COMM 373 | Critical Cultural Theory

This course introduces students to the methodological and theoretical approaches of cultural studies and does so with attention to both the interrelationships of race, gender, and class as well as the contemporary politics of social justice. Although this course is, in general, not canonical in its orientation, the suggested readings do point students toward some key scholarship in cultural studies. Beyond seeing cultural studies, as traditionally viewed by academics, as developing out of Western academic critiques of culture and philosophy, this course examines the multiple locations, and politics of these locations, that gave rise to cultural studies. The course has many goals: to introduce the nascent field of cultural studies scholarship, to encourage analysis of the 'politics of location' of cultural studies research, to provide a broad understanding of the history of cultural studies, and to help students ground their own perspectives within an area of cultural studies scholarship with particular and particularistic assumptions, perspectives, and approaches.