chapter 6 “Semiotic Methods and Applications,” pp. 101-114.
Reader: Turner, G. “Film Languages,” Film as Social Practice, (London and New York: Routledge, 1998) pp. 44-66.
Leong, A., “Introduction”; Chapter 1-3, Korean Cinema: The New Hong Kong, (Victoria, B.C.: Trafford, 2002) pp. 1-2; pp. 5-21 Park, S., “Coming to a Theater Near You?; South Korean Movie Exports Mark Shift Away From Manufacturing,” Wall Street Journal, Oct. 31, 2003.
Russell, M., “The Rebirth of Korean Film Movies,” International Herald Tribune, March 5, 2004. Sneider, D. “Korean Films Shed New Light on Culture; Once-Taboo Subjects Examined on Screen,” Mercury News, March 29, 2005.
Ross, J. “Confessions of a Nipponophile,” Guardian, January 6, 2006.
Flinn, J., “Korea’s Answer to M*A*S*H?,” Asia Pacific Arts, Oct. 6, 2005.
Paquet, D., “Genre Blending in Contemporary Korean Cinema,” Journal of the Asian Arts Society of Australia, Vol. 9, No. 1, March 2000.

Presentation II: Television

Week 6 Tuesday, February 21 Modernity, Nationalism, and Technology Craze
Textbook: Cumings, B., Chapter 2, “The Interests, 1860-1904.”
Reader: Forsberg, B., “The Future Is South Korea,” San Francisco Chronicle, March 13, 2005. Lews, P., “Broadband Wonderland,” Fortune, September 20, 2004.
L. B., “Wired, at Any Price,” Newsweek, Nov. 14, 2005.
Shameen, A., “Korea’s Broadband Revolution,” April 2004, Chief Executive, Vol. 197.
Borland, J. and Kanellos, M., “South Korea Leads the Way,” CNet News, July 28, 2004.
Moon, I., “Honing Its Digital Game,” BusinessWeek, July 18, 2005.
Kerton, D., “Korea Gets Wibro,” TechDirt, Jan. 21, 2005.
Thursday, February 23 Internet Culture
Reader: MacKay, H. “Chapter 2: The Globalization of Culture?” in David Held (2000) A Globalizing World?: Culture Economics, Politics, pp. 79-80.
Kirk, J., “Online Social Network Scores Hit in South Korea,” Industry Standard, May 20, 2005.
“E-Society: My World Is Cyworld,” BusinessWeek, Sept. 26, 2005. Evans, J., “Koreans Find Secret Cybersauce,” Wired, Aug. 8, 2005.
Cameron, D., “Koreans Cybertrip to A Tailor-Made World,” Age, May 9, 2005.
Krim, J., “Subway Fracas Escalates Into Test Of the Internet’s Power to Shame,” Washington Post, July 2005. “A Small Guide to Korean Smileys”
Pollack, A., Happy in the East (--) or Smiling :-) in the West,” New York Times, August 12, 1996.
Layne, A., “Wipe That Smile off Your Face”; “He Seconds That Emotion” April, 2001, FastCompany.

Presentation III: Film

Week 7 Tuesday, February 28 Civil Society
Textbook: Cumings, B., Chapter 7, “The Democratic Movement”
Reader: Armstrong, C. (2002) “Civil Society in Contemporary Korea,” in Charles K. Armstrong (ed.) Korean Society, London and New York: Routledge. pp. 1-10.
Cumings, B. (2002) “Civil Society in West and East,” in Charles K. Armstrong (ed.) Korean Society, London and New York: Routledge. pp. 11-35.
Putnam, R., “Bowling Alone” Journal of Democracy 6:1, Jan. 1995.
Kim, D. J., “Is Culture Destiny?,” Foreign Affairs, November/ December 1994.
“South Korea Coffee Market Comes of Age,” Beverage Daily, July 22, 2004.
Thursday, March 2 Manhua, Manhwa and Manga
Textbook: Fiske, J., Chapter 9 “Ideology and Meanings,” pp. 164-190.
Reader: Hart, C., Manhwa Mania: How to Draw Korean Comics, (New York: Watson-Guptill Publications, 2004) pp. 8-13. Chin, V., “Through the Looking Glass,” Asia Pacific Arts, Oct. 6, 2005.
Korea Society, “Korean Comics: A Society Through Small Frames.”
Cha, K., “Literary Manhwa from Korea,” Publishers Weekly, Nov. 15, 2005.
Onishi, N., “Ugly Images of Asian Rivals Become Best Sellers in Japan,” Nov. 19, 2005.
Vallas, M., “The Korean Animation Explosion,” Animation World, Issue 2.6., Sept. 1997.

Presentation IV: Internet Culture

Week 8 Tuesday, March 7 Citizen Journalism
Reader: Kahney, L., “Citizen Reporters Make the News,” Wired, May 17, 2003.
“Hacks of All Trades,” Guardian, July 22, 2004.
Hua, V., “Korean Online Newspaper Enlists Army of ‘Citizen Reporters’,” San Francisco Chronicle, Sept. 18, 2005. Schroeder, C., “Is This the Future of Journalism?,” Newsweek, June 18, 2004.
Borton, J., “OhmyNews and “Wired Red Devils,” Asia Times, Nov. 25, 2004.
Cheon, Y., “Internet Newspapers as Alternative Media,” January 1, 2004.
Clark, T., “Citizen Reporters Sound Off Against Traditional Media,” Sept. 12, 2003; “New Online Daily Gives Readers a Fresh Take on the News,” May 1, 2003, Japan Media Review.
Rheingold, H., “From the Screen to the Street,” In These Times, Oct. 28, 2003.
Gillmor, D., “Professional Journalists Join the Conversation,” in We the Media, (Sebastopol, CA: O’Reilly Media, 2004).

Week 10 Tuesday, March 21 PC Bang and Online Game
Reader: Hertz, J., “The Bandwidth Capital of the World,” Wired, Issue 10.08, August 2002.
Bub, A., “Lineage II: The Chaotic Chronicle,” Yahoo!, May 25, 2004.
Varney, A., “Gamer Nation,” Escapist, July 26, 2005.
Macintyre, D., “Online Gaming,” Time, Dec. 11, 2000.
Leavander, M., “Where Does Fantasy End?”; “In a Different World”; “I Thought It Was the End of My Life,” Time, June 4, 2001.
Cho, K., “Samsung, SK Telecom, Shinhan Sponsor South Korean Alien Killers,” Bloomberg, January 15, 2006.
Shameen, A., “Starting with a Baang,” Asiaweek, Sept. 1, 2000.

Presentation V: Comics and Animations
Thursday, March 23 Performing Arts (Traditional) (Guest Lecturer: Peggy Choy, Dancer/ Choreographer)
Reader: Heyman, A., and Nahm, A., “Traditional Music and Dance,” John Koo and Andrew Nahm (eds.) An Introduction to Korean Culture, (New Jersey: Hollym, 1997) pp. 346-355.
Chung, B., “An Overview of Traditional Dance,” in Korean Cultural Heritage: Performing Arts, (Seoul: Korea Foundation, 1997) pp. 136-156.

Week 11 Tuesday, March 28 Performing Arts (Modern) (Guest Lecturer: Joohee Park, PhD student in Theatre and Drama) Reader:Yoo, M., “Theaters and the Development of Modern Drama,” in Korean Cultural Heritage: Performing Arts, (Seoul: Korea Foundation, 1997) pp. 206-215.
Thursday, March 30 Korean Cinema Revisited (Guest Lecturer: Yung Bin Kwak: Program Director of Korean Film Festival, University of Iowa)
Reader: Gateward, F. “Youth in Crisis: National and Cultural Identity in New South Korean Cinema” in Jenny Kwok Wah Lau (ed.) Multiple Modernities: Cinema and Popular Media in Transcultural East Asia, (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2003) pp. 114-127.

Week 12 Tuesday, April 4 Industrialization
Textbook: Cumings, B., Chapter 6, “Korean Sun Rising: Industrialization.”
Rose, F., “Seoul Machine,” Wired, Issue 13.05, May 2005.
Kwak, H. “Discourse on Modernization in 1990s Korean Cinema” in Jenny Kwok Wah Lau (ed.) Multiple Modernities: Cinema and Popular Media in Transcultural East Asia (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2003) pp. 90-113.

Presentation VI: Online Game Thursday, April 6 Korean Art
Reader: “Korean Painting and Calligraphy” Lee, J. “Painting,” pp. 313-322;
Rhie, M. “Stone Pagodas and Buddha Images,” pp. 360-369;
Chun, B., “Architecture and House Furniture,” pp. 378-384;
Kim, K., “Traditional Ceramic,” in John Koo and Andrew Nahm (eds.) An Introduction to Korean Culture, (New Jersey: Hollym, 1997) pp. 387-398.

