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Cultural Studies

19:04 / 31.03.03

I have the hiccups, I'm fucked on my meds, so I'm woozy and typing is taking ages, but I hope this makes some sense.

At the end of April I have an interview for a place on a Cultural Studies MA. Now, my area has always been anthropology, my interests mainly being sexuality/gender, cryptozoology, films amd tv (slash, mainly). I have a big book called Cultural Studies which I am going to read before the interview. But I'm wondering - am I likely to get booted out unceremoniously for my lack of knowledge as regards Cult. Studs proper? What are some relevant cultural studies authors? Do we go out to play with philosophy and anthropology, sociology, etc?

Basically, I'm desperate to do my PhD in the Cult. Studs. dept and for that I need an MA. I have one other possibility for a course...but this one would probably be the best move, so I need to ace the interview.

If anyone feels like it we could stretch this thread out to encompass differences/relationships between various disciplines. But yes, this is mostly just a blatant squeak of 'help the poor ex-anthropology student, pwweeese'. Sorry, all.

20:20 / 31.03.03

I'm glad you started this thread, Chol. I've never been sure what Cultural Studies is & would like to know. Who's the author of your big book? Does it seem readable for a person who is normally a good reader, but who sometimes has a problem with reading? I might like to check it out...

06:08 / 01.04.03

Chol, they won't be expecting you to know CS inside out, and anyway it's not all that different to anthropology. You'll be fine. I'd have thought commitment is what they'd want to see, and you clearly have that.

Goodness Gracious Meme

07:13 / 01.04.03

(ha, she'll be after yr job next, Bill.)

Chol, with the sort of stuff you've talked about round here I don't think you've got anything to worry about.

I interviewed for and got a couple of Cult.studs. MA places with a degree in english/art history, which is a good deal 'further away' than Anthropology. There are still relatively few cult. studs. BA courses, it's not something they expect you to have at all.

They want to see brains and commitment, and know why yr switching (subject!). You'll have no problem with that.

Good luck. and yell via PM if you want any help/books etc, but I really don't think you'll need them.

am in a rush but will have a go at a cult.studs def. later. tho' it wpould probably make more sense for someone who does/has done it to have a go!

Deva? Disco?

07:16 / 01.04.03

Thank you, Bill. I had a bit of a painful experience at an archaeology MA interview that had been billed as a 'conversion MA' but turned out to be anything but...so after that, I've always been a bit, well, eek.

Persephone, the book I have is a collection of articles, edited by Grossberg, Nelson and Treichler - it's just called 'Cultural Studies'. Once I get into it a bit more, I'll give you some idea of how the majority of articles are.

07:18 / 01.04.03

Thank you, bip - much appreciated.

08:41 / 01.04.03

Don't worry about archeology Chol. I know a guy who switched to it and now his life's in ruins.

(I'm sorry. I just had to. I'll shuddup now, promise.)

09:04 / 01.04.03

Ho ho.

Goodness Gracious Meme

13:00 / 01.04.03

Mind you, was better than the guy who didn't get the place he'd been drooling over on that Vis.Arts. MA.

His face was a picture*.

So sorry. oh and re yr other point, you get to go out and play with pretty much whatever you like on CS courses, lucky buggers, as long as its extrapolated from 'culture', you can do whatever, that's kind of the point...

*It's a two-pronged joke. There are no pictures done on VisArts MAs anymore.

07:32 / 02.04.03

Chol, would you mind saying where you'll be studying? CS has different meanings/ranges of study in different institutions (you can PM me if you like).

To reassure you a bit, hopefully, our Head of Department here on Gauda Prime was dead against starting a CS BA because he thinks people should be trained in a traditional discipline (philosophy, literature or anthropology particularly) before getting into the interdisciplinary stuff, otherwise they don't really know what they're critiquing, if you see what I mean.

My advice would be to have a clear idea of *your* areas of interest and try and see how they link up with the research areas of the staff or the sorts of courses/modules on the MA. Disciplinary definitions are always going to be a bit vague compared to the actual work that the actual staff are doing, and if you can nestle yourself into one of their niches you'll be set.

