WiSe 18/19: GK-Introduction to Cultural Studies
Lukas Lammers
Kommentar
The term “culture” can refer to Hamlet or Harry Potter, to undercut or underground, to tatoos or totems, to football or fish ’n chips – culture can alternately appear to be highly exclusive or ubiquitous. This lecture prepares students for further studies in the Proseminar and Vertiefungsseminar by discussing central methods and concepts for the analysis of “culture”. We will begin by exploring the comparatively short history of the field, its relation to Literary Studies, and the notion of “culture” at its core. Cultural Studies go beyond the analysis of texts in a narrow sense to consider a wide range of materials and practices. One of the central assumptions that guides such enquiries is that practices, texts, and media do not simply reflect the norms and structures of a given society, but that they effectively produce and maintain them. Cultural Studies are therefore centrally concerned with the constructedness of norms, processes of meaning-making, power structures, and fundamental inequalities. A range of case studies and examples from contemporary culture will allow students to familiarise themselves with key concepts such as ideology, discourse, performativity, and identity. Students can thus assemble a toolkit that will be essential for understanding and critically engaging with materials in the seminars.
The course will be organised as a series of lectures with discussions.
Language: The course will be taught in English (level C1).
Schließen16 Termine
Regelmäßige Termine der Lehrveranstaltung