Week 13 Tuesday, April 11 North Korean Culture
Textbook: Cumings, B., Chapter 8, “Nation of the Sun King”
Reader: Lee, H, Chapter 1, “The Creation of National Identity,” in Contemporary Koran Cinema: Identity Culture Politics, (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000) pp. 16-44.
Ceuster, K., “Art from North Korea” “The Art of Propaganda: Nationalistic Themes in the Art of North Korea”

Presentation VII: Art
Thursday, April 13 (Passover) Korean Thought and Beliefs
Textbook: Fiske, J., Chapter 7, “Structural Theory and Applications,” pp. 115-134.
Reader: Connor, M., “Contemporary Culture and Social Problems,” in The Koreas, (Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO, 2002), pp. 163-199.
Han, S., “The Faithful Daughter Shim Chong”; “The Queen Swallow’s Gift”; “For the Love of Honey,” in Korean Folk and Fairy Tales, (Seoul: Hollym, 1991).

Week 14 Tuesday, April 18 Korean Literature
Textbook: Fiske, J., Chapter 5 “Signification,” pp. 85-100.
Reader: McCann, D., “Modern Poetry and Literature,” in John Koo and Andrew Nahm (eds.) An Introduction to Korean Culture, (New Jersey: Hollym, 1997) pp. 429-463.
Hwang, S., “Cloudburst,” in J. Martin Holman (eds.) Shadows of a Sound, (San Francisco: Mercury House, 1990)

Presentation VIII: Literature and Folklore
Thursday, April 20 Media, Representation and Reality
Textbook: Fiske, J., Chapter 4 “Codes,” pp. 64-84.
Reader: Fiske, J., “Postmodernism and Television,” in James Curran and Michael Gurevitch (ed.) Mass Media and Society, (London: Edward Arnold, 1993)
Cumings, B., “Introduction,” in War and Television, (London and New York: Verso, 1992)
Said, E., “Orientalism” in Michael Ryan (ed.) Literary Theory: Anthology, (London: Blackwell, 1998) pp. 873-886.

Week 15 Tuesday, April 25 Korean Culture in America
Textbook: Cumings, B., Chapter 9, “America’s Koreans.”
Thursday, April 27 Korean Food and Etiquette
Reader: Connor, M., “Korean Language, Food, and Etiquette,” The Koreas, (Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO, 2002), pp. 246-256

Presentation IX: Koreans in America
Week 16 Tuesday, May 2 Korea’s Future
Textbook: Cumings, Chapter 10, “Korea’s Place in the World,” pp. 456-495

Cross-Cultural Conflict Management—Spring 2006
Syllabus - CACM 21010 - Dr. Jennifer Maxwell

General email: jmaxwell@kent.edu
CACM website: kent.edu/cacm
                   
Please note: The following definitions of, and quotes dealing with conflict, culture, and creativity are all direct quotes taken from the source cited immediately after the quote.
Conflict:
1. “A state of disharmony between incompatible or antithetical persons, ideas, or interests; a clash.”
2. “A psychic struggle, often unconscious, resulting from the opposition or simultaneous functioning of mutually exclusive impulses, desires, or tendencies.” (Psychology)
3. “A state of open, often prolonged fighting; a battle or war.” (.dictionary.com)

Culture:
1. “The integrated pattern of human behavior that includes thought, speech, action, and artifacts and depends upon the human capacity for learning and transmitting knowledge to succeeding generations.”
2. “The totality of socially transmitted behavior patterns, arts, beliefs, institutions, and all other products of human work and thought.”
3. “The customary beliefs, social forms, and material traits of a racial, religious, or social group.”
4. “Intellectual and artistic activity and the works produced by it.”
(.dictionary.com)

"A Baseline Definition of Culture
People learn culture. That, we suggest, is culture's essential feature. Many qualities of human life are transmitted genetically—an infant's desire for food, for example, is triggered by physiological characteristics determined within the human genetic code. An adult's specific desire for milk and cereal in the morning, on the other hand, cannot be explained genetically; rather, it is a learned (cultural) response to morning hunger. Culture, as a body of learned behaviors common to a given human society, acts rather like a template (i.e., it has predictable form and content), shaping behavior and consciousness within a human society from generation to generation. So culture resides in all learned behavior and in some shaping template or consciousness prior to behavior as well (that is, a "cultural template" can be in place prior to the birth of an individual person).

“This primary concept of a shaping template and body of learned behaviors might be further broken down into the following categories, each of which is an important element of cultural systems:
* systems of meaning, of which language is primary
* ways of organizing society, from kinship groups to states and multi-national corporations
* the distinctive techniques of a group and their characteristic products

“Several important principles follow from this definition of culture:

“If the process of learning is an essential characteristic of culture, then teaching also is a crucial characteristic. The way culture is taught and reproduced is itself an important component of culture.

“Because the relationship between what is taught and what is learned is not absolute (some of what is taught is lost, while new discoveries are constantly being made), culture exists in a constant state of change.

“Meaning systems consist of negotiated agreements—members of a human society must agree to relationships between a word, behavior, or other symbol and its corresponding significance or meaning. To the extent that culture consists of systems of meaning, it also consists of negotiated agreements and processes of negotiation.

“Because meaning systems involve relationships which are not essential and universal (the word "door" has no essential connection to the physical object—we simply agree that it shall have that meaning when we speak or write in English), different human societies will inevitably agree upon different relationships and meanings; this a relativistic way of describing culture.”
wsu.edu:8001/vcwsu/commons/topics/culture/culture-definition.html

“If it is true that culture, at least in its more complex and elaborated forms, is a distinctly human characteristic, the question remains: Why? Why is cultural behavior so uniquely important to human beings? How and why did it develop? What is its role in our lives?” (.wsu.edu/gened/learn-modules/ top_longfor/phychar/culture-humans-1one.html)

“How was the creativity of the black woman kept alive, year after year and century after century, when for most of the years black people have been in America, it was a punishable crime for a black person to read or write? And the freedom to paint, to sculpt, to expand the mind with action did not exist.” (Alice Walker, In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens)
(.wsu.edu/gened/learn-modules/ top_culture/culture-definitions/walker.html)

“Part of the debate about culture revolves around issues of perspective and ownership. Within a nation such as the United States—a nation whose cultural heritage includes elements from every corner of the world—there are a great many perspectives coexisting and intertwining in the cultural fabric. When we all ask ourselves as individuals, ‘what belongs to me, to my culture?’ we are rewarded with a spectacular variety of responses; in this way, different perspectives and ownership of different cultural traditions enriches everyone.”
(.wsu.edu/gened/learn-modules/ top_culture/culture-definitions/whose-text.html)

CACM 21010: The Course Itself
During the course of the semester, we will explore the study of culture through two main strands. The first will attempt to answer the question, “what belongs to me, to my culture?” We will do this in a variety of ways, foremost through the use of the book, The Artist’s Way, by Julia Cameron. Used by diverse groups of people from artists to business people, this book offers “the basic principle that creative expression is the natural direction of life, [and] leads the reader through a comprehensive three-month program to recover creativity.”

“Creative expression takes many forms through the arts and language —forms directly shaped by the cultures in which they are created. . . . making art is a fundamental human activity, so that in order to more fully understand any culture one must look at its art.” (.csf.edu/sf/pages/75.html#maps11)

"It is your ability as a creative person to envision positive change that will make a difference." (Patricia Johanson) (.artheals.org/power.html)

“Former Secretary of Defense of the United States, Robert McNamara, commenting on wars of the 20th century, wrote: ‘In retrospect, we can now understand these catastrophes for what they were: essentially the products of a failure of the imagination.’ Seeing Peace was born out of an understanding that this failure of the imagination is the missing link in most institutional responses to conflict and hostility in the world. That without the imagination, without ability to ‘think outside the box,’ without a vision from our creative community, our responses to war and aggression will only institute more wars and aggressions.” (.richardkamler.org/seeingpeace/intro.html)
   
“‘At the deepest level, the creative process and the healing process arise from a single source. When you are an artist, you are a healer; a wordless trust of the same mystery is the foundation of your work and its integrity.’” (Rachel Naomi Remen, MD) (.artheals.org/power.html)

Class participants will be asked to complete The Artist’s Way as we go through the class, starting the third week of classes. The actual “artist’s pages” that you keep will remain private and will be seen only by you, however, you will be asked to comment on the process of keeping the pages as we go through the course. For example, “What are you discovering? Is the process helpful to you? Why, or why not? What is the effect of doing these activities on your understanding of culture, and of conflict? Does your work on The Artist’s Way impact your perceptions of the various perspectives that we will consider throughout the semester (for example, the quotes at the beginning of this syllabus, and additional perspectives that will be presented throughout the course)?”

