GRADING and ASSIGNMENTS:
I. FOUR PRECIS: 4 x 5% = 20% of grade
See attached for details.
II. GROUP PROJECT ASSIGNMENTS: 2 x 15% = 30% of grade
The first two of these group projects will require you to team up and take on, with no
preparation, one group of artifacts (texts, issues, etc.) and work them up for a 10 minute group
presentation in class, and an accompanying posting on BlackBoard. The third project will be
voted on by the class and done in a group of the whole.
These two small group projects are designed to offer you practice in constructing projects
according to perspectives from today's cultural studies. You will be under time stress; you will be
required to complete several tasks.
PRELIMINARY PHASE:
1) Decide on which area of text/artifacts (from among the choices given) you wish to work
with.
2) Decide with whom you are working.
PREPARATION PHASE:
1) find the reference books or materials which describe the artifacts -- which define the
who-what-where-when. Note that these NEED to be archival or "of record."
2) on the basis of the basic who-what-where-when, choose one of the issues associated
with the fin de siècle with which it is associated (one of the theoretical perspectives offered in
class readings).
PROJECT EVOLUTION:
1) set up a précis for a model interpretation: set up the grid on how those artifacts need
to be interpreted
2) set up a research plan for that interpretation, specifying;
a) what needs to be researched (and why)
b) where you would find sources for what research (dbases, etc.)
c) clearly articulate what problems of context exist,
and what issues of artifact exist
3) address what this perspective gets you instead of a perspective from the "native"
discipline of the artifact chosen.
PRESENTATION:
1) Post a 250-word abstract summarizing your results, as if it were designed for a
conference paper (on BlackBoard Discussion board site marked for the case study); see handout
on abstracts; note that it has to have who, what, where, when, AND why and how and analysis
takes place.
2) Present this abstract orally
3) Present a critique of what conceptual difficulties and argumentation difficulty the
interpretation presumes
4) Post and present a one-half to one-page guide to researching this kind of artifact in
this kind of context. What are going to be the problems in locating material (primary and
secondary), where must one go to generate a basic research job that looks credible to the
interested parties. Justify the research strategy as you do so.
CAUTION:
This is going to force to learn to delegate or work with other people effectively -- one
person cannot do all of this alone. This is going to force you to work with incomplete data -- to
work "smart" rather than to brute force it. This may require work with a reference librarian at PCL,
and/or careful work with resources already posted on the library website. All postings must also
have proper bibliographic citations attached; note that special characters MUST be coded into
Blackboard using HTML. This includes umlauts and other diacritics. Note that "smart quotes"
also must be coded in, if you insist on using them instead of the straight ones. Deductions will be
made for not checking these things on at least two different computer systems.
CASE 1:
2000: Identity Politics, the Death of Nationalism, Globalization
These texts and cultural artifacts all stem from the context of post-reunification Germany
and Europe. In this framework of cultural studies, the issues are Globalization, Public Sphere,
and the Identity of the post-national subject. This means that a text and a public are meant to
deal with each other differently than earlier; a ikind of liberal global fallacy.
The challenge you have is to figure out how to set the text into a global network in the
post-National context.
PROJECT GROUPS:
International Author: Günter Grass, Nobel Prize Winner
-Ein weites Feld (A Field Too Far) = the question of German Reunification
-Im Krebsgang (Crabwalk) = victims of the military industrial complex
Movies for International Audiences: Der Unhold (The Ogre)
Movies with International Reference (cultural, genre)
-Erleuchtung garantiert (Japan/Germany)
-Der bewegte Mann (Crumb-like graphic novel by Rolf König)
International Artist:
Gerhard Richter's artwork
(start with Schama, Landscape and Memory)
International Artwork: Holocaust memorial planning (I have this archive)
Theories: Systems theory (N. Luhmann, S. Schmidt)
Habermas, Theory of Communicative Action
Discussions of Europe (Peter Handke, Enzensberger, Habsburg)
Webbased Resources: (history topics: to be arranged)
CASE 2: 1900: Modernization, Industrialization, and the Rationalization of the Subject
The Issue for 1900 is modernization and industrialization, which has as an effect the socalled "rationalization of the subject" -- a profound cultural reference point at the end of
humanisim. Where in 2000 the focus is on identity politics of groups on the international stage -how the individual fits into the power ideas of the new national/international contexts--, 1900
cultures are associated with what are now called "structures of feeling" -- with the construct of
affective realities (especially those associated with nations), and how those realities allow
individuals to assert themselves within groups and to position themselves within the national
paradigms. 1900 shows the individual grappling with identity contexts.
The challenge you have is to figure out how to set the text onto a map marked with
nationalism and against the invisible empires of identity markers.
