Бакалавриат 2020/2021

История и теория культуры

Статус: Курс обязательный (Медиакоммуникации)

Направление: 42.03.05. Медиакоммуникации

Кто читает: Школа философии и культурологии

Где читается: Факультет креативных индустрий

Когда читается: 2-й курс, 1 модуль

Формат изучения: без онлайн-курса

Преподаватели: Афанасьева Анна Эдгардовна, Конончук Валерия Владимировна, Юрийчук Дарья Владимировна

Язык: английский

Кредиты: 3

Контактные часы: 42

Course Syllabus

Abstract

As follows from the title of the course, its aim is twofold: first, it seeks to provide a historical survey of the most important developments in Western culture from ancient Greece to the 21st century, which have shaped Western civilisation. It addresses various modes of social organisation and behaviour, ways of thinking and artistic expression within their historical context. Second, it deals with the main concepts and interpretative strategies employed in the academic field of Cultural studies to explain both contemporary culture and the cultures of the past in their manifold dimensions. The overall aim of the course is to foster the development of a reflexive, analytical and critical understanding of culture and its various phenomena.

Learning Objectives

• To examine the most important developments in Western culture and enable students to analyse them within their historical context;
• To introduce students to cultural studies as a multi-faceted field addressing various aspects of culture from its historical and contemporary perspectives;
• To provide students with the main categories and theoretical concepts of cultural studies and with the basic tools for the analysis of cultural objects and processes;
• To develop a critical and reflexive understanding of cultural phenomena.

Expected Learning Outcomes

• - Students can relate cultural phenomena to their historical periods and analyse them within their historical contexts.
• - Students understand various theoretical approaches to the study of culture.
• - Students can apply the new vocabulary and use interdisciplinary critical perspectives to examine the meanings of cultural objects and processes.

