Thomas Rickert
Office: HEAV 303B
Phone: 494-3719
trickert@purdue.edu

Syllabus

Engl 680C: Cultural Studies®™ and Composition©
Fall 2001                                                                              

Texts:
Required:
Jere Paul Surber-Culture and Critique: An Introduction to the Critical Discourses of Cultural Studies
Sigmund Freud-Civilization and Its Discontents
Friedrich Nietzsche-Genealogy of Morals
Lawrence Grossberg, et al-Cultural Studies
Slavoj Zizek-The Sublime Object of Ideology
James Berlin-Rhetorics, Poetics, and Cultures
Karen Fitts and Alan France-Left Margins: Cultural Studies and Composition Pedagogy
Bill Readings-The University in Ruins

Course Packet:
Includes selections from: Karl Marx, Michel Foucault, Theodor Adorno, Stuart Hall, Lawrence Grossberg, Meaghan Morris, Laura Kipnis, Gayatri Spivak, Jean Baudrillard, Jodi Dean, Geoffrey Sirc, Robert Miklitsch, Stephen North, Linda Brodkey, Mark Clark, Patricia Harkin, Henry Giroux, Victor Vitanza, Maxine Hairston, and Julie Drew.

Online:
Horkheimer and Adorno-"The Culture Industry"
Situationist International (Guy Debord)
Thomas Frank-"Why Johnny Can't Dissent" (.pdf file)
Donna Haraway-"A Cyborg Manifesto"
Various-Teaching Writing for Social Change
Victor Vitanza-"The Wasteland Grows"
Geoffrey Sirc-"Virtual Urbanism" (.pdf file)
Barry Faulk-"Tracing Lipstick Traces" (.pdf file)

Recommended:
Raymond Williams-Keywords
Ben Agger-Cultural Studies as Critical Theory
Jean Baudrillard-Simulations
Richard Johnson, “What is Cultural Studies Anyway?”

Objectives:
We can think of Cultural Studies as a series of interrelated orientations directed towards:
a) theorizing (what culture is, what it's parameters are, how it affects us/we affect it, etc.)
b) reading (what is happening in culture, what sense we are to make of it)
c) diagnosing (what is right or wrong, good or bad, healthy or sick-and etc.-in culture)
d) politicizing (re/creating conditions for better futures, greater participation, more liberty)
e) responding (formulating and initiating actions)

This course will be interested (and, of course, “interested” is a loaded term in cultural studies) in exploring these various orientations as they have emerged throughout 19th/20th C. theoretical work on culture. Our class approach to this material will focus on reading selected primary texts, with Surber providing commentary and filling in background. With so much material to be covered, we will necessarily be excluding much that is important (Barthes is particularly missed!) and neglecting to read each figure as thoroughly as we might want. For these reasons, this course, insofar as it wants to present background material and readings in cultural studies, should properly be considered introductory.

Rhetoric and Composition has been strongly influenced by cultural studies, and the last part of the course will examine how aspects of cultural studies apply to writing and writing pedagogy. What does a cultural studies-influenced writing classroom look like? What does it ask of its students, and what kinds of subjects and writings will it produce? At the very end of the course, we will turn to Bill Readings’ diagnosis of the university in order to ask larger questions about the role of cultural studies in the university, and indeed, about the role of a humanities education for proto-globalized inhabitants of the transnational, late capital spectacle. These questions have urgent bearing on how we are to conceive of writing and writing pedagogy--in terms of values, purposes, and forms--in the new millennium.

Assignments:
Your work for the course will consist of 4 short papers of 5-6 pages each. Papers will be turned in a rolling basis four times over the course of the semester. The schedule, below, indicates the window for the papers. Each paper will discuss at least two of the theoretical approaches we covered in that four week period. There will be a handout with more specific instructions regarding the form and direction your essays should take.

Note: Paper topics must be approved by me before you hand them in.

Late Work: I will accept late work if you discuss the problem with me beforehand, prior to the due date.

Attendance:
This class is not a lecture course; accordingly, your attendance and participation is crucial not only for you personally, but for everyone in the class. I will expect you not to miss class. However, if a problem does arise that requires your absence, please discuss the matter with me beforehand to see if arrangements can be made.

