Essential module information – please note that the information provided here is for the stated year/
semester only and may change in subsequent sessions.
Module: CO4003 – Issue in Cultural Studies
Credits
Year/Semester
Module Co-ordinator
Dr Saeed Talajooy
Lecturers
Dr Saeed Talajooy
st83@st-andrews.ac.uk
Dr Bettina Bildhauer (Dept. of German)
Dr Andrew Cusack
(Dept. of German)
Dr Victoria Donovan (Dept of Russian)
Contact Details
(Dept. of Arabic & Persian)
Email:
Email: bmeb@st-andrews.ac.uk
Email: atc4@st-andrews.ac.uk
Email: vsd2@st-andrews.ac.uk
Email: st83@st-andrews.ac.uk
Module Surgery Hours
Module Description
The module will expose students to alternative approaches to the study of culture and cultural
production, allowing them to reach their own definitions of the discipline of Comparative
Literature in the context of comparative cultural studies. Five key areas in Cultural Studies
will be addressed: (1) Defining Culture, (2) Historical Study of Culture, (3) Intellectuals,
Truth and Power, (4) Gender and Culture, (5) Representation, Resistance and Violence in
Cultural Production. Students will also study four creative texts/films as cultural products and
examine them with the methods learned. The module will also give students the opportunity
to improve their essay writing through a reflective learning log and coursework essay.
Teaching and Learning
The module sessions are as follows.
Sessions
Frequency
When
Where
Assessment
The module will be assessed by … pieces of work as outlined below:
Essential module information – please note that the information provided here is for the stated year/
semester only and may change in subsequent sessions.
Assessment
Due Date
Logs
% of
Module
Mark
50%
Essay
50%
Description
Submission
Details
Reading list/ Week-by-week programme
Week 1: Introduction: Culture and Cultural Studies (Dr Saeed Talajooy)
(i) Seminar preparation
Please complete the following tasks and be prepared to discuss your material in class:

Provide a brief definition (no more than 40 words each) of: ‘culture’ [noun]; ‘cultural’
[adjective]; ‘cultural production’; and ‘cultural product’.

Draw up a list of what you regard to be the most important cultural products and
explain why you think they are more important.

How might cultural production have changed over the centuries? Try and identify at
least 3 major changes and explain why they might have come about. To help you do
this, list 1 very important cultural product (however you wish to define this) from
each of: the 9-13th centuries, the 13-16th centuries; 17th century; 18th century; 19th
century; 20th century.

Read about the following terms in M. H. Abram’s A Glossary of Literary Terms and
be prepared to discuss them: (1) cultural studies, (2) cultural poetics, (3) cultural
primitivism, (4) cultural materialism, and (5) new historicism.
(ii) Additional reading
Williams, Raymond, ‘Culture’, Keywords, A Vocabulary of Culture and Society, (Fontana,
1976), 76-82.
Murdock, G. ‘Base Notes: the conditions of Cultural Practice’ in Cultural Studies in
Question, eds. M. Ferguson and P. Golding, (London: Sage Publications, 1997), 86-102.
Essential module information – please note that the information provided here is for the stated year/
semester only and may change in subsequent sessions.
Week 2: Introduction: An Overview of Methods in Cultural Studies (Dr Saeed Talajooy)
(i) Seminar preparation
Before doing the reading, jot down your own initial ideas about what the term culture means
in the twenty first century, and if we should talk about cultures or culture.
Read the following two articles (bring hard copies with you, if possible) and prepare for a
discussion based on the topics below:
Stuart Hall, ‘Cultural Studies: Two Paradigms,’ Media, Culture & Society (Journal/ Sage
Publications) January 1980 2: 57-72.
Jennifer Daryl Slack, ‘The Theory and Method of Articulation in Cultural Studies’ in David
Morley and Kuan Hsing Chen (eds.) Stuart Hall: Critical Dialogue in Cultural Studies,
(London and New York: Routledge: 1996), 113-29.

How do the articles above present the relationship between culture, cultural theory
and cultural studies? What are the principal arguments/areas of debate? To what
extent do they correspond to your own initial thoughts? Which arguments are the most
persuasive?

What would you say the core problem of cultural studies is? Is it a problem of
evaluation; of ideas about how culture works, the nature of cultural production; of
history; or of the relationship between the mass culture and the elite or between
political power and cultural production?

What is the particular difficulty presented when thinking about the two paradigms?
Does any of the arguments presented above best resolves the issue?