Course Contents

• Introduction to Cultural studies: key concepts, terms and debates
  Main approaches to the definition of culture in the 19th - 21st centuries. Borders of culture. Culture and nature: social vs biological. Anthropological definitions of culture: Edward Tylor. “Culture is Ordinary” (1958) by Raymond Williams. Clifford Geertz: semiotic concept of culture. The Birmingham school of Cultural studies (R. Williams, E. Thompson, S. Hall).
• History of culture: ancient Greece and Rome.
  Aegean Civilization: Minoan Crete, Mycenaean Greece. The culture of Archaic Greece, 800 – 500 BC. Greek colonial expansion and its impact on the Greek identity. The rise of the polis. Main developments in Greek art: from conceptual to optical representation. Classical period (c. 480 – 323 BC): Periclean Athens as the centre of Greek civilization. Athenian literature and drama. Schools of philosophy. The Olympic games and the cult of the body. Greek sculpture: developments in the treatment of the human figure. Contrapposto. The Parthenon and its relationship to contemporary history and politics. Phidias. Debates on the Parthenon marbles and the problems of cultural property. Hellenistic period (323 – 31 BC): the conquests of Alexander the Great and their aftermath. The fall of the polis. Hellenistic kingdoms. The scientific revolution of antiquity: medicine, physics, geography, astronomy. Cosmopolitanism of Hellenistic culture. Hellenistic art: developments in sculpture. The ancestors’ cult and its place in shaping Roman identity. Roman religious life. Roman architectural revolution: materials, construction methods, new architectural forms. Roman portraiture: verism. Equestrian monuments. The ambiguous status of Roman culture in the ancient Graeco-Roman civilization. Greek influences in Roman culture: philosophy, religion, art and literature. Rome’s own unique achievements: law, administration, engineering and military organization. The culture of entertainment in ancient Rome. Shifting centres: the founding of Constantinople. The rise of the Christian Church. The impact of the 5th – century migrations. The shaping of a new worldview.
• History of culture: Medieval culture
  “Middle Ages”: the problem of chronology and localization. Approaches to the study of medieval culture. Antique legacy and its transformations in the culture of the Middle Ages. The conversion of North-Western Europe. The role of monasteries as intellectual and spiritual centres. Changing concepts of time and space. Early medieval art. The Carolingian Renaissance. European culture between the 11th and 13th centuries. Crusades and the influence of Islamic science on European culture. The intellectual revolution: the emergence of the university. Phenomenon of the medieval town. “A Europe of town-dwellers” (J. Le Goff). Commercial revival. Pilgrimages. Romanesque art (c. 1050 – 1200). The Gothic style in architecture. “Collective privacy” and the rise of personal autonomy. Court culture: chivalry, the evolution of sensibilities and courtly love. Late medieval culture. Black Death and its impact on the medieval societies. The persecution of witches. The shattering of the unity of the Church. The invention of printing press. The growth of national monarchies. The imaginary Middle Ages: medievalism in the culture of the 19th – 21st centuries.
• History of culture: Early modern culture (late 15th – late 18th centuries)
  Renaissance as transitional period: the uses of the term. The rediscovery of the classical past: Italian Renaissance. Humanism as new intellectual and political agenda. Renaissance art: new architectural forms and painting techniques. The Renaissance north of the Alps. Reformation and the spread of Protestantism. The Age of Discovery (1492 – 1600s). New technologies of conquest: early colonial expansion of the Europeans and its impact on Western culture. Europe and the Atlantic world. “The Columbian Exchange” (Alfred Crosby). The growth of capitalism in Europe. Intellectual origins of seventeenth-century scientific revolution. The new scientific method: Bacon and Descartes. The workings of the universe: Newton and his laws. Science and cultural change. The rise of absolutism in Europe. Court society as a public institution. “The Civilising Process” (Norbert Elias): the transformation of behaviour and emotional sphere. The main features of Baroque style. Developments in sculpture: Bernini. Variations of Baroque style in European architecture. The foundations of the Enlightenment. The cult of reason and development of science. Carl Linneus, Alexander von Humboldt. Diderot’s “Encyclopaedia”. Human progress and education. Main themes of the Enlightenment thought. Government: theories of social contract and natural rights. Adam Smith and free-trade economy. Law and punishment: Beccaria’s humanitarianism. The rise of the middle-class reading public. “Public sphere”. Urban and rural popular culture. The Enlightenment thinking and the French Revolution.
• History of culture: European culture in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries
