32103
Seminar
WiSe 12/13: In Makeovers We Trust: Popular Narratives of Reinvention in American Culture
Kathryn Schweishelm
Comments
Over the past decade American television has seen a dramatic increase in programming that features some form of the "makeover" as its central narrative device. From one perspective, this is nothing new: the concept of reinvention, of positive change made possible through one’s dedicated efforts, lies at the core of the American Dream and is an ideal that has long held powerful sway in the popular imagination. At the same time, many scholars argue that the makeover’s prevalence at this particular moment in history speaks to the types of values that are privileged and foregrounded in an increasingly neoliberal national context. In this seminar we will critically examine these popular fantasies of self-transformation over time in order to understand their promise and pleasures as well as their ideological power and utility. Beginning with a brief discussion of the roots of this ideal, we will move on to evaluate its expression in a variety of mass-mediated texts reaching as far back as the 1950s. These will include film and literature, but because television represents one of the oldest and widest-reaching mediums in which the makeover has consistently figured, its products - from Queen for a Day to Queer Eye for the Straight Guy will receive special emphasis. Throughout the seminar we will reflect on how these desires for self-creation intersect with hegemonic notions of class, gender, race, sexuality, and embodiment, and in so doing explore the broader tension between agency and domination that overarches the field of cultural studies. close
16 Class schedule
Regular appointments
Thu, 2012-10-18 14:00 - 16:00
Thu, 2012-10-25 14:00 - 16:00
Thu, 2012-11-01 14:00 - 16:00
Thu, 2012-11-08 14:00 - 16:00
Thu, 2012-11-15 14:00 - 16:00
Thu, 2012-11-22 14:00 - 16:00
Thu, 2012-11-29 14:00 - 16:00
Thu, 2012-12-06 14:00 - 16:00
Thu, 2012-12-13 14:00 - 16:00
Thu, 2012-12-20 14:00 - 16:00
Thu, 2013-01-10 14:00 - 16:00
Thu, 2013-01-17 14:00 - 16:00
Thu, 2013-01-24 14:00 - 16:00
Thu, 2013-01-31 14:00 - 16:00
Thu, 2013-02-07 14:00 - 16:00
Thu, 2013-02-14 14:00 - 16:00