Jeff Pence	Office: Rice 26
Fall 1998	Of. Hrs: M, 9-10:30; W, 2:30-4
W, 7:00-10:00 pm	Phone: x8586
King 335	Email: fpence

Texts:

• Dick Hebdige, Subculture: The Meaning of Style
• John Storey, An Introduction to Cultural Theory and Popular Culture, (2nd Edition)

First, an admission: the title of this course is intentionally grim, conjuring images of a scholastic grindstone against which we joylessly hone our minds like so many axe blades. Why saddle a topic as potentially entertaining and exciting as Cultural Studies with such a gray and homely prefix? Precisely because the image of Cultural Studies is so sunny and untroubled in much of contemporary academia. For many people, CS simply means the fun of interpretation unfettered by the old-fashioned difficulties of reading, researching, concentration and self-reflection. In place of the dense and difficult prose of Joyce or Woolf, we have the flashy surfaces of "Nick at Night" or the enticing window displays of the Gap. Forget the high-brow posturing of Stravinsky, even the improvisational experiments of Charlie Parker; we've got the Backstreet Boys, whose very popularity and accessibility trumps eurocentric/patriarchal/bourgeois values of difficulty. As my rhetoric indicates, I'm not at all sure that it is in such neo-populist and iconoclastic gestures that CS's value lies. At the same time, the groaningly serious title also contradicts another tendency in the perception of CS. Critics of popular or mass culture forms and objects have frequently been the subject of ridicule in the popular press (see the New York Times in late December and early January of every year, when the annual convention of the Modern Language Association provokes yuck-yuck articles about "Deconstructing Buffy the Vampire Slayer" or "White Riot: Wrestlemania and the Crisis of Masculinity"). In the academic press, CS has been accused of triviality and inappropriate disciplinary poaching, as the recent hoax in Social Text propogated by Alan Sokel demonstrates. Between these two reactions to CS--the "anything goes" enthusiasm of some supporters, the "nothing doing" hostility of some opponents--something important is lost. What disappears is the sense in which CS, however various it may be in approach or choice of objects, is itself a discipline with a history, a set of fundamental questions at its core, and the potential to contribute to humanistic thought in ways neither trivial nor destructive. If we want to get at what is crucial in a discipline, then what we're after is an understanding of method: what to study, how to study it, and for what purpose.

Now, as to our method. This course is a seminar. As such, the syllabus below is necessarily incomplete. The first module looks familiar: a series of theoretical readings, usually conjoined with a case study or a cultural text. Your responsibilities for the first half:

• completion and consideration of all assignments for each class
• a weekly 1-3 pp. informal response to the readings, submitted via the Alta Vista Forum dedicated to English 411
• service, with a partner, as discussion starter for one class. This involves briefly outlining the main points of a reading (not all the readings) for a particular week and offering several questions to begin our discussion.
• regular and considerate participation in the discussions which will constitute the bulk of our class time

What looks strange is the second module. It will be your responsibility to build this half of the course, and the work required to do so will begin earlier and carry on through your final projects.

• in groups of two, you wiil propose the topic for a particular class. (Endless possibilities: the cultural value of a popular icon, the aesthetics of excess TV, musical subcultures, cult texts and audiences, and so on.) I will help you develop a short list of items for reading/viewing/listening/engaging with, and talk with you as you develop your thinking. A week before your presentation, you'll present the class with the list. On the day of the class, you will give a presentation on the problem you've been studying, how you have approached it, and the preliminary questions and conclusions you have reached. You may want to invite help in particular areas, or to simply let the response go where it may.
• on the week you are not presenting, continue with informal responses to course materials on AVF.
• at the end of reading period, you are to turn in a 15-20 pp. essay developing your presentation topic. Essays may be written singly or jointly (the latter will be longer), and have great latitude in how they pursue the topic

In sum:

• do the readings
• write weekly AVF posts
• start discussion one week
• plan the readings for and begin a class with a presentation
• write a final essay
• participate

A guide to AVF will be distributed in class.

Week 1 9/2	Introduction, syllabus, sign-ups
Week 2 9/9	Storey, 1-71; Leavis, Macdonald, Williams, Hall & Whannel (Res. don't worry, 39 pp.)
Week 3 9/16	Horkheimer & Adorno, "The Culture Industry," Adorno, "The Stars Come Down to Earth" (Res.)
Week 4 9/23	Storey, 101-34; Hebdige, Subculture Viewing: Quadrophenia
Week 5 9/30	No class, Yom Kippur. Meeting to be rescheduled. Huyssen, "Mass Culture as Woman" (Res.)
Week 6 10/7	Bordieu, "The Aristocracy of Culture" and Radway, "Mail-Order Culture and Its Critics: The Book-of-the-Month Club, Commodification and Consumption, and the Problem of Cultural Authority" (Res.)
Week 7 10/14	Case Study #1: Screen Violence Clover, from Men, Women, and Chainsaws Wood, "An Introduction to the American Horror Film" Viewing: TBA
	Fall Break
Week 8 10/28	Case Study #2: Photography Readings TBA
Week 9 11/4	Presentation
Week 10 11/11	Presentation
Week 11 11/18	Presentation
Week 12 11/25	Presentation
Week 13 12/1	Presentation
Week 14 12/9	Last Class