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Basic Issues in Intercultural Studies Syllabus (Theory Course)

Class Information: Term 2, 2015/16 Tuesday, 2:30pm-5:15pm

CULS 5211A Basic Issues in Intercultural Studies II Instructor: Teaching Assistant: Dr. Christopher B. Patterson Winnie Chan email@email.com winniechanht@cuhk.edu.hk Class Information: Term 2, 2015/16 Tuesday, 2:30pm-5:15pm The Chinese University of Hong Kong Rm 208, Lee Shau Kee Building Course Description This course expands your abilities in cultural studies by focusing on three units: frameworks, positions, and analytic approaches. As cultural studies is a vast and growing field, each unit will consider different vantage points, and readings will vary widely in genre (films, video games, comics) and in region (Europe, America, Southeast Asia). In each week we will hone our analysis to ask how cultural texts reflect, refract and resist modes of transnational domination and imperial attitudes. This means a focus on how artists and producers from various marginalized positions (based on race, class, nation sex, and gender) respond to dominant ideologies (capitalism, militarism, imperialism). In turn, students will practice critical thinking on the texts that we read, as well as on their own identities, positions and cultures. Learning Outcomes Upon course completion, students should be able to demonstrate an ability to determine dominant cultural assumptions, to understand marginalized positions, and to analyze a wide array of cultural texts. By engaging with theory, scholarship and art, students will prove their abilities through advancement in paper writing, discussion and presentation skills, and collaboration. Students should also understand diverse ways of interpreting a text, and recognize their own cultural ways of seeing within a spectrum of cultures and discourses. Course Components The work for this course is designed to keep you reading and writing weekly. Class time will consist of lectures, small-group and class-wide discussions, analysis workshops, peer review, group conferences, and presentations. We will also have a field trip, and web-based activities. All lectures and discussions will be in English. The Professor reserves the right to change this syllabus throughout this course. Assessment Criteria / Grading Breakdown 25% In Class Participation 10% In-Class Performance and Discussion Your thoughtful participation in class will count positively towards your performance grade. We will often have in-class writing and group work, and students are expected to share their thoughts on the weekly readings, and to perform analyses of everyday texts using the methods introduced in class. This grade rewards those who take leadership roles and contribute consistently. 15% Class Presentations With an assigned group, you will perform a 15-20 minute class presentation on the readings for the week, as well as host a 15 minute class discussion. These presentations will attempt to use the ideas from the readings to analyze texts that the students are already familiar with. This includes television, comics, fashion, music, etc. 15% Unit One Quiz At the end of the first four week unit, we will have a five question quiz to assess students’ understanding of texts as well as their critical analysis skills. Four questions will be on the specific reading, while one will ask them to analyze a particular piece of art using the methods in class. 30% Research Paper The research paper, due at the end of Unit 2, will be 2,000-2,500 words in MLA style with a Works Cited page. Papers will be graded on their critical thinking, their subject knowledge, their use of texts, their cohesion, and their use of MLA style. 