Fall 2025 Cultural Studies Courses
CULS-C 601: Introduction to Cultural Studies
Readings in Literature and Critical Theory
- Registration Information: CULS-C601-0001 (#34465)
- Meeting Information: MW 11:10AM-12:25PM in PV A203
- Joint Listed with: ENG-657
- Instructor: Rebekah Sheldon
- Course Description: This is a course in the history, present, and future of Cultural Studies. In the first part of the course, we will trace the emergence of Cultural Studies as a field and watch its establishment as a method of study through reading key monographs and through encounters with influential collections and readers. We will consider how the field synthesized ideas from other discipline and what was unique to Cultural Studies. The second part of the course will be concerned with the dissemination of Cultural Studies methods into adjacent scholarly subfields, potentially including queer theory, postcolonial studies, race and ethnicity, science studies, performance studies, media studies, and indigenous studies. In the final part of the course, we will think about how Cultural Studies methods are practiced across disciplines today and how we would like to take up and shift the field in our own future research and writing. In historicizing Cultural Studies, we will also pose questions about disciplinary formations, the relationship between field imaginaries and larger historical forces, and the role of the scholarly writing responding in opposition to the operations of power. Assessment will be based on two short and one long essay written across the semester.
CULS-C 701: Special Topics in Cultural Studies
Im/Possible Futures? Comedy after the End of Tragedy
- Registration Information: CULS-C701-0001 (#34125)
- Meeting Information: Th 5:30PM-7:45PM in BH 015
- Joint Listed with: GER-G579
- Instructor: Teresa Kovacs
- Course Description:
- Tragedy has served as a model for the conditions of our societies. From Friedrich Nietzsche to Walter Benjamin, from Hans-Thies Lehmann to Terry Eagleton, scholars have reflected on the (in)ability of modern societies for tragic experience, often suggesting that we find ourselves in post-tragic times. Considering this supposed death of tragedy, Thies-Lehmann asserts: “the future of tragedy is comedy.” Although the turn to the comic has been repeatedly heralded by scholars, the comic is still marginalized as a model for the self-understanding of the individual, society at large, and the planetary.
This class will turn to the comedic mode and test it as a model for reflecting on the conditions of life in an age marked by climate catastrophe, late capitalism, struggling democracies, etc. Understanding comedy and tragedy not merely as genres, but as ways of living and being, we will work through theatrical, literary, and cinematic comic traditions of the 20thand 21st century (from Brecht to Beckett, from the avant-garde to Pasolini, from the circus to Spike Lee) and read them with, through, and against theories and philosophies of comedy (e.g. Hegel, Nietzsche, Freud, Benjamin, Agamben, Zupančič); always keeping historical traditions of comedy in mind (e.g. Ancient Greek comedy, commedia dell’arte).
Although the class will introduce selected theories and materials, students are invited to bring their own materials and suggest texts that they would like to read through the suggested lens. This need not be limited to contemporary theatre, film and literature, but we can discuss a wide range of texts from different cultural contexts, historical moments, and different media and artforms.
Democracy, Populism, Movements
- Registration Information: CULS-C701-0002 (#34229)
- Meeting Information: W 11:10-2:10 in BH338
- Joint Listed with: ENG-R770
- Instructor: Freya Thimsen
- Course Description:
- This course will address the question of which theoretical, conceptual, and methodological approaches are appropriate for studying movement rhetorics. Theories and methods for research are often selected based on their currency, rigor, and explanatory force. Social and political movements, however, often have ways of analyzing and explaining their own activities according to humanistic theoretical influences. The space between scholarly explanation and political inspiration has required research on movement politics to be increasingly self-reflexive about its methodology and the political and social locations of academics writing about movements. This course will introduce examples of research on contemporary North American movements that attempt —and do not attempt—to substantially integrate the theoretical perspectives of the movement actors themselves. How do these choices about theoretical frameworks shape the methodological decisions of researchers studying movements? To what extent do performance-based approaches to movement rhetoric facilitate the inclusion of theoretical influences that motivate and structure movement politics? We will compare how the concepts such as publics, democracy, hegemony, and decoloniality shape the study of movements.