PROJECT GROUPS:
Architecture:
Adolf Loos, Ornament as Crime
Otto Wagner, The Architecture of Our Time
Karl-Marx Hof
Visual Arts
Alois Riegl, Historical Grammar of the Visual Arts (historicism)
Theory of Nerves and Representation
Ernst Mach, Analysis of the Sensations
Mauthner, "Fin de siècle," "Fin de siècle und kein Ende"
Performance/Theater/Social Performativity
Schnitzler, Zum grossen Wurstl
Schnitzler, Reigen
Hofmannsthal, Anatol
Language and Politics:
Wittgenstein, Blue and Brown Books
Krauss, Last Days of Mankind
Red Vienna, AustroMarxism:
Carl Menger, economic theory
Otto Bauer
Viktor Adler
Karl Renner
CASE 3: 1800: Philological Nationalism, Hermeneutic Historicism
The problem confronting the European world of 1800 was historicism and nationalism -the question of how to think about "us" in "history," as an entity with an independent culture. If
the 1900 cultures were concerned about individuals, and 2000's issue about globalization, then
1800 is concerned with the nature of history and situation -- what it means to be "from here" and
"one of us."
Topic for day 1:
Carlyle, Sartor Resartus
Possible topics for day 2:
Historicism:
Herder, Auch eine Philosophie
Goethe, Von deutscher Art und Kunst
Philological Nationaism:
Herder, Abhandlung über den Ursprung der Sprache
Schlegel, Sprache und Weisheit der Inder
Humboldt, excerpt from Kawi-Werk
Napoleon and the European Idea:
Novalis, Christenheit oder Europa
Fichte, Reden an die deutsche Nation
Kotzebüe, Die deutschen Kleinstädter
Bildung:
Schiller, Die Schaubühne als eine moralische Anstalt betrachtet
Tieck, Der gestiefelte Kater.
Schlegel, Lucinde
Class, Race, Ethnicity:
Lessing, Nathan der Weise
Goethe, Die Leiden des jungen Werthers
International Poetics:
Hölderlin, poetry (esp. Brod und Wein)
Schiller, "Der Spaziergang"
Novalis, Hymnen an die Nacht
Artifacts:
Bar graphs and pie charts as part of national economy
Balloons
III. Final Paper/Project: 50% of grade (in sections)
Part 1: Abstract = 10% of grade
Part 2: Research Plan = 5% of grade
Part 3: Class Presentation = 10% of grade
Part 4: Final Paper = 25% of grade
Part 1: This will require the production (and posting on Blackboard) of an abstract for your final
paper. See attachment for what's in a conventional abstract.
Part 2: When you turn in the abstract, you must also turn in up to 200 words on what kinds of
research you will be required to do to turn your abstract into a paper. This will include explicit
attention to which databases you will have to check, with which key words.
Part 3: As part of a "Class Symposium," your mission is to do a "work in progress" presentation
of 7 minutes in length (and you will be timed). The goal is to present something more than your
abstract, and something less than a conference paper (e.g. ca. 3 pp max), and to answer
questions about it.
Part 4: FINAL PAPER
Your paper in the class is a project that you develop in conjunction with the professor.
It may come from varied sources. If you like one of the ideas we start with in class, you
may finish one of them. Remember, however, that you will be held to a very high standard, if you
take on something that you didn't self-design. It might be a part of a dissertation or thesis project.
In any of these cases, you have to work out a cultural studies case. That is, you take an
artifact (text, picture, film, building, event . . . . whatever), and project it into its context. Your goal
is to take it as a representative of the problematics practiced in the class -- globalization,
nationalism/internationalism, identity politics, etc. The particular challenge you will have, and
which you will work out in consultation with the professor, is to figure out how to do that. The
theories of cultural studies we will be reading offer perspectives and problems, they rarely
address how individual instances inform their analyses.
In general, you are going to have to theorize how your artifact functions in its context, and
then figure out a strategy for "reading" or interpreting that object in ways that recaptures that
function. This means that, after you pick a perspective that fits your artifact, you are going to
have to do research of more than one kind, to set up your analysis.
The paper that you will need to turn out will thus have to have a methods section (how to) and a survey of existing work on the topic, as well as the introduction that focuses on how and
what you will work on. This means you have to specify your methodology in comparison to
existing work on your artifact. If, for example, Kafka's work has been treated as post-colonial (it
has), and you want to go in a treat it as a function of globalization, you have to say what the
difference is, and why that difference will matter. As part of the introduction, you will also have to
show what data you are adducing that such earlier analyses have offered.
The paper is 15-20 pp long, in MLA format if you are in literature, or in whatever style
manual is customary in your field (specify, please).