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An introduction to Cultural Studies, emphasising aspects of the field that are most pertinent to English Studies: the textuality of culture, cultural history, and cultural value and taste.
This course is an introduction to Cultural Studies. The focus is on the textuality and readability of culture, looking at how our everyday life is a constant exercise in encoding and decoding our cultural environment, including elements that are commonly thought to be ‘natural’. While the course reads many different types of cultural ‘texts’ – including television programmes, films, advertising campaigns, theatrical performances, print publications, websites, museums, zoos and tourist enterprises – it does so with the aim of explaining in accessible ways the theories and concepts that characterize cultural studies as a field.Topics for 2018 include the following: how to ‘read’ culture; ideology; nature and culture; sex and gender; subculture; digital culture; environments and ‘things’; humans and (other) animals; extinction and survival; popular culture; good taste and bad taste; and sentiment and nostalgia.(Image: "Mona" by Incase, licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0.)
In this course you will learn:awareness of the ways in which cultural texts may be produced and received in different times and places;knowledge of the debates surrounding competing notions of ‘culture’, ‘cultural value’ and ‘taste’;improved capacity to think about the processes by which cultural phenomena carry the values and anxieties of the societies from which they emerge;understanding and ability to make use of various concepts and methods integral to cultural studies analysis.
ENGL132
Erin Harrington
Philip Armstrong
All readings will be provided online.
Library portal
Domestic fee $746.00
International fee $3,038.00
* All fees are inclusive of NZ GST or any equivalent overseas tax, and do not include any programme level discount or additional course-related expenses.
For further information see Humanities .