Syllabus of Cultural Studies

Course Description
More than thirty years have passed since the formation of the first Department of Cultural Studies. The field emerged in Europe from within the insights and accomplishments of cultural anthropology. From the beginning, however, cultural studies has distinguished itself from anthropology, in part by drawing its theoretical and practical models from an eclectic range of disciplines, philosophy, history, literary and media studies, and linguistics, among them. By the 1980s cultural studies had become established and further systematized in North America, and by the beginning of the twenty-first century the field increasingly has been recognized as an independent and interdisciplinary province of social and cultural inquiry, with a definable body of theory and practice, in Europe, the Americas South and 　East Asia, and elsewhere.
Cultural Studies, in the spring term, and Cultural Studies Ⅱ, in the autumn term, will be based upon an interpretation on cultural studies that posits the field as an investigation of the content and process of cultural change. The courses will focus particularly on the position of cultural studies in two important regions, North America and East Asia. In each term the course will be addressed by outside speakers who are either investigators of the theoretical field of cultural studies or practitioners of the process of cultural change.
In Cultural Studies Ⅰ we shall focus on theoretical constructions that have been of importance to the field in these regions. The focus will be on six topics, each of which may occupy more than one class session:
What is cultural studies?
What is culture?
Culture as a field for empowerment
Culture as a field for interaction with otherness
Culture as a field penetrated by and penetrating other social fields
Cultural studies and cultural policy
From among these topics students will be invited to choose an area of particular focus related to their own interests and engagements, and to offer to the course an account of their engagement with the topic.

Supplemental reading
Meenakshi Gigi Durham and Douglas Kellner, eds., Media and Cultural Studies (Oxford: Blackwell, 2000).
Simon During, The Cultural Studies Reader, 2nd ed. (London: Routledge, 1999).
Stephan Fuchs Against Essentialism: A Theory of Culture and Society (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard UP, 2001).
Lawrence Grossberg, Cary Nelson, and Paula A. Treishler, eds., Cultural Studies (London: Routledge, 1991).
Articles noted in David Ewick, “Toward a Classified Bibliography of Not One Thing: Cross-Disciplinary Cultural Studies in English-Language Journals,” Japanese Journal of Policy and Culture 9, 2003.