Introduction to Cultural Studies

Catalog description

We live in a cultural saturated with information. The messages we register, the meanings we deduce, and the knowledge upon which we ground our actions and choices require critical examination if we are to engage as thoughtful actors in our personal and civic lives. This class will encourage students to reflect on their initial impressions of and reactions to various media and will give them critical tools to examine how formal and thematic strategies work to shape and elicit our sympathies, our desires, our fears, and our beliefs. Focusing primarily on visual and written texts drawn from popular culture--video, print, film, and Web sources--students will practice their analytical skills by evaluating these texts in classroom discussions, several short writing assignments, and one longer essay. Reading the work of several cultural theorists, students will learn to analyze persuasive argumentation through an attention to rhetorical and framing devices and to recognize and decipher visual cues, enabling them to interpret texts and images and to produce coherent critical positions of their own. This class will prepare participants for college courses that require them to process knowledge and not simply acquire information.