The second strand of the course looks at culture and the similarities and differences between cultures from a group perspective, rather than an individual one. We will be reading the book by Kevin Avruch, Culture and Conflict Resolution, as well as related readings from internet sources and readings that course participants suggest in the process of presenting their projects on an particular culture or group.

Course Structure
“Students remember only 10 percent of what they read; 20 percent of what they hear; 30 percent, if they see visuals related to what they are hearing; 50 percent, if they watch someone do something while explaining it; but almost 90 percent, if they do the job themselves even if only as a simulation” (Gokhale, 1993).

This course is a “hands-on,” participation-based course that relies heavily on group interaction, discussion, and participation in classroom simulations, exercises, and activities. As discussed earlier in this syllabus, you will be asked to complete activities in The Artist’s Way book, and to write—on a weekly basis—about your reactions to doing these activities. In addition to writing about the process of doing The Artist’s Way activities, you will be asked to include your reactions to the readings and classroom activities in these weekly writing assignments. These weekly writing assignments should be submitted via email, and should be the equivalent of at least a one-page typed paper, as a minimum length (i.e., your writings can be longer if you choose, but they must be at least the equivalent of one-typed page). Please submit them in the body of the email text, and not as an attachment.

Grading for the course is set up in a way to allow you to largely determine what your final grade for the course will look like. In addition to the reaction papers, there will be two tests—a midterm and a final—on materials from the readings and from class presentations. You will also be required to work with a group of students to develop and present on a topic relating to the course. This classroom presentation should contain a mix of elements, for example, participation activities, questions for discussion, cultural arts/ethnic foods, examples of important aspects of the culture, videotapes or music, etc. Each participant in the project should submit a more detailed reaction paper as a part of her or his project describing how the group decided on the approach they chose, what research sources you drew on, any interview notes that you might have gathered in the course of designing your project, etc. (These presentation papers should be about 3 to 5 pages long.) When you submit any reading materials that are to be given to the rest of the class, these materials must be typed and sent to me via computer, in order to meet the needs of all the students in the class, some who rely on various forms of translation, which is significantly easier to accomplish via the computer.

REQUIRED READINGS
The Artist’s Way, Julia Cameron
Culture and Conflict Resolution, Kevin Avruch

Reed College - Sociology of culture syllabus - academic.reed.edu/sociology/faculty/hrycak/culturesyl.htm
Introduction.
Raymond Williams,
Durkheim and Weber on the role of culture

Emile Durkheim, The Elementary Forms of Religious Life (Reserve Main CALL #: GN470 .D813 1995), p. 1-18; definition on p. 44; PLUS: Book II, ch. 1 (pp. 99-126), ch. 6, section I (pp. 190-193), ch. 7, sections 1-V (pp. 207-236) ; ch. 8, section 1 (pp. 242-248)
Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, "Author's Introduction," pp. 13-31, and chapters 1, 2 and 5 (pp. 35-78 and 155-183) (BR115.E3 W4 1958, OR BR115.E3 W4 1998, both on reserve)

Materialist, idealist and sociological approaches to culture

Karl Marx, pp. 147-188 AND pp. 294-298 in The Marx-Engels Reader (HX39.5 A224 1978)
Geertz, "Notes on the Balinese Cockfight" ch. 15 in Interpretation of Cultures (GN315 .G36)

Swidler, Ann. "Culture in Action: Symbols and Strategies." American Sociological Review, Vol. 51, No. 2. (Apr., 1986), pp. 273-286

Further reading:
Peter Berger, The Sacred Canopy (New York, Anchor, 1969), chs. 1 and 2.
Matthew Arnold, "Culture and Anarchy," any edition (three are available in the library)
Chandra Mukerji, Michael Schudson, "Popular Culture, Annual Review of Sociology, Vol. 12. (1986), pp. 47-66.

Culture and working class resistance

Willis, Learning to Labor, ch. 1-4 (HD6276.G7 W54 1981)
Weber, "Types of class struggle," "Status honor," "Guarantees of status stratification" pp. 184-188 in Gerth and Mills (reserve, H33 .W36 1958)
Reading questions (click here) and then search for Week 3

Willis, Learning to Labor, ch. 5-9 (HD6276.G7 W54 1981)
Raymond Williams, "Fractions, dissidents and rebels," pp. 71-74 in The Sociology of Culture (reserve, HM101 .W454 1982)
Raymond Williams, "Hegemony" (hand out)

Week 4
Hegemonic cultures

Strategic action (consumption of culture)

Gerth and Mills, pp. 180-184
Bourdieu, Distinction, chs. 2-3 (recommended: ch. 4) 9/20 Strategic action (production of culture)

Three essays by Milton C. Albrecht:
"The Relationship of Literature and Society," American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 59, No. 5. (Mar., 1954), pp. 425-436.

Does Literature Reflect Common Values? American Sociological Review, Vol. 21, No. 6. (Dec., 1956), pp. 722-729.

Art as an Institution, American Sociological Review, Vol. 33, No. 3. (Jun., 1968), pp. 383-397.

SKIM: Gaye Tuchman, Nina E. Fortin Fame and Misfortune: Edging Women Out of the Great Literary Tradition American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 90, No. 1. (Jul., 1984), pp. 72-96.

The production of culture I
Production as a process

Three essays by Milton C. Albrecht:

"The Relationship of Literature and Society," American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 59, No. 5. (Mar., 1954), pp. 425-436.

Does Literature Reflect Common Values? American Sociological Review, Vol. 21, No. 6. (Dec., 1956), pp. 722-729.

Art as an Institution, American Sociological Review, Vol. 33, No. 3. (Jun., 1968), pp. 383-397.
SKIM: Gaye Tuchman, Nina E. Fortin Fame and Misfortune: Edging Women Out of the Great Literary Tradition American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 90, No. 1. (Jul., 1984), pp. 72-96.

Critical theory

Raymond Williams, chapter 2 in The Sociology of Culture (reserve, HM101 .W454 1982)
Herbert Gans, "The critique of mass culture" (reserve folder)

Recommended: Horkheimer and Adorno, "The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception" pp. 120-167 in Dialectice of Enlightenment (reserve, B3279.H8473 P513 1982) SKIM

Week 6
Production of culture II
Consumption as a process

Sociological approaches

Diana Crane, Production of Culture, ch. 4 "Production of Culture in National Culture Industries" (reserve)
Richard Peterson and David Berger, "Cycles in Symbol Production: The Case of Popular Music" American Sociology Review 40 (1975): 158-173

Paul Hirsch, "Processing Fads and Fashions: An Organization Set Analysis of Culture Industry Systems," American Journal of Sociology 77 (1972): 639-659

Lynn Radway, Reading the Romance: Women, Patriarchy, and Popular Literature (Z1039.W65 R32 1984), Introduction, chs. 2-5 (click here for Radway reading questions)

Culture and community-building

Wendy Griswold, "The Writing on the Mud Wall: Nigerian Novels and the Imaginary Village," American Sociological Review, Vol. 57, No. 6. (Dec., 1992), pp. 709-724.
Wendy Griswold, Recent Moves in the Sociology of Literature Annual Review of Sociology, Vol. 19. (1993), pp. 455-467.
Wendy Griswold, The Fabrication of Meaning: Literary Interpretation in the United States, Great Britain, and the West Indies American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 92, No. 5. (Mar., 1987), pp. 1077-1117.

How culture is collectively produced in a complex society.

Watch excerpts from "Maya Lin [videorecording] : a strong clear vision" (about the conflict over the Vietnam War Memorial)
Wagner-Pacifici, Robin and Barry Schwartz. "The Vietnam Veterans War Memorial: Commemmorating a Difficult Past," American Journal of Sociology Vol. 97, pp. 376-420

Defining national solidarity

News and media

1. Accidental News: The Great Oil Spill as Local Occurrence and National Event,   Harvey Molotch, Marilyn Lester, American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 81, No. 2. (Sep., 1975), pp. 235-260.

2.News as Purposive Behavior: On the Strategic Use of Routine Events, Accidents, and Scandals, Harvey Molotch, Marilyn Lester, American Sociological Review, Vol. 39, No. 1. (Feb., 1974), pp. 101-112.

3. Making News by Doing Work: Routinizing the Unexpected (in Two Articles on Newswork) Gaye Tuchman, American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 79, No. 1. (Jul., 1973), pp. 110-131.

