Cultural Studies Open Seminar

Chuo University Korakuen Campus, 17 April 2004 ~ 8 Jan. 2005, building 3, 11th floor, room 31100, Saturdays 6:30~

Speakers:

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More than thirty years have passed since the formation of the first Department of Cultural Studies. The field emerged in Europe from within the insights and accomplishments of cultural anthropology. From the beginning, however, cultural studies has distinguished itself from anthropology, in part by drawing its theoretical and practical models from an eclectic range of disciplines, philosophy, history, literary and media studies, and linguistics, among them. By the 1980s cultural studies had become established and further systematized in North America, and by the beginning of the twenty-first century the field increasingly has been recognized as an independent and interdisciplinary province of social and cultural inquiry, with a definable body of theory and practice, in Europe, the Americas, South and East Asia, and elsewhere.

This seminar will be based upon an interpretation of cultural studies that posits the field as an investigation of the content and process of cultural change. The courses will focus particularly on the position of cultural studies in two important regions, North America and East Asia. In CS I, in the spring term, we shall focus on theoretical constructions that have been of importance to the field of cultural studies in these regions. In CS II, in the autumn term, we shall apply these constructions to a series of specific case studies of the process of cultural change.

Each term will focus upon six topics, noted below, each of which may occupy more than one class session. From among these topics, students will be invited to choose an area of particular focus related to their own interests and engagements, and to offer to the course an account of their engagement with the topic. In each term the course will be addressed by outside speakers who are either investigators of the theoretical field of cultural studies or practitioners of the process of cultural change.

CS I: The Theory of Cultural Studies

Students will recognize the major theoretical constructs that have contributed to the development and practice of the field of cultural studies.

Topics:

1. What is cultural studies?
2. What is culture?
3. Culture as a field for empowerment
4. Culture as a field for interaction with otherness
5. Culture as a field penetrated by and penetrating other social fields
6. Cultural studies and cultural policy

CS II: Case Studies

Students will recognize ways that the theoretical constructs of cultural studies may be put to use in specific analyses of the nature of cultural change, and in the process of cultural change itself.

Topics:

1. Culture and identity (national, ethnic, racial, gendered)
2. Culture and the production of knowledge
3. Culture and education
4. The culturalization of nature
5. Culture and the evolution of politics
6. Culture and religion

Suggested and Supplemental Reading :

Fuchs, Stephan. 2001. Against Essentialism: A Theory of Culture and Society. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.

Grossberg, Lawrence, Cary Nelson, and Paula A. Treichler, eds. 1991. Cultural Studies. London: Routledge.

Nelson, Cary, and Dilip Parameshwar Gaonkar, eds. 1996. Disciplinarity and Dissent in Cultural Studies. London: Routledge.

Ueno, Chizuko. 2004. Nationalism and Gender. Translated by Beverley Anne Yamamoto. Melbourne: Trans Pacific.

Yoshioka, Hiroshi. 1995. Samurai and Self-Colonization in Japan. Originally published in The Decolonization of Imagination: Culture, Knowledge, and Power, edited by Jan Nederveen Pieterse and Bhikhu Parekh. London: Zed Books.

Supplemental reading will depend upon particular students’ particular interests, but may include, for example:

Appadurai, Arjun. 1996. Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Dirlik, Arif, ed. 1998. What is in a Rim? Critical Perspectives on the Pacific Region Idea, 2nd ed. Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield.

Iriye, Akira. 1997. Cultural Internationalism and the World Order. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.

Karatani, Kôjin. 2003. Transcritique: On Kant and Marx. Translated by Sabu Kohso. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press.

Miyoshi, Masao. 1994. Off Center. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.

Wang, Jing. 1996. High Culture Fever: Politics, Aesthetics, and Ideology in Deng’s China. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Wilson, Rob, and Arif Dirlik. 1995. Asia / Pacific as a Space for Cultural Production. Durham: Duke University Press.

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Articles noted in David Ewick (2003), Toward a Classified Bibliography of Not One Thing: Cross-Disciplinary Cultural Studies in English-Language Journals.