THE COLLEGE OF THE BAHAMAS

 

COURSE ABBREVIATION & NUMBER

       

E

N

G

 

 

3

2

1

                                                                                                                                                                       

SCHOOL:

English Studies

 

DEPARTMENT:

 Bahamian and Caribbean Cultural Studies 

 

COURSE TITLE:

 Methodologies of Cultural Studies

 

COURSE DESCRIPTION FOR CATALOGUE:

 

This course focuses on methodologies of cultural studies and research design and implementation.  Students learn the variety of disciplinary conceptual and methodological approaches comprising cultural studies work and evaluate and synthesize these approaches in their own research design.  Course is crosslisted with Anthropology and Sociology.

 

PURPOSE OF COURSE:

 

University transfer                               ( X )                                                        External Examination                            (    )

College Diploma or Certificate           (     )                                                        Recreational/General Interest

College Degree                                     ( X )                                                        (non-credit)                                           ( X )

 

PRE-REQUISITE(S):

Third Year Standing or Permission of Chair and/or Coordinator

 

CO-REQUISITE(S):

 None

 

HOURS PER WEEK: 

Lecture

3

Laboratory

 

Seminar/Tutorial

 

 

SEMESTER HOUR CREDITS:

3

 

 

SEQUENTIAL COURSE(S):

None.

 

OTHER  COB COURSES HAVING CONTENT OVERLAP:   None                             

 

 

COURSE DEVELOPED ( X )/REVISED (  )  BY: 

 (1) 

School of English Studies

Date:

 

 (2)

(P. Burkhardt)

Date:

 

 (3)

 

Date:

 

 

APPROVALS:

Head of Department:

_______________________

Date:

___________

 

 

Chair of School:

 

__   _______________________

 

Date

 

___________

 

 

Dean:

 

_______________________

 

Date

 

___________

 

 

 

 

 

 

Academic Board

_______________________

Date

___________

NOTE:

1.       A detailed course description must be attached. This must include course objectives, list of topics covered, prescribed textbooks, reading list, method of assessment, and external examinations which are prepared for in this course.

2.       The course description must be suitable for distribution to students.

3.      Only lecturers/instructors approved by The College will be allowed to teach this course.

COURSE DESCRIPTION

 

This course focuses on methodologies of cultural studies and research design and implementation.  Students learn the variety of disciplinary conceptual and methodological approaches comprising cultural studies work and evaluate and synthesize these approaches in their own research design.  Course is crosslisted with Anthropology and Sociology.

 

COURSE OBJECTIVES

 

Upon successful completion of this course, students will be able to:

 

1.      Employ cultural studies theoretical and methodological frameworks in research into cultural phenomena.

2.      Understand how to study and represent discursive semiotic systems and practices given the interactive nature of cultural creation.

3.      Plan, develop and apply systematic approaches to qualitative investigation and the creation of ethnographic accounts of everyday life.

4.      Evaluate and apply disciplinary and interdisciplinary techniques of data collection, participant observation, field note creation, textual analysis and secondary research.

5.      Evaluate and apply the ethical aspects of cultural studies research as interventions in academic and non-academic discursive fields.

 

 

COURSE CONTENT

 

I.                    Central Concepts in Cultural Studies Approaches

·        Culture as social, signifying practices

·        Semantic systems and discourses

¨      Symbolic and material aspects of discursive systems

·        Culture as process

·        Cultural processes

¨      Representation

¨      Identity

¨      Production

¨      Consumption

¨      Regulation

·        Articulation of cultural processes and relations

·        Ethics

·        Research as discursive intervention in academic and non-academic cultural fields

 

II.                 Cultural Studies Research Methodologies

·        Qualitative research and cultural studies

¨      Phases of qualitative research

¨      Types of ethnographic fieldwork

¨      Using primary and secondary sources

¨      Research / fieldwork notes and documentation

¨      The social construction of representation and classification

¨      The concept of meaning and cultural studies

·        Producing Observations

¨      Scientific research and pragmatic survey

¨      Theoretical framework and method

¨      The factist perspective

¨      The specimen perspective

¨      Emic and etic work

¨      Narrativity and texts

¨      The interaction perspective

·        Analyzing data

¨      Constructing questions

¨      Generalization, patterns and specificity

¨      Interpretation

¨      Validity and rigor

·        Research process

¨      Theoretical framework to local explanation

¨      Local explanation to theoretical ideas

¨      Hypotheses

 

III.               Textual and Social Analysis

·        Textual analysis methodologies and techniques

·        Discursive analysis

·        Textual analysis of literary, linguistic texts

¨      Written and oral traditions

·        Non-written and mixed texts

¨      Auditory texts and soundscapes

¨      Visual texts

-- The gaze

¨      Other senses

·        Ethnography

¨      Ethnographic methodologies and techniques

¨      Observation, participant observation, interviews, surveys

¨      Mapping social relations and interactions

¨      Relations to textual analysis and narrativity

 

IV.              Analysis of Cultural Production, Consumption and Regulation

·        Media industries

¨      Ownership and control

¨      Effects of profit motive

¨      Vertical and horizontal integration

¨      Production processes

¨      Advertising, promotion and distribution as the production of consumption

¨      Consumption

-- Identity, social differentiation

-- Habitus

-- Cultural reception

¨      Commodification

-- Appropriation and resistance

·        Media technologies

¨      Oral media, traditional culture

¨      Technologically mediated communications

¨      Broadcast and multicast media

¨      Hardware and software

¨      New media technologies (internet, listservs, etc.)

