ENGL 439 - Seminar in Cultural Studies

3 Credits

Spring
Prerequisite(s): ENGL 102; and either ENGL 213, 250, 253, 254, 283, 333, OR 437; or ART 407; or Permission of Instructor.  This course explores the role of art in mass culture using cultural critique as our primary critical orientation. We will investigate the dialectical relationship between art (literature, film, music, and other art forms) and technology, capitalism, bureaucracy, politics, propaganda, production and consumption, and other components of contemporary lived experience. The concept of mass culture will be weighed against other cultural studies conceptualizations such as high culture, pop culture, folk culture, oppositional art, and other modes of understanding the ways in which material practices and ideologies play a role in how art is theorized, produced, and consumed. 

  Lecture