  Wars and revolutions in Europe. The aesthetic of Romanticism and its historical context. The idea of national identity. The Industrial revolution. Railways and the change of spatial and temporal vision. The rise of the middle classes. The 19th-century city: observer and the crowd. New forms of public transport and their influence on city culture. Gender and the cult of domesticity. “Angel in the House” (Patmore). Colonialism and imperialism. Orientalism as a cultural projection of the West. The concept of “civilizing mission”. Imperial culture and racial thought. The cult of science in the 19th century. Positivism. Darwin’s evolutionary theory. Challenges to rationality: Pavlov and Freud. Mass industry and consumer culture. Social movements. Suffrage and the redefinition of womanhood. Realism in art. The development of photography and its influence on visual arts. The Impressionist movement. Post-Impressionism. Symbolism in art. Art Nouveau: the search for new aesthetic forms. Modernism in literature, music, theatre, architecture. Non-classical formations in the culture of the early 20th century: destruction of traditional forms in arts, literature and science. The impact of the WWI: “the Lost Generation”. The aftermath of the WWII: Europe divided. Changes in structural relations between sexes and generations after the war. The 1960s: the move towards social and personal liberation. Feminist movement. Student protests. Disintegration of the empires. The rise of the youth culture. Music and popular art. Abstract expressionism. The “Americanization” of culture. “Liquid modernity” (Zygmunt Bauman): the flow of money and people. Globalizing world. Postmodernism in arts and literature. Conceptual art. Art and activism.
• Theory of culture: Critical theory and Cultural studies. Poststructuralism. Postmodernism.
  Modernist theories of culture: the concepts of culture in Marxism and Freudianism. Critical theory: the Frankfurt school and its main figures. “Dialectic of Enlightenment”. Culture as commodity (Herbert Marcuse). Theories of ideology: Louis Althusser and Antonio Gramsci. Cultural hegemony. Culture as a site of ideological struggle. Birmingham school of Cultural studies: Edward Thompson, Raymond Williams, Tony Bennett, Stuart Hall. Concepts of power, agency, subjectivity, identity. Poststructuralism: the main concepts. Intertextuality. Representation. Deconstruction. Michel Foucault: the notion of discourse. Discursive formation. Epistemes. ‘Regimes of truth’. Power/knowledge. Medicalization. Postmodernism: the end of grand narratives (Jean-Francois Lyotard)
• Theory of culture: Nationalism and Postcolonial studies.
  Nationalism as an ideology. Primordialism and its critique. Constructivist theories of nation. Ernst Gellner. Benedict Anderson: “imagined communities”. Eric Hobsbawm and “the invention of tradition”. Colonialism and imperialism: definitions and debates. Orientalism as a way of constructing the non-Western world: the works and legacy of Edward Said. Travel writing, literature and colonial discourse. The critiques of capitalist modernity. Debates over nation and national liberation. The role of national culture in the project of decolonization. The issue of representation in postcolonial writing. The notion of creolization. Hybridity, mimicry and ambivalence: Homi Bhabha. Subaltern studies: Gayatri Spivak and Ranajit Guha. “Provincializing Europe” by Dipesh Chakrabarty.
• Theory of culture: Feminist perspectives of culture. Body studies.
  Feminist and post-feminist critiques of culture. The notion of patriarchy. “Patriarchal bargain” (Deniz Kandiyoti) and “patriarchal dividend” (Raewyn Connell). Varieties of feminist programmes in the 20th and 21st centuries. Intersectionality. The works by Joan W. Scott, Judith Butler, Gayatri Spivak and Julia Kristeva and their role in conceptual redefinition of cultural studies. Gender studies. Interactionist approaches: ethnomethodology of Harold Garfinkel. Erving Goffmann and the notion of “gender display”. Candace West and Don Zimmerman (“Doing gender”, 1987): gender as a product of human effort. Performative theory of gender (Judith Butler). Feminist epistemology. Verbal and visual representations of gender in culture. Emergence of body studies: Bryan Turner and the “somatic turn”. The social and cultural production of the body. Precursors of body studies: Marcel Mauss and his “Techniques of the body” (1935). Body as a visible manifestation of culture. The civilizing process and the bodily control: Norbert Elias. Michel Foucault: docile and disciplined bodies in the European culture. The notion of panopticon. The range of interdisciplinary perspectives in body studies. Medicalized bodies. Racialized bodies. The body in feminist theory.

Assessment Elements

• Active participation in discussions during seminars
• Collective presentation
• Examination (a written test, consisting of several closed and one open question)

Interim Assessment

• Interim assessment (1 module)
  The final grade of a student (Gfinal) is formed of a cumulative grade (Gcumulative) and the grade for examination (written test) (Gexam), calculated in the following proportion: Gfinal = 0,5* Gcumulative + 0,5* Gexam Cumulative grade (Gcumulative) is formed of the grade for the performance during the seminars (Gseminars) and two collective presentations in class (Gpresentations). These grades have the following weight in the overall cumulative grade: Gcumulative = 0,6* Gseminars + 0,2* Gpresentation1 + 0,2*Gpresentation2

Bibliography

Recommended Core Bibliography

• Andrew Milner, & Jeff Browitt. (2002). Contemporary Cultural Theory : An Introduction: Vol. 3rd ed. Routledge.
• Michael Ryan. (2010). Cultural Studies : A Practical Introduction. Wiley-Blackwell.

Recommended Additional Bibliography

• Simon During. (2005). Cultural Studies: A Critical Introduction. Routledge.