30% Group Online Resource Project For Unit 3, you will collaborate with a group to create an online resource focusing on a single trope, theme or figure in multiple (three or more) types of texts, such as: films, television, comics, advertising, digital texts, video games, graffiti, smart phone apps, or others. Using a host site (like wordpress.com), you will create a website that visitors can use to have a comprehensive overview of your topic. Besides presenting analyses of multiple texts, you will use online resources (hyperlinks, infographs, videos, podcasts) and will produce an original, creative element (a video, mechanima, comic, song, podcast). Topic Examples: "The Superhero in Film, Television, and Smartphone Apps" "The Hong Kong Umbrella Movement in Songs, Graffiti, and Art" "Tourism in Southeast Asia, as Seen in Advertisements, Video Games, and Pamphlets" "Fan-created Star Wars Stories in mechanime, memes, and online fiction" Requirements: * Use of 5 different texts from the course (or one per group member) * 1,000 words of analysis from each group member * Use of lectures and presentations from the course to construct analyses. * Use of digital tools (infograms, maps, podcasts, hyperlinks, videos) * Original, creative component (a song, comic, video, etc.) * 5-10 minute in-class presentations on your projects (due last week of class) Course Calendar Unit 1 - Ideology, Culture, Capital Week 1, January 12th – Introduction: Ideology and Education Required Reading Dick Hebdige’s “From Culture to Hegemony.” In The Cultural Studies Reader. London: Routledge, 1993. Print. 357-367. (skim) Althusser, Louis. "Ideology and ideological state apparatuses (notes towards an investigation)." The anthropology of the state: A reader (2006): 86-111. Suggested Reading Freire, Paulo. “Education as the Practice of Freedom.” In Education for Critical Consciousness. New York: Seabury Press, 1973. Print. 3-78 Gramsci, Antonio. “The Intellectual” and “On Education” in Selections from the Prison Notebooks. Trans Quentin Hoare and Geoffrey Nowell Smith. London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1971. Print.131-190 Week 2 - January 19th – Author, Audience, Text Required Reading Barthes, Roland. “The Death of the Author.” In Image, Music, Text. London: Fontana, 1977. (skim) Barthes, Roland. The Pleasure of the Text. New York: Hill and Wang, 1975. Print. 1-22. Suggested Reading (In its entirety) Barthes, Roland. The Pleasure of the Text. New York: Hill and Wang, 1975. Print. 1-22. Michel, Foucault. "What is an Author?" The Foucault Reader, New York: Pantheon Books (1984). Chandler, Daniel. "An Introduction to Genre Theory." Media and Communication Studies, http://www. aber. ac. uk/media/Documents/intgenre/intgenre1. html (1997). Web. Week 3 - January 26th – Genealogy and the Subject Required Reading Williams, Raymond. “Dominant, Residual, Emergent,” “Structures of Feeling,” and “Alignment and Commitment” in Marxism and Literature Oxford England: Oxford University Press, 1977. Print. Suggested Reading Foucault, Michel. “Nietzsche, genealogy, history.” In The Foucault Reader. New York: Pantheon Books, 1984. Print. Nietzsche, Friedrich W, and Douglas Smith. On the Genealogy of Morals: A Polemic. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996. Internet resource. Week 4 - February 2nd - Postmodernism and Consumption Required Readings Borges, J L. "Of Exactitude in Science." Quaderns Barcelona Collegi D Arquitectes De Catalunya. (2002): 12. Print. (Selections) Baudrillard, Jean. Simulacra and simulation. University of Michigan press, 1994. Suggested Reading (In its entirety) Baudrillard, Jean. Simulacra and simulation. University of Michigan press, 1994. Baudrillard, Jean. America. London: Verso, 1989. Print. Foucault, Michel. “Chapter Nine – American Neo-Liberalism” in The Birth of Biopolitics: Lectures at the Collège De France, 1978-79. Basingstoke [England: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008. Print. Unit #1 Quiz No Class Feb 9 – Lunar New Year Unit 2 - Race, Ethnicity, Gender Week 5  - February 16th – Ethnicity (Group 1 Presenting) Required Reading Hall, Stuart. "Gramsci’s Relevance for the Study of Race and Ethnicity." Journal of Communication Inquiry 10.2 (1986): 5-27. (skim) Gramsci, Antonio. "Hegemony, relations of force, historical bloc," in An Antonio Gramsci Reader: Selected