Seminar on Cultural Studies (CUST-5000Y)
Co-ordinator: Professor Michael Epp
The seminar brings together all first-year students enrolled in the program for an intensive exploration of different contemporary theoretical perspectives bearing on culture and politics. The focus will be on problems of interpretation, language, cultural forms and political action in the context of a broadly defined theme which will vary from year to year.
1. Aims
The course has three aims:
a. to introduce students to key contemporary issues, problems, and perspectives in the field of cultural studies; often taught in collaboration with CUST 6100Y, the first-year PhD course
b. to provide a forum within which students can develop a bridge between these issues and the various elements of their own projects
c. to foster professional skills in the writing and oral presentation of academic work.
2. Format
The monthly activities in the course include a variety of sessions:
a. seminar discussions of readings proposed both by the co-ordinator and the students;
b. public presentations by invited speakers;
c. sessions toward the end of the academic year devoted to student presentations of their projects;
d. a student-based, one-day symposium at the end of the course, at which each student will present a short paper on a topic of her/his choice (normally related to the student’s thesis project) under the general rubric of “Re-presentations.”
3. Readings by such authors as
Louis Althusser, J.L. Austin, Walter Benjamin, Judith Butler, Teresa de Lauretis, Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, Sigmund Freud, Jürgen Habermas, Donna Haraway, Martin Heidegger, Max Horkheimer, Luce Irigaray, Fredric Jameson, Jacques Lacan, Jean-François Lyotard, Joan Riviere ...