How important is the study of culture and cultural production for expanding our
understanding of comparative literature?
(ii) Additional Reading
Abbas, Ackbar, ‘Cultural Studies in A Postculture’ in Disciplinarity and Dissent in Cultural
Studies, eds. G. Nelson and D. Gaonker, (New York: Routledge, 1996), 289-313.
Grossberg, Lawrence ‘On Postmodernism and Articulation: an Interview with Stuart Hall’ in
Stuart Hall: Critical Dialogue in Cultural Studies, (eds.) David Morley and Kuan Hsing
Chen (London and New York: Routledge: 1996),
Hall, Stuart ‘The problem of Ideology: Marxism without Guarantees’ in Stuart Hall: Critical
Dialogue in Cultural Studies, (eds.) David Morley and Kuan Hsing Chen (London and New
York: Routledge: 1996),
Essential module information – please note that the information provided here is for the stated year/
semester only and may change in subsequent sessions.
Hall, Stuart ‘The Meaning of New Times’ in Stuart Hall: Critical Dialogue in Cultural
Studies, (eds.) David Morley and Kuan Hsing Chen (London and New York: Routledge:
1996),
McLaren, P. and Jaramillo, N ‘Not Neo-Marxist, Not Post-Marxist, Not Marxian, Not
Autonomist Marxism: Reflections on a Revolutionary (Marxist) Critical Pedagogy” in
Cultural Studies ↔ Critical Methodologies, June 2010; vol. 10, 3: 251-262. (Available
Online)
******************************************
Strand Two: History and Culture
Week 3: The Historical Study of Culture I (Dr. Andrews Cusack)
Creative Work for the Strand:
Jakob Burckhardt, The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy (Phaidon Press edition, 1995).
This is a history book, but also a very famous work of literary creativity.
ISBN-13: 978-0714833637
(i) Seminar preparation
(a) Please read and be prepared to engage critically with / give a short exposition of, the
following pieces:
Jacob Burckhardt, ‘Introduction’ in The Greeks and Greek Civilization (New York: St
Martin’s Griffin, 1999), 3-12.
Carola Lipp, ‘Writing History as Political Culture. Social History versus “Alltagsgeschichte”.
A German Debate’, Storia della Storiografia 9 (1990) 17: 66-100.
(ii) Additional Reading
Burke, Peter, What is Cultural History? (Cambridge; Malden, MA: 2004).
Burke, Peter Varieties of Cultural History (Oxford: Polity, 1997).
Wehler, Hans-Ulrich ‘What is the “History of Society”?’, Storia della Storiografia 9 (1990)
18: 2-20.
Week 4: The Historical Study of Culture II (Dr. Andrews Cusack)
(i) Seminar preparation
Essential module information – please note that the information provided here is for the stated year/
semester only and may change in subsequent sessions.
(a) Please read and be prepared to engage critically with / give a short exposition of, the
following piece:
Going back to Week 1, would you now answer the questions differently?
Jakob Burckhardt, The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy (Phaidon Press edition, 1995).
This is a history book, but also a very famous work of literary creativity.
ISBN-13: 978-0714833637
(ii) Additional Reading
Darnton, Robert, The Great Cat Massacre and Other Episodes in French Cultural History,
rev. ed. (New York: Basic Books, 2009). E-book. Read introductory material.
Gilbert, Felix, History: Politics or Culture?:Reflections on Ranke and Burckhardt (Princeton,
NJ: Princeton University Press, 1990).
Ginzburg, Carlo, The Cheese and the Worms: The Cosmos of a Sixteenth Century
Miller (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins, 2013). Read introductory material.
*************************************
Strand Three: Intellectuals Truth and Power
Week 5: Intellectuals, Truth and Power I (Dr Victoria Donovan)
Mapping the ways intellectuals participate in producing, promoting or resisting dominant
discourses.
Creative Work for the Strand:
Choose one of the following films:
Brian Gilbert, Wilde (1997)
Or
Magarethe Von Trotta, Hannah Arendt, (2012)
Or
Adam Curtis, The Century of the Self (2002)
(i) Seminar preparation:
(a) Please read and be prepared to engage critically with / give a short exposition of, the
following short pieces (you should bring hard copies with you):
Antonio Gramsci, Prison Notebooks, trans. Quentin Hoare and Geoffrey Nowell Smith,
(London: ElecBook, 1999), 134-162. (Available Online)
Essential module information – please note that the information provided here is for the stated year/
semester only and may change in subsequent sessions.
Michelle Foucault, “Truth and Power” in Power/Knowledge, ed. and trans. Colin Gordon,
(London: Random House, 1972), 109-133.
(b) Be prepared to discuss the following issues and questions:
 Why are the terms, “power” and “truth” relevant to the study of culture and by
extension, cultural products?
 How useful do you find the concept as defined in the readings above, and can you
think of alternative concepts that would work better?
 How do such concepts as “intellectuals,” “power,” and “knowledge” fit together?
(ii) Additional reading
McNay, L. (1994) Foucault: A Critical Introduction. Cambridge: Polity.
Payne, M (1997) Reading Knowledge: An Introduction to Barthes, Foucault and Althusser.
Oxford: Blackwell.
Said, E. (1986) “Foucault and the Imagination of Power” in Foucault: A Critical Reader, ed.
D.C Hoy. Oxford, Blackwell,, pp. 149-156.
Week 6: Intellectuals, Truth and Power I (Dr Victoria Donovan)