Writings, 1916-1935. New York: Schocken Books, 1988. Suggested Reading Hall, Stuart. "Old and New Identities, Old and new ethnicities.” In Culture, Globalization and the World-System: Contemporary Conditions for the Representation of Identity. Ed. Anthony D. King. Vol. 3. U of Minnesota Press, 1991. Nakamura, Lisa. "Race in/for cyberspace: Identity tourism and racial passing on the Internet." Works and Days 25.26 (1995): 13. Week 6 - February 23rd – Post-colonialism (Group 2 Presenting) Required Reading Dan Carlin’s “Globalization Unto Death” Hardcore History. Feb 27 2010. http://www.dancarlin.com/product/hardcore-history-32-globalization-unto-death/ accessed June 12 2015. Podcast. Said, Edward. “Orientalism.” In The Post-Colonial Studies Reader. Ed Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths, and Helen Tiffin. London: Routledge, 1995. Print. Suggested Reading Said, Edward. “Overlapping Territories, Intertwined Histories” in Culture and Imperialism. New York: Vintage Books, 1994. Print. Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. “Can the Subaltern Speak?” In Cary Nelson and Lawrence Grossberg (eds.) Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture. Basingstoke: Macmillan Education, 1988. pp. 271-313. Week 7 - March 1st – Gender (Group 3 Presenting) Required Reading Haraway, Donna. “A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century'." The Cybercultures Reader, London: Routledge, 2000. Suggested Reading Donna Haraway, "The Biopolitics of Postmodern Bodies," In Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature. New York: Routledge, 1991. Print. 203-230. Modern Girl Around the World Research Group. “Modern Girl as Heuristic Device: collaboration, connective comparison, multidirectional citation.” In The Modern Girl Around the World: Consumption, Modernity, and Globalization. Durham: Duke University Press, 2008. Print. Week 8 - March 8th - (Group 4 Presenting) Bring Research Paper Draft to class Required Reading Halberstam, Judith. “Introduction” and “Dude, where's my phallus? forgetting, losing, looping.” In The Queer Art of Failure. Durham: Duke University Press, 2011. Print. Suggested Reading Butler, Judith. “Critically Queer” Bodies That Matter. New York and London: Routledge, 1993. 223-242. Berlant, Lauren and Michael Warner, “Sex in Public” Critical Inquiry 24. Winter, 1998: 547-566. Gopinath, Gayatri. “Local sites/global contexts : the transnational trajectories of fire and "The quilt".” In Impossible Desires: Queer Diasporas and South Asian Public Cultures. Durham: Duke University Press, 2005. Print. Research Paper Due Friday, March 11th Unit 3: Technology, Visual and Digital Cultures Week 9 - March 15th - Technology of Film (Group 5 Presenting) Required Reading Benjamin, Walter. "The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility (First Version)." Grey Room 39 (2010): 11-37. Suggested Reading Hagedorn, Jessica. "Asian women in film: No joy, no luck." Ms. Magazine 4.4 (1994): 74-79. hooks, bell. “The Oppositional Gaze: Black Female Spectators.” In Critical Theory: A Reader for Literary and Cultural Studies. Ed. Robert Dale Parker. New York: Oxford UP, 2012. Shih, Shu-mei. "Globalization and minoritization: Ang Lee and the politics of flexibility." New Formations: A Journal of Culture/Theory/Politics 40 (2000): 86-101. Week 10 - March 22nd - Tourism and Photography (Group 6 Presenting) Watch: Ways of Seeing by John Berger Required Reading Crawshaw, Carol, and John Urry. "Tourism and the photographic eye." Touring cultures: Transformations of travel and theory (1997): 176-95. Suggested Reading Gonzalez, Vernadette V. “Introduction: military-tourism partnerships in Hawai'i and the Philippines”  Securing Paradise: Tourism and Militarism in Hawai'i and the Philippines. , 2013. Print. Ritzer, George, and Allan Liska. "McDisneyization” and “Post-Tourism”: complementary perspectives on contemporary tourism." Touring cultures: Transformations of travel and theory (1997): 96-109. Week 11 - March 29th – Comics and Politics (Group 7 Presenting) Required Reading McCloud, Scott. “The Vocabulary of Comics,” in Understanding comics: The invisible art. New York: Harper, 1990. Vaughan, Brian K., Niko Henrichon, and Todd Klein. Pride of Baghdad. DC Comics, 2006. Suggested Reading McCloud, Scott. Understanding Comics: The invisible art. New York: Harper, 1990. Yang, Gene L, and Lark Pien. American Born Chinese. New York: First Second, 2006. Print. Week 12 - April 5th – Global Hip Hop (Group 8 Presenting) Required Reading McBride, James. "Hip-hop Planet." National Geographic. 