10/25 Consumption of, and demand for, alternative views to the "news"

1. Selections from Dan Berkowitz, Social Meaning of News (reserve)

2. Ethnic Conflict and the Rise and Fall of Ethnic Newspapers, Susan Olzak, Elizabeth West, American Sociological Review, Vol. 56, No. 4. (Aug., 1991), pp. 458-474.

3.The Rise and Fall of Social Problems: A Public Arenas Model, Stephen Hilgartner, Charles L. Bosk, American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 94, No. 1. (Jul., 1988), pp. 53-78.

Social Movements and Culture

Paper conferences in small groups.

Questions for discussion and reading

David Knoke and Nancy Wisely, "Social Movements" (reserve folder)
Kaplan, Temma,"Female Consciousness and Collective Action: The Case of Barcelona" (reserve folder)

How do women's movements create a culture of commitment? Discussion and readign questions

Verta Taylor, "Social Movement Continuity: The Women's Movement in Abeyance," American Sociological Review, Vol. 54, No. 5. (Oct., 1989), pp. 761-775.
Rebecca Klatch, selections from Women of the New Right

Overcoming the problem of competing commitments to different communities

"Consequences of Professionalization and Formalization in the Pro-Choice Movement," American Sociological Review, Vol. 53, No. 4. (Aug., 1988), pp. 585-605.
Frontiers in social movement theory, ch. 9

Recommended: "Coalition Work in the Pro-Choice Movement," Social Problems Vol. 33, No. 5, June 1986, pp. 374-390 (reserve folder)

Suzanne Staggenborg on coalition-building and resource mobilization in women's movements

Paper two, Hypothesis and evalution of evidence (5-7 pages), due Friday, 11/10, in my Eliot Hall mail box.

New research on class consumption patterns

Daniel Bell, Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism, excerpts (reserve)

Lamont, Michele, Money, morals, and manners : the culture of theFrench and American upper-middle class (reserve, HT690.U6 L36 1992), ch. 1-3

New research on the working class

Lamont, Michele, Money, morals, and manners : the culture of theFrench and American upper-middle class HT690.U6 L36 1992), chs. 4, 6 7

Rick Fantasia, Cultures of Solidarity: Consciousness, Action, and Contemporary American Workers (reserve HD8072.5 .F36 1988) chs. 4 and 6 (ch. 5, Strike as Emergent Culture, is highly recommended)
11/23 Thanksgiving Holiday

New research on the American public's national character

Robert Putnam, "Bowling Alone" muse.jhu.edu/journals/ journal_of_democracy/v006/6.1putnam.html
Putnam is available through Project Muse, which Reed subscribes to: muse.jhu. It is linked to the library web page.

Hall, Peter Dobkin, "Vital Signs: Organizational Population Trends and Civic Engagement in New Haven, Connecticut, 1850-1998 (5 copies are on reserve, two copies for xeroxing are outside my door)

Selections from Voice and Equality: Civic Voluntarism in American Politics, by Verba, Schlozman, and Brady

LAST DAY OF CLASS Richard Lachman, "Grafitti as Career and Ideology" American Journal of Sociology (Sep. 1988): 229-50. Enter J-STOR and type in your request.

Soc 250, Sociology of Culture, Spring 2006, Course Outline - uvm.edu -syllabus

Douglas E. Foley, "The Great American Football Ritual," from Learning Capitalist Culture: Deep in the Heart of Tejas, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1990, pp. 28-62.
Kathryn Fox, "Real Punks and Pretenders: The Social Organization of Counterculture," Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, Vol. 16, No. 3, Oct. 1987, pp. 344-370.
David Brooks, "Business Life" (on "Burlington, Vermont and other Latte Towns"), from Bobos in Paradise: the New Upper Class and How They Got There (Simon & Schuster: 2000), pp. 103-112.

What is Culture and Why Does it Matter?
The Arnoldian Answer
NEIL POSTMAN, Chapter 1 from Building a Bridge to the 18th Century: How the Past Can Improve Our Future, 1999: .nytimes.com/books/first/p/postman-bridge.html
Matthew Arnold, excerpts from Culture and Anarchy in John Storey (ed.), Cultural Theory and Popular Culture: A Reader 2nd edition (Univ. of Georgia Press, 1998) pp. 7-12.

The Anthropological Answer
Clifford Geertz, "Deep Play: Notes on the Balinese Cockfight," in Rethinking, pp. 239-277. (from The Interpretation of Cultures, 1973.)
Lawrence W. Levine, "William Shakespeare and the American People: A Study in Cultural Transformation," in Rethinking, pp. 157-197.

Critical Theory and Culture

Anthony Giddens, "Conclusion," from New Rules of Sociological Method, (1st edition), pp. 155-161.
Raymond Williams, "Culture" from Marxism and Literature, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977, pp. 11-20.
Richard Johnson, "What is Cultural Studies Anyway?" Social Text, Winter 1986/87, pp. 38-80.
Gina Marchetti, "Action-Adventure as Ideology," in Ian Angus & Sut Jhally (eds.), Cultural Politics in Contemporary America, New York: Routledge, 1989, pp. 182-197
Raymond Williams, "Base and Superstructure in Marxist Cultural Theory," in Rethinking, pp. 407-423.
T. J. Jackson-Lears, "The Concept of Cultural Hegemony: Problems and Possibilities." The American Historical Review, 90:3, June 1985, pp. 567-593.

The Analysis of Form: Semiotics, Structuralism, and Ideology

Semiotics and Media Web Site, .uvm.edu/~tstreete/semiotics_and_ads/index.html
Student semiotic analyses: Hanna Gregory, Brita Wanger, and Jeff Henry.
Roland Barthes, "Written Clothing," in Rethinking, pp. 432-445.

Class and Culture

Video, Media Education Foundation, "Class Dismissed: How TV Frames the Working Class"
E. P. Thompson, "Preface," from The Making of the English Working Class (Vintage: 1966), pp. 9-14.
John Berger, "The Suit and the Photograph," in Rethinking, pp. 424-431.
Roy Rosenzweig, "The Rise of the Saloon," in Rethinking, pp. 121-156
Stanley Aronowitz, "Working Class Culture in the Electronic Age," in Ian Angus & Sut Jhally (eds.), Cultural Politics in Contemporary America, New York: Routledge, 1989, pp. 135-150.
E. P. Thompson, "Time, Work-discipline, and Industrial Capitalism," Past and Present, No. 38, 1967, pp. 56-97.
Paul DiMaggio, "Cultural Entrepreneurship in Nineteenth Century Boston: The Creation of an Organizational Base for High Culture in America," in Rethinking, pp. 374-397

Gender

Video: Dreamworlds: Desire/Sex/Power in Rock Video (written & directed by Sut Jhally)
Thomas Streeter, Nicole Hintlian, Samantha Chipetz, and Susanna Callender, "A Web Essay on the Male Gaze, Fashion Advertising, and the Pose," .uvm.edu/%7Etstreete/powerpose/
John Berger, Chapter 3 of Ways of Seeing, New York: Penguin/BBC, 1972, pp. 45-64.
Janice Radway, "Interpretive Communities and Variable Literacies: the Functions of Romance Reading," in Rethinking, pp. 465-486.
Rachel Bowlby, Just Looking: Consumer Culture in Dreiser, Gissing, and Zola, NY: Methuen, 1985, pp. 1-34.

Race and Ethnicity

Video: Stuart Hall, "Race, the Floating Signifier"
Michael Omi, "In Living Color: Race and American Culture," in Ian Angus & Sut Jhally (eds.), Cultural Politics in Contemporary America, New York: Routledge, 1989, pp. 111-122
Ellen Seiter, "Different Children, Different Dreams: Racial Representation in Advertising," Journal of Communication Inquiry, Vol. 14, No. 1, Winter 1990, pp. 31-47.

Consumer Culture

Thorstein Veblen, excerpts regarding "Conspicuous Consumption," from The Theory of the Leisure Class: An Economic Study of Institutions, 1953 [1899].
Susan G. Davis, "Shopping," in Richard Maxwell (ed.), Culture Works: the Political Economy of Culture, University of Minnesota Press, 2001, pp. 163-196.
Colin Campbell, "Modern Autonomous Imaginative Hedonism," pp. 77-95, and "Conclusion," pp. 202-227, from The Romantic Ethic and the Spirit of Modern Consumerism, Basil Blackwell, 1987.
Rosalind Williams, "The Dream World of Mass Consumption," in Rethinking,pp. 198-235.

