Kommentar |
“[T]he work that cultural studies has to do is to mobilise everything that it can find in terms of intellectual resources in order to understand what keeps making the lives we live, and the societies we live in, profoundly and deeply antihumane in their capacity to live with difference.” (Stuart Hall, “Race, Culture, and Communications: Looking Backward and Forward at Cultural Studies”, 1992)
This course provides an introduction to the academic discipline of cultural studies with a focus on the cultures of the UK and Ireland. This will include analyses of selected texts from literature, film, television, and music, as well as cultural practices, and the culture of everyday life from the early modern period until today. We are going to focus on the meaning of identity categories such as class, gender, sexuality, region, and race in the UK and Ireland and how they have affected notions of Britishness over time. Rather than just providing facts and figures, the course will give you an overview of the history of ideas and movements in the UK and Ireland, ranging from the divine right of kings to multiculturalism. Exploring the links between power and identity, we will examine various constructs of Britishness and how they have been challenged throughout the centuries by forces from without and within.
Texts: The course materials will be made available to you via Moodle and MS Teams. |