Best of luck, you'll knock 'em dead.

Goodness Gracious Meme

12:04 / 02.04.03

Think it's a pretty commonly-held view that in order to be able to do good interdiscplinary work, you need a strong foundation in one or two discplines to start with. And also that CS is too diverse and complex to an extent to teach at undergrad level, you risk spreading things too thinly.

Was certainly the case for my Art History MA (which in true goldsmiths' style is in no way art historical but was much more visual culture/cultural studies

) - the then head of dept was very keen to get people with a wide range of backgrounds with specific areas of knowlege and then use the MA space to mix them up.

12:31 / 03.04.03

This just in from the Ann Arbor bureau id est my sister, who is ex-academe:

pyp,

uh. i can't really remember.

basically, it's like you look at culture and read/analyze it as a text. but it's a lot more than that. there are various theoretical schools associated with it. it kind of grew out of post-modernism/post-structuralism. it started in britain. what was that guy's name? can't remember.

sorry. it was a long time ago. i'll try to remember something else about it.

later,
gyp

-------Original Message Follows-------

hey gyp,

what the hell is cultural studies?

thanks,
pyp

Goodness Gracious Meme

13:51 / 03.04.03

Ah, she's probably talking about Stuart Hall/The Birmingham School approach, one of the main roots of CS.

Although some have argued that Frankfurt Schoolers such as Adorno/Benjamin were the first to analyse mass culture, I think it's probably with the Birmingham lot in the late 50s/early 60s that you get the first conscious attempt to study culture as text, and to *engage with* the multifaceted/contradictory/fragmented nature of (post)modern culture...

Actually I'd say it kind of grew alongside/intermingled with post-structuralism, though much of the work done under the CS banner today certainly has its roots in postmodern and/or postructuralist thought...(not the same thing)

Goodness Gracious Meme

13:57 / 03.04.03

This is a reasonable working definition, id say:

Cultural studies draws from the fields of anthropology, sociology, gender studies, feminism, literary criticism, history and psychoanalysis in order to discuss contemporary texts and cultural practices.

[...]

"links the social sciences and the humanities, combining methods of interpretation and explanation to explore the dynamics of intention and reception in the production, distribution, and consumption of cultural objects in their cultural context. ."

__________

As I understand it, here "objects" could be anything from a 17th century poem to the practice of schooling today (ex: Henry Giroux) to... anything. A central idea is a political focus on retaining nuanced ties to historical/ cultural contexts and to enabling discourses and practices of social change.

Altho' i'd widen the list of source subjects to include philosophy, linguistics, art history, visual culture etc etc.

14:10 / 03.04.03

The bastards closed Birmingham down, non?

Chol, I'd get The Blackwell Dictionary of Cultural Studies at some point. I once did quite well in an argument with Deva about an author I've never even read just by checking the entry in that. (Deva, I'm so sorry. I'm a fake and a fraud. Will you ever trust me again?

)

Disco is My Class War

04:58 / 09.04.03

I reckon coming from anthropology is probably easy, but I don't think of anthrop. as near cultural studies at all. For me it's nearer either philosophy or cinema studies. I totally agree with Deva and plums that you need a decent background in one particular discipline before you go for CS -- I am a victim of a university which didn't hold anyone to that, and have had to wade right back through 3 centuries of philosophy/theory in order to think through anything more complicated than Foucault...

According to the Intro to CS subject I did six years ago, CS began with Raymond Williams and Stuart Hall. And, probably, with Adorno. And I reckon CS divides up roughly into 2 categories: there's the popular culture approach (media/fandom/texts/films/tv/etc) and the quote unquote "minority" discourse approach (post-colonial theory/queer theory/gender theory/class if you're lucky).