Disability:
If you have a disability that requires special accommodations, please see me privately within the first week of class to arrange such accommodations

Tentative Schedule of Event-Scenes:

Aug. 20-Wk. 1: In Through the Out Door

  • Introductions
  • Entertainment! X-Files, "Jose Chung's From Outer Space"
  • Surber, Culture and Critique, 1-47

Aug. 27-Wk. 2:  Evil Empire--Marx and the Frankfurters

  • Marx (packet)
  • Surber, 67-88
  • Horkheimer and Adorno, "The Culture Industry" (online)
  • Adorno, "Subject and Object" (packet)
  • Surber, 128-52

Sep. 3-Wk. 3: NO CLASS--Labor Day
Check Your Head--Culture on the Couch with Siggie

  • Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents
  • Surber, 95-125

Sep. 10-Wk. 4: Metaphysical Graffiti--Doing Values with Fast Freddie

  • Nietzsche, Genealogy of Morals
  • Surber, 48-65; 183-90

Sep. 17-Wk. 5: All That You Left Behind--The SI and the Birmingham School
Paper#1 Due

  • Debord, Society of the Spectacle, Chs. 1-2, 8 (online--see above)
  • Debord, "Theory of the Dérive"; "Detournement as Negation and Prelude" (online--see above)
  • Hall, "The Emergence of Cultural Studies" (packet)
  • Grossberg, "The Formations of Cultural Studies" (packet)
  • Morris, "Banality in Cultural Studies" (packet)
  • Surber, 233-53
  • Johnson, “What is Cultural Studies Anyway?” (recommended) (packet)

Sep. 24-Wk. 6: Heaven or Las Vegas?--First American Cultural Studies Conference (pt. 1)

  • Grossberg, et al, Cultural Studies, selections TBA
  • Surber, 155-80

Oct. 1-Wk. 7: Delight in Disorder--The Postmodern Drift

  • Foucault-"Nietzsche, Genealogy, History"; "Nietzsche, Freud, Marx"
  • Baudrillard-"After the Orgy"; "Simulacra and Simulation" (packet)
  • Surber, 190-229

Oct. 8-Wk. 8: NO CLASS--Fall Break
Power, Corruption, and Lies--First American Cultural Studies Conference (pt. 2)
Paper#2  Due

  • Grossberg, et al, Cultural Studies, selections TBA
  • Surber, 253-65

Oct. 15-Wk. 9: Trans-Europe Express--Cultural Intermissions

  • Haraway, "A Cyborg Manifesto" (online--see above)
  • Kipnis, Marx: The Video (packet)
  • Spivak, "Scattered Speculations on the Question of Cultural Studies" (packet)
  • Faulk, "Tracing Lipstick Traces" (.pdf)
  • Dean, Aliens in America (selections) (packet)

Oct. 22-Wk. 10: Is This Desire?--Psycho-Marxism

  • Zizek, The Sublime Object of Ideology

Oct. 29-Wk. 11: Pre-Millennium Tension--Cultural Studies and Berlin

  • Berlin, Rhetorics, Poetics, and Cultures

Nov. 5-Wk. 12: Leftism--Cultural Studies/Composition Pedagogies
Paper#3  Due

  • Fitts and France, Left Margins

Nov. 12-Wk. 13: The Action is Go--Post-Critical Cultural Studies Pedagogies

    • Sirc, "Never Mind the Tagmemics" (packet); "Virtual Urbanism" (.pdf)
    • Saper, "On Cultural Invention" (packet)
    • Miklitsch, "Punk Pedagogy, or Performing Contradiction" (packet)
    • Vitanza, "Hermeneutics of Abandonment" (packet)

Nov. 19-Wk. 14: Won't Get Fooled Again--Re/Marking the Troubles at Texas

  • Hairston, "Diversity, Ideology, and Teaching Writing" (packet)
  • North, "Rhetoric, Responsibility, and 'The Language of the Left'" (packet)
  • Brodkey, "Making a Federal Case out of Difference" and responses by Clark and Harkin (packet)

Nov. 26-Wk. 15: Ultramega OK--Cynicism and (Resisting!?) Pomo Malaise®

  • Drew, "(Teaching) Writing: Composition, Cultural Studies, Production" (packet)
  • Vitanza, "The Wasteland Grows" (online--see above)
  • Reader Responses, Drew and Vitanza (packet)
  • Frank, "Why Johnny Can't Dissent" (online--see above)
  • Various, "Teaching Writing for Social Change" (online--see above)
  • Giroux, “Cultural Studies and the Culture of Politics” (recommended) (packet)

Dec. 3-Wk. 16: The Biz--Whither Cultural Studies in the University of Excellence?
Paper#4  Due

  • Readings, The University in Ruins