Feminist Cultural Studies

This course takes as its central purpose an in-depth exploration of the relationship between meaning and power. Meaning-making is one of the central purposes of story-telling. We tell stories about ourselves and others in order to make sense of the world and (to secure) our place in it. Thus meaning-making and story-telling are explored in this course as sites of struggle in which power relations are negotiated, resisted, and reasserted. So we ask: How do we make meaning within our culture and across cultures? How is meaning constitutive of “culture”? How do the meanings that get privileged serve the interests of some, while disempowering others? To answer these questions, we will explore theories of culture, ideology, and power—from the Birmingham School to contemporary feminist interventions in the field. We will pay particular attention to postcolonial, queer, and intersectional studies of culture. This course welcomes graduate students from both the academic disciplines and the creative fields. If you are (or want to be) a critic of popular culture, literature, or ethnographic inquiry, this is an ideal course for you. If you are a writer who is interested in how your stories might contribute to resistive or transformative notions of culture, identity, or belonging—welcome! The interdisciplinary conversations in which we engage promise to be productive.