Spring 2021 | CSCL 1301W Section 001: Reading Culture: Theory and Practice (50646)
- Instructor(s)
- Class Component:
- Lecture
- Credits:
- 3 Credits
- Grading Basis:
- Student Option
- Instructor Consent:
- No Special Consent Required
- Instruction Mode:
- Completely Online
- Class Attributes:
- UMNTC Liberal Education RequirementDelivery ModeOnline Course
- Times and Locations:
- Regular Academic Session01/19/2021 - 05/03/2021Mon, Wed 08:15AM - 09:30AMOff CampusUMN REMOTE
- Enrollment Status:
- Open (24 of 25 seats filled)
- Also Offered:
- Course Catalog Description:
- Culture and cultural conflict. Reading cultural theory/texts such as film, literature, music, fashion, commercial art, and built environment.
- Class Notes:
- http://classinfo.umn.edu/?CSCL1301W+Spring2021
- Class Description:
- CSCL 1301W Reading Culture: Theory and Practice 3 credits, meets Lib Ed req of Other Humanities Core; meets Lib Ed req of Writing Intensive Instructor: STAFF Description: This course turns on one central question: How do things 'mean?' Specifically, how do cultural texts mean in relation to each other and to human life in society and across history? 'Cultural texts' are made objects and forms of communication that encode messages and values, and that produce effects--anything from movies, TV shows, magazine ads and rock concerts to 'high art' (paintings, classical music, plays, poems, etc.). The course specifically examines: (1) the role played by cultural forms in creating, maintaining or challenging social boundaries and power relationships; and (2) the ways art and culture function as sites where creative and alternative visions of 'the good life' come into being. Small classes emphasize close reading, discussion, and practice in critical writing. An introductory course in every sense, it's a good place to start thinking about what "culture" is and how it works. It will also help you develop reading and writing techniques useful for many courses and majors. Class Time: 40% lecture, 60% discussion
- Textbooks:
- https://bookstores.umn.edu/course-lookup/50646/1213
- Instructor Supplied Information Last Updated:
- 12 November 2020
Spring 2021 | CSCL 1301W Section 002: Reading Culture: Theory and Practice (50647)
- Instructor(s)
- Class Component:
- Lecture
- Credits:
- 3 Credits
- Grading Basis:
- Student Option
- Instructor Consent:
- No Special Consent Required
- Instruction Mode:
- Completely Online
- Class Attributes:
- UMNTC Liberal Education RequirementDelivery ModeOnline Course
- Times and Locations:
- Regular Academic Session01/19/2021 - 05/03/2021Mon, Wed, Fri 11:15AM - 12:05PMOff CampusUMN REMOTE
- Enrollment Status:
- Open (18 of 25 seats filled)
- Also Offered:
- Course Catalog Description:
- Culture and cultural conflict. Reading cultural theory/texts such as film, literature, music, fashion, commercial art, and built environment.
- Class Notes:
- http://classinfo.umn.edu/?CSCL1301W+Spring2021
- Class Description:
- CSCL 1301W Reading Culture: Theory and Practice 3 credits, meets Lib Ed req of Other Humanities Core; meets Lib Ed req of Writing Intensive Instructor: STAFF Description: This course turns on one central question: How do things 'mean?' Specifically, how do cultural texts mean in relation to each other and to human life in society and across history? 'Cultural texts' are made objects and forms of communication that encode messages and values, and that produce effects--anything from movies, TV shows, magazine ads and rock concerts to 'high art' (paintings, classical music, plays, poems, etc.). The course specifically examines: (1) the role played by cultural forms in creating, maintaining or challenging social boundaries and power relationships; and (2) the ways art and culture function as sites where creative and alternative visions of 'the good life' come into being. Small classes emphasize close reading, discussion, and practice in critical writing. An introductory course in every sense, it's a good place to start thinking about what "culture" is and how it works. It will also help you develop reading and writing techniques useful for many courses and majors. Class Time: 40% lecture, 60% discussionCOURSE TITLE: Interrogating the space of the classroom
Cultural Studies teaches us to question and criticize the normal and the familiar in their micro operations, in their taken for granted status and in their common sense. For example, if certain practices come to characterize and determine the lives of large number of individuals, the discipline of Cultural Studies help us question this taken for grantedness of the particular practice by drawing our attention to the historical origins, the politics and their meanings and how these practices constitute the individuals in question. By taking a step back, it draws our attention to the way an individual is always living, working and interacting with other individuals in a society. It foregrounds the way these social interactions are never simple and peaceful but diverse and conflicted and are mediated by the spaces we occupy and the subject positions we embody. It helps us engage with the ideas and ideologies behind certain practices through its method of analysis of a diverse range of texts that can include a novel, a film, an advertisement or a simple conversation between two people in a shared space.
Using the tools of Cultural Studies, we will focus on one of the most normal and accepted aspects of our everyday life, that of the classroom. In this course, we will ask the following questions:
Why do we say that everybody needs education? Why do people say that going to a specific school or college determine our characters, our lives, our worldview? What are the implications of these assumptions?