Culture, Power, and Identity

Ira Glass, "Family Physics: Act One. Occam's Razor." This is a segment of an NPR radio show called This American Life. There are two ways to listen, online at 207.70.82.73/ra/214.ram or by paying four dollars and downloading the show into your iPod at this link. In either case, listen to the first segment ("Act One") which runs from about 7 minutes to 38 minutes.
Sut Jhally, "'Free at Last': Sponsorship, Fanship & Fascism" .sutjhally.com/lectures/lectures_frame.html

Michel Foucault, "What is an Author?" in Rethinking, pp. 446-464.
Stuart Hall, "Minimal Selves," in Gray and McGuigan (eds.), Studying Culture: An Introductory Reader (New York: Edward Arnold, 1993), pp. 134-138.
Stuart Hall, "Culture, Community, Nation," Cultural Studies, Oct. 1 1993, v. 7 n. 3, pp. 349-363.

Syllabus: Popular Culture
Spring 2004 Instructor: Phil Rutledge, Email: prutledg@email.uncc.edu
.uncc.edu/socant/syllabi/ spring2004/ socy2112-001.doc

TEXTS:
'MEDIA/SOCIETY: Industries, Images, and Audiences' by David Croteau and William Hoynes. Third Edition. Pine Forge
Press, Ca.; 2003; ISBN: 0-7619-8773-p.

'TELEVISION MYTH AND THE AMERICAN MIND' by Hal Himmelstein. Second Edition. Praeger, Conn.; 1994. ISBN:
0-275-93157-9

'UNDERSTANDING POPULAR CULTURE', by John Fiske. Unwin Hyman; Boston. 1989.

'READING THE POPULAR', by John Fiske. Unwin Hyman; Boston. 1989.

Download my lecture notes at .zaxistv.com/sociology.htm. These notes are essential material, especially during the first
weeks of class.

INTRODUCTION:
Popular culture typically refers to what we do in our leisure time. In this society, much of what we do involves consumption. We are a culture of mass consumers. Almost every aspect of our modern leisure lifestyle (i.e., music, TV, sports, nightlife, etc) is based on purchasing something that was initially made by someone else (probably on an assembly line) and is then sold to us.
Historically, this is new, because in less technologically advanced societies people must know how to make or produce much of what they consume - including their own leisure entertainment. What is also new to our society is the rise of powerful, influential private corporations driven by the primary goal of making a profit through the encouragement of (mass) consumption of their (mass-made) products.
The study of leisure in a mass society requires the study of the mass media - perhaps the primary agent of 'massification.' We live in a society saturated by mass media. Virtually all forms of leisure have been affected by this increasingly powerful agent of socialization. Of all forms of mass media, television has emerged to become the most powerful media. This course examines popular culture in context of mass society, mass media and the television in particular, and the issues raised by mass society leisure patterns: In a mass society, who influences the forms of entertainment that are made available to the 'mass' public? What messages and ideologies are promoted by mainstream television and radio - and how are they helpful or harmful to certain groups? How are some subcultures seeking their own voices in defiance of the dominant culture? These and other questions are
the subject of this class.
This course is partly designed to introduce the student to a sociological approach to the study of how the production of desire brought by industrialism, capitalism, and the mass media have influenced our lives. These influences are pervasive, influencing ideas about 'success', 'beauty', 'romance', 'happiness', and even what it means to be an 'American.' The study of popular culture requires an examination of the larger social and economic forces that influence our lives, particularly the rise of industrial capitalism and a mass media which is driven by capitalism. At the center of this study is a debate over the extent of this influence and its effects on our social and value systems, and particularly over how to understand our modern leisure activities.

SCHEDULE:
The course will be divided three sections.

The first section of the course will review important sociological issues and cover a basic introductory perspective of popular culture. The theme of these introductory lectures relates to the emergence by the 1920's in the U.S. of a mass consumer society in which entertainment and leisure activities are heavily influenced by private corporations, their advertisements, and the specific values they promote. The first test will cover these introductory lectures and videos. The 'Media/Society' text is important throughout the term but is especially useful for the first test.

The second section of the course directly addresses the theme of popular culture as driven by the force of mass consumption and the interests of industrial capitalists. According to 'mass culture' theorists, cultural institutions - be they aesthetic, political, or
whatever - have been transformed by the force of industrial capitalism and its commodification mechanisms. Artists, athletes, entertainers, and other cultural actors (such as politicians) serve potentially contradictory interests in our modern society: the
desire to remain authentic to themselves and their indigenous culture versus their increased dependency upon profit-interested corporations for survival in a culture dominated by the powerful interests of industrial capitalists. This raises the concern that our cultural institutions are being co-opted by the the force of commodification. In the mass culture model, people are viewed largely as 'massified', opiated spectators who consume that which corporations choose to offer us. Corporate elites are 'all-powerful' in
determining the shape of popular (mainstream) culture. To these theorists, popular culture is really a 'mass culture' brought to us by the 'mass media' which reinforces the dominant values of consumer capitalism, materialism, patriarchy, racism, etc. The second section of the course will utilize Himmelstein's book on this theme, along with the Media/Society text.

The last section will examine John Fiske's model of popular culture. Fiske disagrees with the mass cultural view which tends to be promoted by Himmelstein, preferring to view popular culture as something distinct from 'mass culture.' Fiske argues that, while the force of commodification is great, many people still choose to make their own entertainment - and to make their own expressions of cultural identity - rather than merely consume an instant, prefabricated or ready-made culture manufactured on some 'assembly line' by corporations interested mainly in making money and reinforcing the dominant ideologies that support their system. Fiske is interested in those who are 'marginalized' by various cultural pecking orders (such as by race, ethnicity, wealth, sex, age, etc) and how they use their own cultural expressions to assert themselves against the dominant culture that holds them down in some way. He explores peoples' everyday efforts as creative participants (as opposed to 'opiated spectators') in what he considers the truly 'popular' culture.

Some possible journals to consult for your project:

Journal of Popular Culture;Journal of American Culture;

Journal of Film and Television; American Film;

Journal of Advertising Research;

Advertising Age;

Marketing News;Journal of Communication;

Journal of Leisure Research;

Journalism Quarterly;

Quarterly Review of Film & Video;

Sex Roles;

Women and Language;

Childhood Education;

Adolescence;

Journal of Social Issues;

Social Problems;

Social Forces;

Demography;

American Journal of Sociology;

American Sociological Review;

American Demographics;

Modern Maturity;

Aging;

Black Scholar;

Journal of Psychology;

Ewen, Stuart: Captains of Consciousness. McGraw Hill, 1976.

Communications, Culture, and Society . The globalization of culture. "Globalization and Cinema " - syllabus - .princeton.edu/~starr/344syll02.html

Adorno on “Culture Industry” Spring 2006
Instructor: Christopher Cutrone
Course title:
Adorno on “Culture Industry:” Critical Theory of Art as Social Subjectivity
Instructor: Chris Cutrone (e-mail: ccutrone@speedsite.com)
Course description:
Theodor W. Adorno has been best known for his scathing critique of “culture industry.” What is usually missed is that Adorno’s critique of 20th Century cultural forms was dialectical, concerned with their critical potential for both emancipation and domination, and sought to comprehend modern practices of both “hermetic” art and “popular” culture, implicating reflexively the categories and concerns of his own cultural criticism, and thus anticipating issues in “post”-modernism. For Adorno, reflecting critically upon the significance of modern aesthetic forms such as those of the media of cinema, radio, television (and now, the internet) involves the critical theory of the viewer/listener/subject, common to both “high” art and “culture industry.”
In this course we address the Frankfurt School critical theory of the historical transformations of experience and aesthetic subjectivity in modern social life in context, reading works of the 1920s-30s by Siegfried Kracauer and Walter Benjamin, and then focusing on works by Adorno in considering the analytical and explanatory as well as critical power of certain enduring if problematic and contested categories such as “commodification” and “democratization” for a dialectic of modern forms of art and culture as forms of social subjectivity.

