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