Mapping the ways intellectuals participate in producing, promoting or resisting dominant
discourses.
(i) Seminar preparation:
(a) Please read and be prepared to engage critically with / give a short exposition of, the
following short pieces (you should bring hard copies with you):
Edward Said, Representations of the Intellectual: The 1993 Reith Lectures.
(b) What are the key functions and responsibilities of dissenting intellectuals at national and
international levels?
(ii) Additional reading
Benda, Julien, The Treason of the Intellectuals, trans. Richard Aldington (New York:
William Morrow & Company, 1928).
Bourdieu, Pierre, ‘Introduction’ and ‘Part One’, in Distinction: A Social Critique of the
Judgement of Taste, trans. Richard Nice, (Harvard University Press, 1984), Xvii- 90.
Essential module information – please note that the information provided here is for the stated year/
semester only and may change in subsequent sessions.
Driver, Felix, ‘Bodies in Space: Foucault’s Account of Disciplinary Power’, in: Colin Jones
and Roy Porter (eds.), Reassessing Foucault: Power, Medicine and the Body (London:
Routledge, 1995), 113- 131.
Fanon, Frantz, The Wretched of the Earth, trans. Richard Philcox, (New York: Grove Press,
2004).
Finlayson, A. and Valentine, J, Politics and Post-structuralism: An Introduction, (Edinburgh:
Edinburgh University Press, 2002).
Shi-xu, (ed.), Discourse as Cultural Struggle, (Hong Kong: HKUP, 2007).
Spivak, Chakaravorty Gaytari, ‘Can the Subaltern Speak?’ in A Critique of Postcolonial
Reason, (USA: Harvard University Press), 266- 311.
Young, R. (ed.) (1981) Untying the Text: A Post-Structuralist Reader. Boston: Routledge &
Kegan Paul, 1981.
*************************************
Strand Four: Gender and Culture
Week 7: Gender and Culture I: Queer space (Dr Bettina Bildhauer)
One of the tenets of cultural studies is attention to the disenfranchised, and to cultural
mechanisms of marginalising people through gender, class, race and sexual orientation; and
gender studies has always had a strong interest in culture as a whole rather than just high
literature. In recent years, the focus of the theoretical debates in gender studies has moved
from gender to sexuality and queerness, and here especially to the way the very basic vectors
of time and space are gendered and sexualised in culture. In this strand, we will read together
two relatively recent important discussions of the queerness of space (Ahmed, Week 1) and
of time (Dinshaw, Week 2). In the second half of each seminar, we will engage with a
popular novel, Michael Cunningham’s The Hours, and investigate if time and space are
sexualised or queered here. Our main questions will be: How are the concepts of gender and
sexuality useful for the study of culture and cultural products (for example, The Hours)? And
more specifically, how does the cultural construction of space and time work to constrain
female and queer behaviour?
(ii) Seminar Preparation:
(a) Read Sara Ahmed’s Ch. 2. Make notes summarising her main arguments. Pay particular
attention to how she configures the link between heterosexuality and space, especially lines
and tables.
(b) Read as much as you can of The Hours. Pay particular attention to how spaces confine
people in heteronormative roles or free them up, and make notes on some examples. Be
Essential module information – please note that the information provided here is for the stated year/
semester only and may change in subsequent sessions.
prepared to discuss in class the first sections of the ‘Mrs. Woolf’ and ‘Mrs. Brown’ strands
(pp. 29-48), and the ‘escape attempts’ to the hotel by ‘Mrs. Brown’ (pp. 141-152) and to the
station by ‘Mrs Woolf’ (pp. 163-172). You should bring hard copies of both texts with you.)
Sara Ahmed, ‘Chapter 2: Sexual Orientation,’ in Queer Phenomenology: Orientations,
Objects, Others (Durham, NC: Duke University Press), pp. 65-107
Michael Cunningham, The Hours (London: Fourth Estate, 1998) [there are various editions of
this book with different covers, please be sure to buy an edition from Fourth Estate with this
layout so that we can compare page numbers]
(ii) Additional Reading:
A Companion to Gender Studies, ed. Philomena Essed, David Theo Goldberg, and Audrey
Kobayashi (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2005). HQ1075.E88
Butler, Judith, Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of “Sex” (London: Routledge,
1993) HQ1190.B886
Butler, Judith, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (London:
Routledge, 1999 [1990]) HQ1154.B8F99
Edelman, Lee, No Future: Queer Theory and the Death Drive, Series Q (Durham, NC: Duke
University Press, 2004)
Foucault, Michel, The History of Sexuality, vol. 1, An Introduction, trans. Robert Hurley
(London: Penguin, 1990 [1976]) HQ21.F78
Halberstam, Judith, Female Masculinity (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1998)
HQ75.5H2
Halberstam, Judith, A Queer Time and Place: Transgender Bodies, Subcultural Lives (New
York: New York University Press, 2005)
Hall, Donald E., Queer Theories (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002) HQ75.15H26
Halperin, David M., How to Do the History of Homosexuality (Chicago: Chicago University
Press, 2002) HQ75.15H2
Irigaray, Luce, Speculum of the Other Woman, trans. Gillian C. Gill (Ithaca: Cornell
University Press, 1985 [1974]) BF692.I85