Why are some people excluded from these spaces? What are the conditions that lead to such exclusions? Additionally, what are the conditions that determine inclusions of people?
Why are some departments considered critical and too liberal? Is there a connection between the critic and the classroom? What the hell is a critic!
Why and when do university spaces become places of conflict and battles, antagonism and death, leading to the posting of cops and arrest of students?
Why are young people so invested in these spaces? Can these spaces offer hope, shelter and relief from oppression and exploitation? If yes, how does it happen?
How and when does the classroom fail to deliver its promise?
Our readings, comprising novels, films, autobiographies, histories and theories will work towards the formulation of these questions. Not reading the texts as isolated pieces of art, we will read them as particular interpretations and interventions in understanding and sometimes creating what we understand by classroom. While we will focus on particular styles, language or forms of a novel or a film, we will use them primarily as examples or instance for understanding the above mentioned questions or themes. We work with the assumption that texts and the world interact with each other, co-constitute each other and co-construct each other. Over the course of the semester we will familiarize ourselves with the concepts of "subject", "ideology", "critic", "exclusion", "subversion", "healing", "experience", "responsibility" and "pedagogy". However, the concepts will never be understood in an abstract way but always in relation to specific historical and sociological contexts. Hence, we will have to build these concepts as we read the different texts as opposed to using them as products.
- Who Should Take This Class?:
- If you are interested in the following questions, do consider taking the course1) What is a classroom? What is its relationship with power, history, identity?2) How does race, gender, class and colonialism construct the classroom?3) Can classrooms be potential sites of resistance against power?4) Is is possible to separate desire, friendship, love and bonding from the classroom?5) What is the relationship between the classroom and the neo-liberal university?
- Workload:
Weekly posts: ten percent.
First paper: twenty five percent.
Class Reports: twenty-five percent.
Final paper: Thirty Five percent
Class participation: five percent.
- Textbooks:
- https://bookstores.umn.edu/course-lookup/50647/1213
- Instructor Supplied Information Last Updated:
- 17 November 2020
Spring 2021 | CSCL 1301W Section 003: Reading Culture: Theory and Practice (50652)
- Instructor(s)
- Class Component:
- Lecture
- Credits:
- 3 Credits
- Grading Basis:
- Student Option
- Instructor Consent:
- No Special Consent Required
- Instruction Mode:
- Completely Online
- Class Attributes:
- UMNTC Liberal Education RequirementDelivery Mode
- Times and Locations:
- Regular Academic Session01/19/2021 - 05/03/2021Tue, Thu 02:30PM - 03:45PMOff CampusUMN REMOTE
- Enrollment Status:
- Closed (25 of 25 seats filled)
- Also Offered:
- Course Catalog Description:
- Culture and cultural conflict. Reading cultural theory/texts such as film, literature, music, fashion, commercial art, and built environment.
- Class Notes:
- http://classinfo.umn.edu/?CSCL1301W+Spring2021
- Class Description:
This course turns on one central question: How do things 'mean?' Specifically, how do cultural texts mean in relation to each other and to human life in society and across history? 'Cultural texts' are made objects and forms of communication that encode messages and values, structures of power and modes of belief. and that produce effects-- anything from movies, TV shows, magazine ads and rock concerts to 'high art' (paintings, classical music, plays, poems, etc.). With a special focus on 20th and 21st century popular culture, this course specifically examines: (1) the role played by cultural forms in creating, maintaining or challenging social boundaries and power relationships; (2) the way popular and mass culture function as sites where creative and alternative visions of 'the good life' come into being and (3) how discursive formations like race, gender, and class are created, maintained, and challenged in popular culture (and vice versa). Small classes emphasize close reading, discussion, and practice in critical writing. An introductory course in every sense, it's a good place to start thinking about what "culture" is, how it works, and why it matters. It will also help you develop reading and writing techniques useful for many courses and majors. Class Time: 40% lecture, 60% discussion
Required materials: course reader from Paradigm course resources. Will be available December/January.- Learning Objectives:
By the end of the semester, you will have:
Developed the tools to read and interpret a cultural text.
Learned how to perform a close reading of a text.
Learned how to engage critically with a text in discussion.
Fulfilled the University of Minnesota's Writing Intensive Course and Liberal Education requirements.
- Grading:
15% Participation
10% Discussion posts
10% Short quizzes
10% Critical meme project
15% Object Analysis paper
20% Midterm Paper
20% Final Paper
- Exam Format:
- Final paper.
- Class Format:
- Lecture and discussion. Asynchronous and synchronous meetings.
- Workload:
- 20 to 40 pages of reading per week.
- Textbooks:
- https://bookstores.umn.edu/course-lookup/50652/1213
- Instructor Supplied Information Last Updated:
- 1 December 2020
ClassInfo Links - Spring 2021 Cultural Stdy/Comparative Lit Classes
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