Course books:
Adorno, Critical Models: Interventions and Catchwords [Columbia Univ. Press, 1998 / 2005: ISBN 0231076355 (1998) / 023113505X (2005)] - $23.00 ($23.00) / $24.50 ($24.50)
Adorno, The Culture Industry: Selected Essays on Mass Culture [Routledge, 2002: ISBN 0415253802] - $18.00 ($13.00)
Adorno, Essays on Music [Univ. of California Press, 2002: ISBN 0520231597] - $40.00 ($36.00)
Horkheimer and Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment: Philosophical Fragments, trans. Edmund Jephcott [Stanford Univ. Press, 2002: ISBN 0804736332] - $25.00 ($17.00)
Siegfried Kracauer, The Mass Ornament [Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press, 1995]
Georg Lukács, History and Class Consciousness [Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1971]
Leon Trotsky, Literature and Revolution (1924) [Ann Arbor, MI: Univ. Michigan Press, 1960]
Robert C. Tucker, ed., Marx-Engels Reader [New York: Norton, 1978]

Intention of the course:
This will be a reading-intensive course focusing on works by Theodor W. Adorno (1903-69) elaborating the concept of “culture industry,” a category of Frankfurt School Critical Theory for characterizing the social-historical context for the development and transformations of artistic forms and aesthetic subjectivity in the 20th Century. The category of “culture industry” will be considered through a sustained reading of Adorno’s writings on popular culture. Additional course readings will be selected from among Weimar- and Nazi-era writings by Walter Benjamin and Siegfried Kracauer.
We will address the origins of Adorno’s thought in what has been termed “Western” Marxism (contrasted with “Eastern,” or Russian-Soviet Marxism), in the context of issues of developments of “mass” society in the 20th Century. We will consider the seminal debate between Adorno and Benjamin on the social significance of modern popular cultural forms that continued to inform Adorno’s subsequent elaboration of a dialectic of modern aesthetic form as social form. We will evaluate the coherence, the analytical and explanatory as well as critical power for present-day, post-20th Century social life, of the attempt at a dialectic of “culture industry,” with such attendant critical concepts in Adorno’s writings as “authoritarian personality,” “eclipse of the individual,” etc., considered as being not merely “negative” or pejorative, but grasping emergent social-historical formation and its actual, determinate possibilities for transformation and emancipation. The latter part of the course will focus on Adorno’s work as exemplary of such a dialectic.

Note on Frankfurt School Critical Theory and Cultural Studies:
Frankfurt School Critical Theory developed after the failed and betrayed revolutions of 1917-19 in Russia, Germany and elsewhere, and sought to develop upon Marxist thought for a dialectic of 20th Century social forms. Frankfurt School critical theorists such as Adorno were concerned with how social discontents found expression through forms of the reconstitution of domination after struggles for emancipation were defeated, failed, or gave rise to highly ambiguous, contradictory and paradoxical outcomes.
Frankfurt School thought has served as an important if ambivalent foundation for the development of popular cultural studies in the aftermath of the 1960s. Perhaps the most widely read work in this founding tradition of cultural studies is the chapter on “The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception” from the book by Horkheimer and Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment: Philosophical Fragments (1944-47), a book which became influential for the post-WWII generation’s political discontents, and whose themes were elaborated in Marcuse’s writings of the ’60s such as One-Dimensional Man.
However, in the subsequent development of cultural studies, especially after the ebbing of the radicalism of the social upheavals of the 1960s-’70s, Adorno’s work in particular has suffered obscurity. Cultural criticism after the 1960s has taken a cue from Frankfurt School Critical Theory’s attention to so-called cultural determinants of social-historical continuity and change. But since Adorno’s critique of culture industry has been mistaken for an elitist rejection of popular culture, it remained a stumbling block to the intention of discovering an authentic democratic and egalitarian basis for the appeal of modern popular cultural forms. Since the ’80s, cultural studies approaches have emphasized the production of meaning in reception, in contrast to the formal analysis of cultural objects, which emphasizes problems of subjectivity.
This course will consider the continued relevance of the latter approach to problems of culture and society provided by Frankfurt School Critical Theory, especially through the work of Adorno, which seeks to apprehend, explore and socially-historically specify fundamental problems of subjectivity in transformations of the nature of social equality and democracy that might otherwise be taken for granted and naturalized, for a dialectic of emancipation and domination that constitutes social modernity.

Course schedule: Adorno on “Culture Industry” (Spring 2006):

Week 1: Introduction, modernity in crisis 1/27/06
Screening: Margarethe von Trotta, dir., Rosa Luxemburg (film on video, 1986, 122 min.)
Terry Eagleton, “The Politics of Amnesia,” After Theory (NY: Basic Books, 2003), 1-22
In-class reading: Theodor W. Adorno, selection from “Commodity Music Analyzed” (1934-40), Quasi Una Fantasia [London: Verso, 1998], 49-52 [photocopy handout]

Week 2: Politics (1), after the Revolution, its betrayal and failure 2/3/06
Rosa Luxemburg, selection from The Crisis of German Social Democracy (a.k.a. the “Junius Pamphlet,” 1915); and “Order Prevails in Berlin” (1919)
Wilhelm Reich, “Ideology as Material Power,” The Mass Psychology of Fascism (1933; English translation 1946) [New York: Orgone Institute Press, 1946], 1-27 [2]
Georg Lukács, “The Phenomenon of Reification,” Section I, “Reification and the Consciousness of the Proletariat” (1923), History and Class Consciousness, 83-110 (209-210n) -also- [web resource] [2]

Week 3: Context and concept (1), Americanism from Weimar to Nazi Germany 2/10/06
Siegfried Kracauer, “Photography,” “The Mass Ornament,” and “The Little Shopgirls Go to the Movies” (1927-28), The Mass Ornament, 47-63 (354-356n), 75-86 (356-357n), and 291-304 (383-385n)
Adorno, “The Curves of the Needle” (1927), Essays on Music, 271-276 -also- October 55 (Winter, 1990), 48-55 [2]
Walter Benjamin, “Little History of Photography” (1931), trans. Rodney Livingstone,
Selected Writings, vol. 2: 1927-34 [Cambridge, MA: Harvard, 1999], 507-530
Benjamin, “Mickey Mouse” (1931) and “On the Mimetic Faculty” (1933), Selected Writings, vol. 2: 1927-34 [Cambridge, MA: Harvard, 1999], 545-546 and 720-722 -also- “On the Mimetic Faculty,” Reflections [NY: Schocken, 1986], 333-336.

Week 4: Politics (2), critical theory of modernity 2/17/06
Karl Marx, selections from: the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844
(“Estranged Labor,” “Private Property and Communism,” and “The Meaning of Human Requirements”); the Grundrisse (1857-58) (“A. Introduction: Independent Individuals. 18th Century Ideas,” “B. Society and the Individual,” and “C. The
Dynamics of Capitalism”); and the Manifesto of the Communist Party (1848) (Prefaces to Various Language Editions, I. “Bourgeois and Proletarians,” II.
“Proletarians and Communists,” and IV. “Position of the Communists in Relation to the Various Existing Opposition Parties”), Marx-Engels Reader, 70-101, 222-223, 246-250, 469-491, and 499-500 -also- [web resource] [2]
Trotsky, “Proletarian Culture and Proletarian Art,” “Communist Policy Towards Art,”
and “Revolutionary and Socialist Art,” Literature and Revolution (1924), 184-256 -also- [web resource] [2]

Week 5: Context and concept (2a), critical social theory of art 2/24/06
Adorno, “On the Social Situation of Music” (1932), Essays on Music, 391-436
Adorno, “Farewell to Jazz” (1933), Essays on Music, 496-500 [2]
Adorno, “Commodity Music Analyzed” (1934-40), Quasi Una Fantasia [London: Verso, 1998], 37-52
?? Please listen to Adorno CD 1, music selections for Adorno, “Social Situation” and “Commodity Music”

Week 6: Context and concept (2b), critical social theory of art (continued) 3/3/06
Adorno, “Form of the Phonograph Record” (1934), Essays on Music, 277-282 -also- October 55 (Winter, 1990), 56-61
Benjamin, “Experience and Poverty” (1933), Selected Writings, vol. 2: 1927-34 [Cambridge, MA: Harvard, 1999], 731-735
Benjamin, “The Author as Producer” (1934), Selected Writings, vol. 2: 1927-34 [Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press, 1999], 768-782 -also- Reflections [New York: Schocken, 1986], 220-238 [2]
Clement Greenberg, “Avant-Garde and Kitsch” (1939), The Collected Essays and
Criticism: vol. I Perceptions and Judgments 1939-1944 [Chicago: Univ. Chicago, 1986], 5-22
Trotsky, “Art and Politics in Our Epoch” (letter of 18 June 1938), Fourth International 11.2 (March-April 1950), 61-64 [2]

Week 7: Dialectic of progress, Adorno-Benjamin debate 3/10/06
Benjamin, “The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility” (1936; 3rd
version, 1939), Selected Writings, vol. 4 [Cambridge: Harvard, 2003], 251-283 -also- Illuminations [New York: Schocken, 1969], 217-251
Adorno, “On Jazz” (1936), Essays on Music, 470-495
Adorno, “Letter to Walter Benjamin, London, 18 March 1936,” Aesthetics and Politics [London: Verso, 1977], 120-126 [2]