211.4 (2007): 100. Print. Kelley, Robin DG. "Looking for the “Real” Nigga." That's the Joint!: The Hip-hop Studies Reader (2004): 119. Suggested Reading Pennycook, Alastair. "Language, localization, and the real: Hip-hop and the global spread of authenticity." Journal of Language, Identity, and Education 6.2 (2007): 101-115. Baker, Geoffrey. "Preachers, Gangsters, Pranksters: Mc Solaar and Hip-Hop As Overt and Covert Revolt." The Journal of Popular Culture. 44.2 (2011): 233-255. Print. Week 13 - April 12th – Video Games and Militarism (All Group Project Presentations) Required Reading Amanda Phillips, “Shooting to Kill: Headshots, Twitch Reflexes, and the Mechropolitics of Video Games” Games and Culture, October 2015, 4. Marcus Schulzke, "Rethinking Military Gaming: America's Army and Its Critics" Games and Culture 8.2, February 2013, 59-76. Suggested Reading Mbembe, J-A., and Libby Meintjes. "Necropolitics." Public culture 15.1 (2003): 11-40. Olli Tapio Leino, “Death Loop as a Feature,” Game Studies 12.2 December 2012, http://gamestudies.org/1202/articles/death_loop_as_a_feature (accessed June 29, 2015). Puar, Jasbir K., and Amit Rai. "Monster, terrorist, fag: The war on terrorism and the production of docile patriots." Social text 20.3 (2002): 117-148. Group Projects Due Friday April 22nd Feedback for Evaluation End-of-term university course evaluation will be conducted in class. Students’ comments and feedback on the course through e-mails or personal meeting with the instructor are always welcomed. Honesty in Academic Work: A Guide for Students and Teachers The Chinese University of Hong Kong places very high importance on honesty in academic work submitted by students, and adopts a policy of zero tolerance on cheating and plagiarism. Any related offence will lead to disciplinary action including termination of studies at the University. All student assignments in undergraduate and postgraduate programmes should be submitted via VeriGuide with effect from September 2008: https://academic.veriguide.org/academic/login_CUHK.jspx Although cases of cheating or plagiarism are rare at the University, everyone should make himself/herself familiar with the content of this website and thereby help avoid any practice that would not be acceptable. Section 1 What is plagiarism http://www.cuhk.edu.hk/policy/academichonesty/Eng_htm_files_(2013-14)/p01.htm Section 2 Proper use of source material http://www.cuhk.edu.hk/policy/academichonesty/Eng_htm_files_(2013-14)/p02.htm Section 3 Citation styles http://www.cuhk.edu.hk/policy/academichonesty/Eng_htm_files_(2013-14)/p03.htm Section 4 Plagiarism and copyright violation http://www.cuhk.edu.hk/policy/academichonesty/Eng_htm_files_(2013-14)/p04.htm Section 5 CUHK regulations on honesty in academic work http://www.cuhk.edu.hk/policy/academichonesty/Eng_htm_files_(2013-14)/p05.htm Section 6 CUHK disciplinary guidelines and procedures http://www.cuhk.edu.hk/policy/academichonesty/Eng_htm_files_(2013-14)/p06.htm Section 7 Guide for teachers and departments http://www.cuhk.edu.hk/policy/academichonesty/Eng_htm_files_(2013-14)/p07.htm Section 8 Recommended material to be included in course outlines http://www.cuhk.edu.hk/policy/academichonesty/Eng_htm_files_(2013-14)/p08.htm Section 9 Electronic submission of assignments via VeriGuide http://www.cuhk.edu.hk/policy/academichonesty/Eng_htm_files_(2013-14)/p09.htm Section 10 Declaration to be included in assignments http://www.cuhk.edu.hk/policy/academichonesty/Eng_htm_files_(2013-14)/p10.htm