Genre in East Asian Film and Media
- Registration Information: CULS-C701-0003 (#34466)
- Meeting Information: W10:25am-1:25PM in BH123
- Joint Listed with: EALC-E600
- Instructor: Hannah Airriess
- Course Description:
- This course examines popular genre in East Asian cinema. Assigning generic categories to films we watch is a common way to make sense of the narrative structure, visual style, and expectations of the text. How do we define genre? How do generic typologies emerge and develop over time? Are genres dictated by industrial standards, audience responses, retrospective theorizing, or by other means?
We will discuss different methodological approaches to the study of genre, from 1970s genre studies to contemporary reexaminations of genre theory. We will examine how genre develops specific to the film industrial circumstances of the national cinemas of East Asia. This entails asking how categories such as comedy or the musical take on characteristics specific to historical and cultural contexts of different regions and eras, as well as the formation of shorter-lived generic cycles, such as Japan's shoshimin (petit bourgeoisie) genre. We will also analyze the transnational circulation of genres such as wuxia, melodrama, and horror.
- This course examines popular genre in East Asian cinema. Assigning generic categories to films we watch is a common way to make sense of the narrative structure, visual style, and expectations of the text. How do we define genre? How do generic typologies emerge and develop over time? Are genres dictated by industrial standards, audience responses, retrospective theorizing, or by other means?
The Politics of Digital Media Technologies
- Registration Information: CULS-C701-0004 (#34467)
- Meeting Information: Th 12:45PM-3:15PM in FF017
- Joint Listed with: MSCH-C792
- Instructor: Rachel Plotnik
- Course Description:
- Digital media technologies are inevitably freighted with politics, as Internet platforms and applications function as crystallizations of society and culture. This course thinks about those politics related to pressing questions of the contemporary moment around algorithms, data ethics, content moderation, labor practices, social movements, etc., with a particular emphasis on critical/cultural studies and attention to race, gender, sexuality, and class. Moving through different thematic units, the class will offer students theoretical and methodological frameworks for interrogating digital media technologies. Rather than focusing solely on media content and messages, it especially considers the material infrastructures, bodies, and practices that make such media possible. The course will be of interest to students who want to 1) make better sense of the digital landscape as a topic of study through humanistic inquiry; and 2) develop scholarly interventions into these timely debates.
Introduction to African Film Studies
- Registration Information: CULS-C701-0005 (#34468)
- Meeting Information: W 4:00PM-6:30PM in BH315
- Joint Listed with: FRIT-F825
- Instructor: Vincent Bouchard
- Course Description:
- This seminar offers students the unique opportunity to explore African cinemas, the cultures they originated from, and a series of research techniques developed in the humanities: Film, Cultural, Postcolonial Studies, and beyond. Starting with a series of lectures as an introduction on African history, cultures, and cinemas, we will then study the precise terminology which will allow us to further question the relational complexities between African cultures, social or geopolitical issues, and technical configurations. We will also experiment with various techniques related to the field of archival research. Finally, we will envision the best practices for teaching the multifaceted & nuanced subjects linked to African Cinemas, such as gender or race representation, subaltern studies, and foreign cultures. No prior background in African or Film studies required.
Texts in French or English, taught in English, with discussions in French and/or English.
- This seminar offers students the unique opportunity to explore African cinemas, the cultures they originated from, and a series of research techniques developed in the humanities: Film, Cultural, Postcolonial Studies, and beyond. Starting with a series of lectures as an introduction on African history, cultures, and cinemas, we will then study the precise terminology which will allow us to further question the relational complexities between African cultures, social or geopolitical issues, and technical configurations. We will also experiment with various techniques related to the field of archival research. Finally, we will envision the best practices for teaching the multifaceted & nuanced subjects linked to African Cinemas, such as gender or race representation, subaltern studies, and foreign cultures. No prior background in African or Film studies required.