Cultural Studies (CLST) 201

What is cultural studies, and how does this field relate to your everyday habits and routines? You will grapple with this question through an introduction to central discussions and concepts in this field of study. Cultural studies is not about looking at the “exotic,” the “foreign,” or “high culture”; neither is it a surface-level engagement with “multiculturalism,” “looking at different cultures,” even as it does attend to different “locations” of culture and engages with questions of the global political economy. Rather, cultural studies aims to defamiliarize what seem to be the normal processes and objects of everyday life. Through critical perspectives on our everyday objects, popular culture, media relations, and economic entanglements, you will analyze “culture” as a site of power and contestation. While cultural studies is focused on the current moment, it is also attentive to histories of, for example, colonization and racialization, which lead to present-day possibilities and constraints for individuals and communities. You will gain familiarity with the critical tools of cultural studies and apply these tools in analyzing the production and consumption of media and everyday objects. You will reflect on your shifting locations as cultural subjects, as consumers, and as producers of cultural objects and experiences. The textbook is largely situated in Canadian examples, but as it is an international edition and supplemented with other materials, a global scale is of interest to us. We hope that this course permits you to see the power and possibilities of viewing culture from this lens!

CLST 201 is divided into five units:

Unit 1: Landing Popular Culture

Unit 2: Representation and Production

Unit 3: Consumption, Happiness, and Culture

Unit 4: Bodies, Identities, and Community

Unit 5: Globalization and Contemporary Popular and Digital Cultures