Admission requirements
Students have been admitted to the LUCAS Research Master Arts, Literature and Media.
Description
Studying cultural artefacts from the past – whether these are medieval romances, surrealist paintings or fiction from pulp magazines – keeps shifting our understanding of the present, just as studying contemporary literature and other art forms often prompts us to critically rethink the past and its afterlives through contemporary lenses and concerns. This course inrtroduces students in the Research MA Arts, Literature and Media into the main thematic, theoretical, and methodological tenets of this program: it seeks to foster a keen understanding of the power and dynamics of cultural artefacts from literature, art, and other media in the past and present, and get students acquainted with diverse strands and approaches in cultural theory. Importantly, it also trains students to critically reflect on, and actively integrate these theories and approaches in their own research and position themselves in a field or fields.
To that end, in the first half of the course, we reflect on how culture has been defined and studied in the last decades and probe some of the challenges of studying culture today. In times of globalization, accelerating environmental degradation, intersecting crises, and gaping global inequalities, and as the specter of colonialism is still intensely present in various forms, the question of what culture is doing or can do – as well as the role of humanities sholars - presents itself with new urgency. In the second half we move towards a collective understanding of the notions of representation and mediation. In this part of the course students are trained to formulate research questions with regard to specific cultural artefacts, and in the context of the dynamic between representation and mediation. In addition, they each choose a scholar that they find pivotal to their research and delve into her/his/their work. The course ends with a mini-conference, in which students present their work.
Course objectives
Students who follow this course will:
Acquire knowledge about key issues, questions, and approaches in the field of culture studies;
Develop a keen understanding of the notions of representation and mediation;
Be trained in situating their research in the complex fields of cultural history and cultural analysis;
Be able to position themselves as researchers and their topics in a scholarly field or set of fields
Sharpen their theoretical baggage and close reading skills not only of primary works but also of theoretical texts, by focusing on the work of a scholar who is pivotal for their work;
Be able to convincingly present other scholars’ work as well as their own research, both in informal and semi-formal settings, to an interdisciplinary audience of peers.
Be able to work collaboratively in organizing an academic event (mini-conference)
Timetable
The timetables are available through My Timetable.
Mode of instruction
- Seminar
Assessment method
Assessment
Participation: pass/fail
Conference presentation: 40%
Positioning paper: 60%
Weighing
The final mark for the course is established by (i) determination of the weighted average of 40% mini-conference presentation and 60% positioning paper, combined with (ii) Participation in class (including peer feedback and informal presentation), which is is a prerequisite for completing the course.
To pass the course, the weighted average of the partial grades must be 5.5 or higher, and participation must have been marked as ‘pass’.
Resit
A resit is available only for the paper.
Inspection and feedback
Students will receive feedback both on the conference presentation and the paper by the instructor.
How and when an exam review will take place will be disclosed together with the publication of the exam results at the latest. If a student requests a review within 30 days after publication of the exam results, an exam review will have to be organized.
Reading list
- Peter Burke. What is Cultural History? Second Edition. Cambridge & Malden, 2008.
*Judith Schalansky. An Inventory of Losses. New Directions Publishing, 2021 [Original: Verzeichnis einiger Verluste, 2018)
Next to Burke’s study and Schalansky’s essays/stories, we will read articles by Giorgio Agamben, Sara Ahmed, Mieke Bal, Lauren Berlant, Judith Butler, Frantz Fanon, Edouard Glissant, bell hooks, Henry Ivry, Sianne Ngai, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Rebecca Solnit, Isabel Stengers, Hayden White, Raymond Williams, and others. Students are asked to obtain (purchase or borrow) the 2 books listed above. All other material will be made available via open source or on Brightspace, through the university’s learning repository (LOR).
Registration
Enrolment through MyStudyMap is mandatory.
General information about course and exam enrolment is available on the website
Contact
For substantive questions, contact the lecturer listed in the right information bar.
For questions about enrolment, admission, etc, contact the Education Administration Office: Arsenaal.
Remarks
Not applicable.