Jagose, Annamarie, Queer Theory: An Introduction (New York: NYUP, 1996) HQ76.25J2
Mulvey, Laura, Visual and Other Pleasures (London: Palgrave, 1989) PN1995.9W6M8
Padva, Gilad, Queer Nostalgia in Cinema and Pop Culture (Basingstoke : Palgrave
Macmillan, 2014) electronic access
Queer Popular Culture: Literature, Media, Film and Television, ed. Thomas Peele
(Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011) electronic access
Rubin, Gayle, ‘The Traffic in Women’, in Toward an Anthropology of Women, ed. Rayna R.
Reiter (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1975), pp. 157-210 GN294.T7
Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky, Epistemology of the Closet (London: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1991
[1990]) PS374.H63S4
What’s queer about queer studies now?, ed. David L. Eng, Judith Halberstam and José
Esteban Muñoz, Special issue of Social Text (Durham, NC: Duke University Press,
2005) per HN1.S7T4;84-85
Week 8: Gender and Culture II: Queer time (Dr Bettina Bildhauer)
Essential module information – please note that the information provided here is for the stated year/
semester only and may change in subsequent sessions.
Seminar Preparation:
 Read the introduction to Dinshaw’s How Soon is Now? Make notes on her definitions:
How does she define queerness in relation to time (p. 4)? What is the link between
amateurism and queer time (p. 5)? What is the difference between linear and lived time (p.
10)? What is the link between the premodern or nonmodern and queer time (pp. 20-21)?
Why does she value the usually derided concept of nostalgia (pp. 34-37)?
(b) Are Dinshaw’s concepts of queerness and queer time, amateurism, linear time,
nonmodernity and nostalgia useful for understanding The Hours? Find one passage of The
Hours for whose understanding you find one of these concepts useful, and be prepared to
explain why.
Carolyn Dinshaw, ‘Introduction: How Soon is Now?’ in How Soon is Now? Medieval Texts,
Amateur Readers, and the Queerness of Time (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2012),
pp. 1-39
Michael Cunningham, The Hours (London: Fourth Estate, 1998)
**********************************************
Additional Reading (Related to Gender and Cultural Studies)
Alcoff , Linda & Elizabeth Potter (eds.) Feminist Epistemologies (London, 1993).
Komter, Aafke (1991) ‘Gender, Power and Feminist Theory’, in The Gender of Power, ed. by
Kathy Davis, Monique Leijenaasr & Jantine Oldersma. London, Newbury Park & New
Delhi: Sage Publications, pp. 42-64.
Jordan, G and Weedon, C. Cultural Politics, Class, Gender, Race and the Postmodern World.
(Oxford: Blackwell, 1997).
Moore, Henrietta (1994) ‘The Cultural Constitution of Gender’, in The Polity Reader in
Gender Studies. Cambridge: Polity Press, pp. 14-21.
*************************************
Strand Five: Representation, Violence and Resistance
Essential module information – please note that the information provided here is for the stated year/
semester only and may change in subsequent sessions.
Week 9: Representation, Violence and Resistance I. (Dr Saeed Talajooy)
Mapping the way presentation and representation define cultural production in terms of
violence, resisting or promoting dominant cultural products.
Creative works for the Strand of Weeks 8, 9, 10
Michael Moore, Bowling for the Columbine, (2002) available at
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cr8ZstJHNz8
OR
Gillo Pontecorvo, The Battle of Algeria, available at
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XeMWdueGTZ4
(i) Seminar Preparation:
(a) Please read and be prepared to engage critically with / give a short exposition of, the
following pieces (you should bring hard copies with you):
Jurgen Habermas, “Modernity and Unfinished Project”, (Available Online) at
http://postcolonial.net/@Backfile/_entries/4/file-pdf.pdf
Jacques Ranciere, The Politics of Aesthetics: The Distribution of the Sensible, trans. Gabriel
Rockhill, (London: Continuum International Publishing Group, 2004), 7-46.
(ii)
Additional Reading
Ranciere, Jacques, The Politics of Aesthetics: The Distribution of the Sensible, trans. Gabriel
Rockhill, (London: Continuum International Publishing Group, 2004). Vii-7 and 48-107.
Ranciere, Jacques, Mute Speech: Literature, Critical Theory, and Politics , tr. by James
Swenson, (New York: Columbia University Press, 2011).
M. Passerin d’Entreves and Seyla Benhabib, Habermas & the Unfinished Project of Mod:
Critical Essays on the Philosophical Discourse of Modernity (MIT Press Edition, 1997).
Week 10: Representation, Violence and Resistance II. (Dr Saeed Talajooy)
Mapping the way presentation and representation define cultural production in terms of
violence, resisting or promoting dominant cultural products.
Essential module information – please note that the information provided here is for the stated year/
semester only and may change in subsequent sessions.
(i) Seminar Preparation:
(a) Please read and be prepared to engage critically with / give a short exposition of, the
following pieces (you should bring hard copies with you):
Slavoj Zizek, ‘Introduction: Tyrant’s Bloody Rope’, ‘Chapters 5: Tolerance as an Ideological
Category’ and Chapter 6: Divine Violence’ in Violence: Six Side Ways Reflections, (London:
Profile Book, 2009), 1-7 and 119-173.
(b) Be ready to answer the following questions:

What is Violence? Are human beings violent by nature and nurture?

Is tolerance a form of violence?

Can divine violence be secular?
(ii) Additional Reading
Slavoj Zizek, Violence: Six Side Ways Reflections, (London: Profile Book, 2009).
Lawrence, Bruce B. and Aisha Karim (Eds.), On Violence: A Reader (USA: Duke University
Press, 2007), Particularly ‘Introduction’ and ‘Part II’ and ‘Part III’.
Week 11: Representation, Violence and Resistance III. (Dr Saeed Talajooy)
Mapping the way presentation and representation define cultural production in terms of
violence, resisting or promoting dominant cultural products.
(i) Seminar Preparation:
(a) Please read and be prepared to engage critically with / give a short exposition of, the
following pieces (you should bring hard copies with you):
Pierre Bourdieu, ‘Outline of a Theory of Practice’ in On Violence: A Reader, Lawrence,
Bruce B. and Aisha Karim (Eds.), (USA: Duke University Press, 2007), 188-199.
Scott, James C., ‘Domination and the Arts of Resistance’ in On Violence: A Reader,
Lawrence, Bruce B. and Aisha Karim (Eds.), (USA: Duke University Press, 2007), 199-214.
Additional Reading
Duncombe, Stephen, (ed.) Cultural Resistance Reader, (London: Verso, 2002).
Foucault, Michel, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of Prison,
Essential module information – please note that the information provided here is for the stated year/
semester only and may change in subsequent sessions.
Foucault, Michel, History of Sexuality I: An Introduction, trans. Robert Hurley, (New York:
Vintage, 1990.
Michelle Foucault, ‘Part III/Practice: Knowledge and Power’ in Language, Counter-memory,
Practice: Selected Essays and Interviews (New York: Cornell University, 1977), 199-234.
Harlow, Barbara, Resistance Literature, (New York: Methuen, 1987).
Laachir, Karima and Saeed Talajooy, Resistance in Contemporary Middle Eastern Cultures:
Literature, Cinema and Music, (London and New York: Routledge, 2013).