·        Museums

·        Analysis of Regulation

·        Public and private spheres

·        Representation, industry and governmental regulation

·        Nationalisms and culture

·        Globalization and culture

 

V.                 The Writing Process

·        Fieldwork as a textual process

·        Macrostructure and microstructure in writing up research

·        Representation, rhetoric and knowledge

·        Persuasion and argumentation

·        Presentation of evidence and warrants

·        Logic and fallacies

·        Objectivity and critique

·        Ethics and the representation of others

·        Politics and knowledge

·        Style, form and disciplinary expectations

 

ASSESSMENT

 

In-Class Reading Quizzes                     10%

Short Essays                                         15%

Proposal                                               10%

Bibliography                                         10%

Methodology and Rationale                  15%

Final Project                                         30%

Participation                                         10%

TOTAL                                               100%

 

REQUIRED TEXTS

 

Alasuutari, P.  (1995).  Researching culture:  Qualitative method and cultural studies.  Thousand Oaks:  Sage.  ISBN 0803978316

du Gay, P., Hall, S., Janes, L. Mackay, H., & Negus, K.  (1997).  Doing cultural studies:  The story of the Sony walkman.  Thousand Oaks:  Sage.  ISBN 0761954023

 

SUPPLEMENTARY READINGS

 

Atkinson, P.  (1990).  The ethnographic imagination:  Textual constructions of reality.  London:  Routledge.

Baldwin, E., Longhurst, B., McCracken, S., Ogburn, M., & Smith, G. (1999).  Introducing cultural studies.  Hemel Hempstead:  Prentice Hall.

Barker, C. (2000).  Cultural studies: Theory and practice.  London: Sage.

Barrow, C., & Reddock, R. (Eds.).  (2001).  Caribbean sociology:  Introductory readings.  Kingston:  Ian Randle.

Berger, P., & Luckmann, T.  (1967).  The social construction of reality:  A treatise in the sociology of knowledge.  Harmondsworth:  Penguin Books.

Bernard, H.  (1988).  Research methods in cultural anthropology.  Newbury Park, CA:  Sage.

Bogdan, R., & Taylor, S.  (1975).  Introduction to qualitative research methods:  A phenomenological approach to the social sciences.  New York:  John Wiley & Sons.

*Brooker, P.  (1998).  Cultural theory:  A glossary.  New York:  Arnold

Brown, R.  (1987).  Society as text:  Essays on rhetoric, reason and reality.  Chicago:  University of Chicago Press.

Brown, R.  (1989).  Social science as civic discourse:  Essays on the invention, legitimation, and uses of social theory.  New York:  Aldine de Gruyter.

Bute, E., & Harmer, H. (Eds.).  (1997).  The black handbook.  Kingston:  Ian Randle.

Clifford, J.  (1988).  The predicament of culture:  Twentieth-century ethnographic literature and art.  Cambridge, MA:  Harvard University Press.

Clifford, J., & Marcus, G.  (1986).  Writing culture:  The poetics and politics of ethnography.  Berkeley, CA:  University of California Press.

Cruz, J., & Lewis, J. (Eds.).  (1994).  Viewing, reading, listening:  Audiences and cultural reception.  Boulder, CO:  Westview Press.

Curran, J., Morley, D., & Walkerdine, V. (Eds.).  (1996).  Cultural studies and communications.  London: Arnold.

Dooley, D.  (1990).  Social research methods (2nd ed.).  Englewood Cliffs, NJ:  Prentice Hall.

During, S. (1999).  The cultural studies reader (2nd ed.).  New York:  Routledge.

Fiske, J.  (1989b).  Reading the popular.  London:  Unwin Hyman.

Fonow, M., & Cook, J. (Eds.).  Beyond methodology:  Feminist scholarship as lived experience.  Bloomington, IN:  Indiana University Press.

Garfinkle, H.  (1984).  Studies in ethnomethodology.  Cambridge:  Polity Press.

Geertz, C.  (1973).  The interpretation of cultures.  New York:  Basic Books.

Geertz, C.  (1983).  Local knowledge:  Further essays in interpretive anthropology.  New York:  Basic Books.

Geertz, C.  (1988).  Works and lives:  The anthropologist as author.  Cambridge:  Polity Press.

Giddens, A, & Turner, J. (Eds.).  (1987).  Social theory today.  Stanford:  Stanford University Press. 

Glaser, B., & Strauss, A.  (1967).  The discovery of grounded theory:  Strategies for qualitative research.  Chicago:  Aldine.