Week 8: Exile, dialectic of social form, Adorno in America (1) 3/17/06
Adorno, “On the Fetish Character in Music and Regression of Listening” (1938), The Culture Industry, 29-60 -also- Essays on Music, 288-317
Adorno, “The Radio Symphony” (1941), Essays on Music, 251-270 [2] Please listen to Adorno CD 2, music selections for Adorno, “Fetish Character in Music”

Week 9: [Spring Break, no class session] 3/24/06

Week 10: Exile, dialectic of social form, Adorno in America (2) 3/31/06
Adorno, “On Popular Music” (with George Simpson, 1941), Essays on Music, 437-469 -also- Studies in Philosophy and Social Science IX (1941), 17-48
Adorno, “Freudian Theory and the Pattern of Fascist Propaganda” (1951?), The Culture Industry, 132-157
Adorno, “Messages in a Bottle” (selections orphaned from Minima Moralia, 1944-47), New Left Review I/200 (July-August 1993), 5-14 [2]

Week 11: War years, dialectic of culture criticism, Dialectic of Enlightenment (1) 4/7/06
Horkheimer and Adorno, “Preface 1944 and 1947” and “The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception,” Dialectic of Enlightenment, xiv-xix, and 94-136
Adorno, “The Schema of Mass Culture” (orphaned from Dialectic of Enlightenment, 1944-47), The Culture Industry, 61-97 [2]

Week 12: War years, dialectic of culture criticism, Dialectic of Enlightenment (2) 4/14/06
Horkheimer and Adorno, “Elements of Anti-Semitism” and “Notes and Sketches,” Dialectic of Enlightenment (1944-47), 137-214 [2]
Adorno, et al., “Introduction to The Authoritarian Personality” (1950), Bronner and Kellner, eds., Critical Theory and Society, 219-232

Week 13: Dialectic of society (1), critique of liberal democracy 4/21/06
Adorno, “Culture Industry Reconsidered,” The Culture Industry, 98-106
Adorno, “How to Look at Television” (1954), The Culture Industry, 158-177
Adorno, “Prologue to Television” (1953) and “Television as Ideology” (1953), Critical Models, 49-70 (326-330n) [2]

Week 14: Dialectic of society (2), emancipation and domination 4/28/06
Herbert Marcuse, “The Obsolescence of the Freudian Concept of Man” (1968), Bronner and Kellner, eds., Critical Theory and Society, 233-246
Adorno, “Perennial Fashion -- Jazz” (1953), Brian O’Connor, ed., The Adorno Reader [Oxford: Blackwell, 2000], 267-279 -also- Prisms [Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1981], 119-132
Adorno, “Those Twenties” (1961-62), “Sexual Taboos and the Law Today” (1963), “Opinion Delusional Society” (1961), and “Gloss on Personality” (1966), Critical Models, 41-48 (324-326n), 71-88 (330-337n), 105-122 (343-346n), and 161-165 (356-358n) [2]

Week 15: [Critique Week, no class session] 5/5/06
[Please read ahead for week 16]
Week 16: Endgame, closing the 1960s 5/12/06
Adorno, “Transparencies on Film” (1967), The Culture Industry, 178-186
Adorno, “Opera and the Long-Playing Record” (1969), Essays on Music, 283-287 -also- October 55 (Winter, 1990), 62-66
Adorno, “Free Time” (1969), “Education after Auschwitz” (1966), “Critique” (1969), and “Resignation” (1969), Critical Models, 167-176 (358-360n), 191-204 (364-368n), 281-288 (383-388n), and 289-294 (388-389n)
-also- “Free Time” (1969), and “Resignation” (1969), The Culture Industry, 187-197, and 198-204 [2]

[additional readings:]
Adorno, “Commitment” (1962), Can One Live after Auschwitz? A Philosophical Reader [Stanford, CA: Stanford Univ. Press, 2003], 240-258 (496-497n) -also- Bloch, et al., Aesthetics and Politics, 177-195
Adorno, “Cultural Criticism and Society” (1949), Can One Live after Auschwitz? A Philosophical Reader [Stanford, CA: Stanford Univ. Press, 2003], 146-162 (501-513n) -also- Prisms [Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1981], 17-34
Adorno, “The Essay as Form” (1958), Notes to Literature, vol. 1 [New York, Columbia Univ. Press, 1991], 3-23 (277n)
Adorno, “Late Capitalism or Industrial Society?” (1968-69), Can One Live After Auschwitz? A Philosophical Reader [Stanford, CA: Stanford Univ. Press, 2003], 111-125 (491n)
Adorno, “The Liquidation of the Self,” “Metaphysics and Materialism,” “Consciousness of Negativity” and “Dying Today” (lectures on Metaphysics 14-17, 1965), Can One Live after Auschwitz? A Philosophical Reader [Stanford, CA: Stanford Univ. Press, 2003], 427-460 (501-513n)
Adorno, “The Relevance of Wagner Today” (1963), Essays on Music, 584-602
Adorno, “Sociology and Psychology” (1955), New Left Review, two parts: 46 (Nov.-Dec. 1967), 67-80; and 47 (Jan.-Feb. 1968), 79-97
Adorno and Marcuse, “Correspondence on the German New Left” (1969) (with introduction by translator Esther Leslie), New Left Review I/233 (January-February 1999), 123-36 (118-122)
Andreas Huyssen, “Adorno in Reverse: From Hollywood to Richard Wagner,” New German Critique 29 (1983) 8-38
-also- Nigel C. Gibson and Andrew Rubin, eds., Adorno: A Critical Reader [Blackwell, 2002], 29-56
Herbert Marcuse, “The Question of Revolution” (1967), New Left Review 45 (Sept.-Oct.1967), 3-7
Moishe Postone, “History and Helplessness: Mass Mobilization and Contemporary Forms of Anticapitalism,” Public Culture 18:1 (Winter 2006), 93 - 110

Media and Cultural Studies - Spring 2005 Syllabus
Dr. Ted Friedman
Email: tedf@gsu.edu; Phone: (404) 463-9522
Home Page: .tedfriedman.com

Course Description
What are the political dimensions of popular culture? How does culture reflect, influence, and embody structures of power?
Where does hegemony end and resistance begin? This class will engage the interdisciplinary field of Cultural Studies, which
attempts to understand the relationship between culture and politics. We’ll be reading founding theoretical texts, current
scholarship, and works which attempt to translate theory into action. We’ll address a range of media, from film and television to
music, computer games and romance novels. We’ll look at multiple, intersecting structures of power, including class, nation,
gender, and race.

Readings
Class readings will include books, a coursepack of articles, and news items distributed via the class email list.
• Thomas Frank, What’s the Matter With Kansas?
• Graeme Turner, British Cultural Studies: An Introduction
• Michael Denning, Culture in the Age of Three Worlds
• Suzanna Walters, Material Girls
• Michael Omi and Howard Winant, Racial Formation in the United States
• Arjun Appadurai, Modernity at Large
• Janice Radway, Reading the Romance
• Susan Douglas et al, The Mommy Myth
• Allan Badiner, ed., Mindfulness in the Marketplace
• Cary Nelson, Manifesto of a Tenured Radical
• Craig Seligman, Sontag & Kael: Opposites Attract Me
• Naomi Klein, No Logo.

Part I: Introduction
The Politics of Culture
In-class screening: Barbie Nation
What’s the Matter?
Thomas Frank, What’s the Matter With Kansas?

Part II: Theory
From Marx to the Frankfurt School
Graeme Turner, British Cultural Studies, Introduction and Part I
Karl Marx and Fredrich Engels, excerpts
Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer, “The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception”
Walter Benjamin, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction”
Louis Althusser, “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses”
Stuart Hall, “Signification, Representation, Ideology: Althusser and the Post-Structuralist Debates”

Birmingham and Beyond
Turner, Part II
Atonio Gramsci, “Hegemony, Intellectuals and the State”
Stuart Hall, “Encoding/Decoding” and “The Rediscovery of ‘Ideology’: Return of the Repressed in Media Studies”
Richard Dyer, “Entertainment and Utopia”

American Cultural Studies
Michael Denning, Culture in the Age of Three Worlds

Public Intellectuals
Craig Seligman, Sontag & Kael: Opposites Attract Me

Feminist Theory
Suzanna Walters, Material Girls

Critical Race Theory
Michael Omi & Howard Winant, Racial Formation in the United States

Globalization
Arjun Appuradai, Modernity at Large

Part III: Practice
Ethnography
Janice Radway, Reading the Romance
Cultural Criticism
Susan Douglas et al, The Mommy Myth

Part IV: Praxis
Academia
Cary Nelson, Manifesto of a Tenured Radical

Consumer Ethics
Allan Badiner, ed, Mindfulness in the Marketplace
Outside screening: I ? Huckabees

Activism
Naomi Klein, No Logo

Discourses of Culture, Media and Technology (core theory) - Spring 2006
CCT 797: Jeffrey Peck

Texts ordered: T. Eagleton, Literary Theory. An Introduction; C. Belsey, Critical Practice; M. Foucault, History of Sexuality, Vol. 1. The first two texts must be read, although they will not be discussed specifically. I encourage you to read them before class begins. The rest of the texts will be on electronic reserve in the Lauinger Library under my name.