Anyhow, good luck. Although the interview's probably all over by now, I am always so late to the party

08:19 / 09.04.03

my two cents. cultural studies is a loose 'inter-disiplinary' descendant of the frankfrot school. i may be confusing cult studies with cult theory but theoretically adorno's marxist critique and contempory european philosophy such as derrida, foucault, altussare(did i say it right(marxist structuralist)), the (&post)structuralists in general but particularly lacan so also freud for that matter as well that really very important contempory of the frank school martin hiedegger. good luck youll need it!!

zizek s a good very-contempory example

hahahaha ah hahahahaha!!
ahem!
hmm
?

ONLY NICE THINGS

08:56 / 09.04.03

Althusser, I believe. Also Heidegger.

Has the name of Hoggart (cofounder with Hall of the BCCS) been struck from the record? I know that his view of the British working classes and his view of America were both in many ways confections, but he must presumably still have some role to play at least in the history of?

Personally, I dream of a world where Staurt Hall, lord of Birmingham and Stuart Hall, excitable commentator of It's A Knockout, share the same body. In fact, I shall be submitting a script to that effect to Epic.

And here come the analysts!

Crimes_Of_Fashion

15:01 / 13.04.03

All you need to know:

'grammatology' and deconstruction - Derrida (Dare-ee-da)

'symbolic exchange' - Baudrillard (Bo-dre-ard)

'political technology of the body' - foucault (fu-co)

'duck soup' - Marx (mar-ks)

ONLY NICE THINGS

15:11 / 13.04.03

Clearly not all you need to know, although certainly all three of these authors are very interesting from a theory point of view. I wouldn't follow the pronunciation guides, though.

Crimes_Of_Fashion

23:01 / 13.04.03

I saw Baurdrillard lecture two years back - the pronounciations are those of the assembled 'whos who of post modernism' - was mocking their anal adherence to faux french pronounciation.

ONLY NICE THINGS

07:07 / 14.04.03

But this is not particularly important. It's very *nice* that you saw Baudrillard - he's getting a bit fragile now and needs somebody to help with feeding the cats - but it's not entirely relevant to the question at hand. So, to go in a slightly different direction - you have advanced some elements there as key to cultural studies (although as I said, they sound more like a quick guide to continental lit. theory than cult studs). Why have you chosen them? What would a view of cultural studies built on those pillars (I think we can probably discount Duck Soup, but YMMV) look like?

15:19 / 14.04.03

The interview is on the 23rd, and I'm pretty anxious about the whole thing. Thanks for the support and info, people - much appreciated. Will let you know how it goes...

02:59 / 18.04.03

Hey Cholister,

I recently moved into a cultural studies department. I had previously been studying with a media and information department, and my background is really politics. My PhD is researching notions of Access and the Internet, so I don’t really seem to fit in anywhere. I found that there is a different feel to CS and the way they talk about things, but it seems very accommodating to those outside the field. I think Anthropology, especially your areas of interest should be a good fit.

Good luck

01:56 / 24.04.03

Thanks to previous posters, I now have a general idea of what cultural studies is. However, what is its purpose?

06:55 / 24.04.03

To address the dynamics of human society through interdisciplinary methodology

02:47 / 27.04.03

the purpose of cultural studies is simulation and recuperation.
during your time in cultural studies you will come across writers such as:
michael foucault
jean baudrillard
paul virilio
giles deleuze and felix guattari
walter benjamin
arthur and marilouise kroker
guy debord
walter benjiman
the question you need to ask is how do i apply these writings to my own life and the world around me...check it out in the light of your own experience and believe nothing.
in conjunction with reading the above writers, i suggest a basic course in general semantics and/or neurolinguistic programming.
its easy to get trapped in a closed loop of self-referential discourse -cultural studies encourages this -
remember that the map is never the terriitory and the menu is never the meal.

the purpose of cultural studies > to replicate its viral/meme like nature throughout the academy - basically the purpose of c.i. is self-replication > to produce more academics who produce more academics who..(strange loop).

enjoy -but dont believe the hype...keep your bullshit detector up and ask your lecturers just "what they do" with their theories -how do they think/feel and act in the world -as praxis.

and remember the old tom-tom club line > "what are words worth -absolutely nothing".

and the cool part? - u get to sit on your ass dissecting and analysing assorted image/music/texts for three years - i wish i was back at uni