This seminar will be offered on Tuesdays from 3:30-6:00.
Cultural studies as an interdisciplinary approach, and at times an anti-disciplinary approach, reflects the intersectionality of various modes of literary and cultural critique, and in this course, we will work to map out these approaches to texts and how they situate texts within shifting relations of power. We will examine the ways that cultural studies as a field has changed over time and how it has become assemblage of such fields as Marxist critical studies, critical ethnic studies, indigenous studies, gender and queer studies, globalization studies, media studies, and critical cartography studies. We will also consider critical debates over the uses and problematics of cultural studies approaches.
Representation and location are key in situated scholarship, and Hawaiʻi is a rich place of cultural affinities, discursive contestations, and cultural production. We will pay special attention to the ways our readings of various literary and cultural texts from our distinctive location in Hawaiʻi and the Pacific illustrate practices that are shaped by this place, and we will also attend to the ways that our cultural studies work enables different modes of activism, making possible transformations in the ways that we see and act in the world. We will read a range of cultural texts, including maps, murals, graffiti, land, wind and cloud formations, films, mapping databases, autobiographical essays, so that we can map the intricate intertextuality of cultural formations and the alternative economies and forms of knowledge they pose and produce. We will also be asking questions about the ways that anti-disciplinary alliances enable material alliances between people against oppressive logics and narratives, as well as how representation is intimately rooted in complex issues of agency, antagonism and alliance, and responsibility.
The common theme for the ENG 625 classes this semester is “pedagogy,” and this focal point will guide us in our exploration of cultural studies approaches to different kinds of cultural texts. We will begin by examining Stuart Hall’s reflections on cultural studies as a discursive formation and thinking about the responsibilities of those of us who do cultural work. For whom and for what purpose do we do this work? What transformations do we hope to bring about in the classroom and in the world? What potential dangers does this work pose and how can we approach these problems in ways that are enabling rather than disabling? The concern in cultural studies with the ways that cultural formations both reproduce and challenge the (il)logics of existing systems of power runs through not only Marxist critical studies but also into other areas that at one time were considered marginal. Ethnic studies, for example, has taken on greater intersectional dimensions as an emerging field of a critical ethnic studies concerned with heteropatriarchy, genocide, globalization and capitalism, and settler colonialism.
Student Learning Outcomes:
Students will be able to
1) demonstrate foundational knowledge of the theories and methods of cultural studies,
2) demonstrate an understanding of the ways that our position in Hawaiʻi and in the Pacific has an impact on our understanding of the theories and methods of cultural studies,
3) develop an understanding of advanced research methods,
4) develop written and oral ability to place one’s own scholarly work within broader critical conversations,
5) conduct independent research (using primary and secondary sources) in CSAP,
6) be able to make precise use of critical vocabulary to frame and support analysis,
7) have experience with delivering concise, informed, focused, thoughtful presentations.
Course requirements:
1) weekly email letters to the class on issues and problems raised by the assigned readings, (15%),
2) one short 5-page paper on a cultural studies keyword in relation to a question or problem raised by one of the readings (15%),
3) one short 5-page paper using a theoretical text to think through a reading of a cultural text (15%),
(One of the short papers will provide the basis for your participation in the 625 colloquium, where students from all sections of 625 will present on the theme of “pedagogy.”)
4) one presentation on a critical text (10%),
5) one presentation on a critical project the student is working on (10%),
6) one project proposal (5%),
7) one conference paper length 10-page essay on a cultural text or event or practice, utilizing cultural studies theory or work (30%),
8) attendance and participation.
Possible Texts:
Bruce Burgett and Glenn Hendler, eds. Keywords for American Cultural Studies (2014).
Laura Lyons and Purnima Bose, eds., Cultural Critique and the Global Corporation (2010).
kuʻualoha hoʻomanawanui, Voices of Fire: Reweaving the Literary Lei of Pele and
Hiʻiaka (2014).
Brandy Nālani McDougall, The Salt Wind / Ka Makani Paʻakai (2008).
Possible Films:
Noho Hewa: The Wrongful Occupation of Hawaiʻi (dir. Anne Keala Kelly)
The Pā Boys (dir. Himiona Grace)
Pan’s Labyrinth (dir. Guillermo del Toro)
This Changes Everything (dir. Avi Lewis)
Selected chapters from Paul Lyons and Ty P. Kawika Tengan, eds., Pacific Currents (2015); Lawrence Grossberg, Cary Nelson and Paula Treichler, eds., Cultural Studies( 1991); Audra Simpson and Andrea Smith, eds. Theorizing Native Studies (2014); Katrina-Ann R. Kapāʻanaokalāokeola Nākoa Oliveira and Erin Kahunawaikaʻala Wright, eds., Kanaka ʻŌiwi Methodologies (2015).
A course reader will be available during the second week of school (you will also have the option of downloading pdfs from Laulima), and it may include texts by Marx, Gramsci, Raymond Williams, Stuart Hall, Louis Althusser, Paulo Freire, Slavoj Zizek, John Fiske, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Judith Butler, Kobena Mercer, Ruth Wilson Gilmore, Noelani Goodyear Kaʻōpua, Cristina Bacchilega, Avery Gordon, Lisa Lowe, Chandra Mohanty, Hauani-Kay Trask, Puakea Nogelmeier, Leanne Simpson, Eve Sedgwick, Jeff Chang, Eve Tuck and K. Wayne Yang, Dennis Kawaharada, Patrick Wolfe, Kevin Kumashiro, Teresia Teaiwa, Epeli Hauʻofa.