Tentative Schedule

Week 1, January 17: Introduction

Week 2, January 24: (Em)Powering/ Disciplining/Defining the Discipline of Cultural Studies

Texts: M. Foucault, “Docile Bodies” in Discipline and Punish and “The Subject and  Power;” L. Grossberg, C. Nelson, P. Treicher, “Cultural Studies: An Introduction,” in Cultural Studies; L. Grossberg, “Cultural Studies: What’s in a Name?;” D. Bathrick, “Cultural Studies.”

Week 3, January 31: Authors, Texts, Readers/Audiences and the Practices of Interpretation

Texts: M. Foucault, “What is an Author?;” R. Barthes, “From Work to Text;” W. Iser, “Interaction Between Text and Reader;” S. Fish, “Literature and the Reader: Affective Stylistics” in Is There a Text in This Class?; R. Palmer, “Toward Reopening the Question: What is Interpretation?” and “Thirty Theses on Interpretation.”(on hermeneutics)

Week 4, February 7: Historical, Social, Political Contexts and Interests: Ideology, Hegemony, and the State

Texts: K. Marx, “The German Ideology,” in The Grundrisse; F. Fanon, “On National Culture” in The Wretched of the Earth; A. Gramsci, “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses;” J. Habermas, “Knowledge and Human Interests;” B. Anderson, Imagined Communities (Ch.1-3); P. Bourdieu, Reproduction in Education, Society and Culture (selections).

Week 6, February 21: Race and Ethnicity

Texts: F. Fanon, “Black Skin, White Masks”; b. hooks, “Eating the Other: Desire and Resistance;” H.L. Gates, The Signifying Monkey (Intro., Part I); S. Hall, “Old and New Identities, Old and New Ethnicities;” G. Anzaldua, “The Homeland, Aztlán” and “Towards a New Consciousness” in Borderlands/La Frontera; S. Gilman, “Black Bodies, White Bodies,” in Race, Writing and the Difference It Makes; Trin Minh Ha, Woman/Native/Other (Ch. 2, 3).

Week 8, March 14: (Post)Colonialism

Texts: E. Said, Orientalism (selections); G. Spivak, “Can the Subaltern Speak?;” H.Bhaba, “Interrogating Identity;” and “The Postcolonial and the Postmodern: the Question of Agency;” C. Mohanty, “Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourses.”

Week 10, March 28: Gender and Sexuality

Texts: S. Freud, “Introduction, The Interpretation of Dreams” and “Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality;” J. Lacan, “The Mirror Stage” and “The Function of the Letter;” M. Foucault, The History of Sexuality, Vol. 1; E.K. Sedgwick, “Introduction” and “The Epistemology of the Closet;” D. Haraway, “A Cyborg Manifesto;” J. Butler, Gender Trouble (selections).

Week 12, April 11: Semiotics and (Post)Structuralism

Texts: F. de Saussure,”Course in General Linguistics;” R. Barthes, “The Structuralist Activity” and Mythologies (selections); C-L. Strauss, “The Structural Study of Myth;”

J. Culler, Structuralist Poetics (Ch. 1, 2); J. Derrida, “Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences” in Writing and Difference; M. Foucault, “The Discourse on Language;” J. Harari, “Critical Factions/Critical Fictions,”(Introduction) in Textual Strategies: Perspectives in Post-Structuralist Criticism.

Week 14, April 25: Technology and Representation

Texts: W. Benjamin, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction;” M. Horkheimer and T. Adorno, “The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception;” J. Habermas, “The Public Sphere: An Encyclopedia Article;” L. Mulvey, “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema;” J. Johnston and F. Kittler, Friedrich A. Kittler Essays (Intro, Ch. 1); R. Debray, Media Manifestos (selections); H.M. Enzensburger, “Constituents of a Theory of Media;” J. Baudrillard, “The Precession of Simulacra.”

Comparative Studies in Emerging Media - Spring 2006 Syllabus
In the past ten years, the expansion of the internet and the digitization of culture have vastly changed the way Americans, and
people all over the world, share information. Libraries of data can now be accessed and exchanged instantaneously from
terminals around the globe. Any blogger with a keyboard can weigh in on the issues of our times to an international audience,
and hope to build a readership based on nothing other than strength of ideas. Digital production technologies make the tools of
the Hollywood pros available to anybody with a Mac. And new models of “open source” software distribution challenge the
inequities of the global capitalist economy.

But if new media technology today offers a host of utopian promises, it also inspires dystopian fears: of technology making jobs
obsolete, of ubiquitous governmental and corporate surveillance, of the consequences of the pervasive digital divide between the info-haves and -have-nots.

Meanwhile, the American media landscape is in the midst of major transitions:

Traditional news-gathering organizations have been challenged by bloggers, who, scouring the ‘net in their pajamas, are often
more informed than the high-powered journalists with the greatest insider “access.”

Television networks continue to lose market share to cable, and now have begun selling episodes through DVD, pay per view,
and iTunes.

Movie studios now make over two-thirds of their grosses from DVD sales rather than box office receipts. Box office declined
5% in the US in 2005, as studios began discussing the option of releasing films simultaneously in theaters and on DVD, which
could lead to the end of the American custom of going to the movies.

CD sales have been dropping for years, but the music industry now makes billions on ringtone sales, and Apple’s iPod has
become on of the most successful consumer products in global history.
Even as the public sphere grows more capacious, the ownership of production and distribution grows more concentrated, as a
small number of multinational corporations more powerful than many nation-states continue to expand their mass media
oligopolies.

Moore’s Law states that the pace of growth in computing power continuously accellerates. It’s not surprising, then, that the pace of technological change continues to pulse faster and faster.

In the thick of the moment, how can we gain perspective on the present, and insight into the future? One way is to turn to the
past, to look at our circumstances in the light of earlier transitional moments. Examining the introduction of the telegraph can help us gain perspective on the rise of the internet. At the same time, studying our projections of the future can also help us
understand our present obsessions.

This class, then, will bounce between the past, present and future. At the same time, it will engage a range of methodologies,
including cultural studies, social history, journalism, futurism, science studies, science fiction, blogging and Buddhist philosophy.

There are 12 required books:

Ted Friedman, Electric Dreams
James Paul Gee, What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy
Steve Fuller, Kuhn vs. Popper
N. Katherine Hayles, How We Became Post-Human
Carolyn Marvin, When Old Technologies Were New
Jonathan Sterne, The Audible Past
Jonathan Markoff, What the Doormouse Said
Dan Gilmor, We Are the Media
Alex Gallaway, Protocol
Cory Doctrow, Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom
Peter Morville, Ambient Findability
Joel Garreau, Radical Evolution

Several of the texts are available at GSU bookstores. However, the syllabus has been revised since books were ordered;
several books were not ordered, and several of the ordered books are no longer assigned. All of the required books can be
ordered online. Additional readings will be distributed in class and via email. The required computer game demo will be available for free download. Audio recordings will be digitally distributed.

Schedule

New Technologies Yesterday and Today
Introduction
Ted Friedman, Electric Dreams
James Paul Gee, What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy
Play the demo of a computer game chosen by the class
Theorizing Scientific and Technological Change
Steve Fuller, Kuhn vs. Popper
Selections by David Wolfram and Rupert Sheldrake
Katherine Hayles, How We Became Post-Human
When Old Technologies Were New
Carolyn Marvin, When Old Technologies Were New
Jonathan Sterne, The Audible Past
Jonathan Markoff, What the Doormouse Said
New Media Politics
Dan Gilmor, We The Media
Alex Gallaway, Protocol
Extrapolation
Cory Doctrow, Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom
Selections by Fredric Jameson and Scott Bukatman
Peter Morville, Ambient Findability
Joel Garrau, Radical Evolution
Dalai Lama XIV, The Universe in a Single Atom as read by Richard Gere
(audio recording to be distributed on mp3)
Video games at Ted’s house