Greimas, A.  (1987).  On meaning:  Selected writings in semiotic theory.  Minneapolis:  University of Minnesota Press.

*Grossberg, L., Nelson, C., & Treichler, P. (Eds.).  (1992).  Cultural studies.  New York: Routledge.

Hall, S.  (Ed.).  (1997).  Representation:  Cultural representations and signifying practices.

Harris, M.  (1980).  Cultural materialism:  The struggle for a science of culture.  New York:  Vintage Books.

Hobsbawm, E., & Ranger, T. (Eds.).  (1983).  The invention of tradition.  Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press.

Hunter, A. (Ed.).  (1990).  The rhetoric of social research understood and believed.  New Brunswick, NJ:  Rutgers University Press.

Marcus, G.  (1998).  Ethnography through thick and thin.  Princeton:  Princeton University Press.

Miller, D.  (1999).  Material cultures.  London:  Routledge.

Moerman, M.  (1988).  Talking culture:  Ethnography and conversation analysis.  Philadelphia:  University of Pennsylvania Press.

Morley, D.  (1992).  Television, audiences and cultural studies.  London:  Routledge.

Mosco, V.  (1996).  The political economy of communication.  Thousand Oaks:  Sage.

Nelson, C., & Grossberg, L. (Eds.).  (1988).  Marxism and the interpretation of culture.  Basingstoke:  Macmillan Education.

Nelson, J., Megill, A., & McCloskey, D. (Eds.).  (1987).  The rhetoric of the human sciences:  Language and argument in scholarship and public affairs.  Madison, WI:  University of Wisconsin Press.

Punter, D. (Ed.).  (1986).  Introduction to cultural studies.  London:  Longman..

Simons, H. (Ed.).  (1990).  The rhetorical turn:  Invention and persuasion in the conduct of inquiry.  Chicago:  University of Chicago Press.

Soja, E.  (1989).  Postmodern geographies.  London:  Verso.

*Storey, J. (Ed.).  (1996).  What is cultural studies?  A reader.  London: Arnold.

Storey, J.  (1997).  An introduction to cultural theory and popular culture (2nd ed).  London: Prentice Hall.

Srauss, A.  (1987).  Qualitative analysis for social scientists.  Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press.

Strauss, A.  (1990).  Basics of qualitative research:  Grounded theory procedures and techniques.  Newbury Park, CA:  Sage.

Watson, C.W. (Ed.).  (1999).  Being there:  Fieldwork in Anthropology.  London:  Pluto Press.

 

 

JOURNALS

 

Canadian Journal of Communications

*The Canadian Journal of African Studies

The Canadian Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Studies           

*Caribbean Geography

Critical Inquiry                                     

Critical Studies in Mass Communications

Cultural Logic                                                  

Cultural Studies   

Culture, Theory and Critique  

International Journal of Cultural Studies

*Journal of Caribbean History

*Journal of Caribbean Studies

Journal of Communication Inquiry

Journal of Eastern Caribbean Studies

Media, Culture and Society

Nepantla

New Left Review

Postmodern Culture

*Small Axe

Social Text

Theory, Culture and Society

Wadabagei

*Yinna

 

Note:  * indicates titles currently held by the COB library.

            Order requests for other titles will be submitted upon approval by the Academic Board.

 

 

WEBSITES

 

http://www.theory.org.uk/                                 Media, Gender, Identity Theory

http://www.popcultures.com/                            Sarah Zupko's Cultural Studies Center

http://www.culturalstudies.net/               The New Cultural Studies Central

http://eng.hss.cmu.edu/theory/               Cultural Studies and Critical Theory Readings

http://vos.ucsb.edu/shuttle/theory.html    Voice of the Shuttle

http://www.tiac.net/users/thaslett/                      Black Cultural Studies Site

http://www.sosig.ac.uk/                         Social Sciences Information Gateway

http://www.geocities.com/Athens/7364/CS_pages_phII.html  The Institute, Cult. Stud. Resources

http://www.uiowa.edu/~commstud/resources/culturalStudies.html  Cultural Studies Resources

http://csf.colorado.edu/mirrors/marxists.org/  Marxists Internet Archive

http://www.towson.edu/~vanfoss/rgc.htm          The Intersection of Sex, Race and Class

http://www.library.cornell.edu/africana/Library/C_Studies.html  Caribbean Studies Reference Sources

http://www.hist.unt.edu/09w-blk4.htm   Caribbean Studies

http://landow.stg.brown.edu/post/caribbean/caribov.html  The Caribbean, A PoCo Overview

http://www.fgcu.edu/csa2001/aboutcsa.html      Caribbean Studies Association

http://www.Caribbean-Reporter.com/               Caribbean Reporter

 

LISTSERVS

 

caribbean-studies@jiscmail.ac.uk                      Caribbean Studies Listserv

cultstud-l@lists.acomp.usf.edu              CULTSTUD-L: A listserv devoted to Cultural Studies