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Media culture today is a form of cultural pedagogy that teaches us values, proper and improper modes of behavior, role models, and beliefs. Cultural studies has emerged as a form of counterpedagogy that critically analyzes and dissects the products of media culture to empower individuals to use their culture to advance their own projects. The seminar will investigate current trends in cultural studies through examination of different methods of cultural interpretation, seminal texts in cultural studies, and practical criticism engaging popular artifacts of media culture. Emphasis will be on developing critical media literacy as a goal of cultural studies. In addition to the following texts, there will be a website archiving readings and other websites relevant to the seminar and a list-serve enabling discussion among theparticipants in the seminar.

Required Reading List

Douglas Kellner, Media Culture. New York: Routledge, 1995.

Meenakshi Gigi Durham and Douglas Kellner, editors Media and Cultural Studies: KeyWorks,. Malden, Mass. and Oxford, UK: Blackwell, 2001.

Philip K. Dick, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? [the novel upon which the film Blade Runner was based]

There will also be Internet material by Stuart Hall, John Fiske, bell hooks, Henry Giroux, and others and videotapes of many of these theorists and others.

Course Requirements

1) a 2-3 paper critical analysis of a contemporary media text, to be chosen by the class the second and third seminar, and due Nov. 11 at beginning of class.... 10% of grade.

Focus will be a cultural studies analysis dissecting politics of representation of gender, class, race, sexuality, and so on; what type of media text (genre)? what politics and ideologies? what meanings and messages?

2) a 15-page research paper illustrating methods of cultural studies that incorporates earlier cultural studies paper, Dick's Androids, and artifact chosen by student; 40% of grade;

3) class presentations and participate = 50%

Website= http://www.gseis.ucla.edu/faculty/kellner/ed270/

We are also setting up a seminar cultural studies messageboard and perhaps a weblog.

People have to register for the messageboard. You can click the messageboard button on the website and then click Register in the top right corner of the screen. Then just fill out the information and submit. Once you've done that, you will have to login one time, but one can click REMEMBER which will save settings for the future. If you are going to use the messageboard from the computer lab, best if you don't click REMEMBER because anyone could use that computer -- and so you should just re-login everytime.

The direct link to register is:
http://forums.gseis.ucla.edu/profile.php?mode=register

But again this is available through the website.

Office hours: Mon 12:00-1:00 and Thurs 3-5:00; email for appointment: kellner@ucla.edu

Reading and Lecture Schedule

Sept 30 Introduction to Cultural Studies; methods of cultural studies; key concepts; practical pedagogy;

Oct 7 Methods of Cultural Studies; Introduction to D. Kellner, Media Culture, Chapter 1;

Oct 14 Toward a Multiperspectival Cultural Studies; Kellner, MC, Chapters 2-3; Ideology and MediaCulture -- DK lecture

Oct 28 Race and Ethnicity in Media Culture;
Kellner, MC, Chapter 5: The films of Spike Lee _________
Rap Music, Kellner, in MC - ________________
Herman Gray in, _____________
bell hooks, website and Keyworks-

selected texts __________ __________

Nov. 11 Globalization and Cultural Studies;

Kellner, MC, C6; The Gulf war as cultural text; ________

Mohanty from KeyWorks, ___________________

Canclini from KeyWorks, _______________

Nov 25 Selected topics from cultural studies; students to choose reading, topics, and presentations;Begin Philip K. Dick, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? .
Dec 2 Cyberpunk, SF and Cultural Studies; Kellner, MC, conclusion; D .Final class presentations on chosen topics and summing up: Dick, Androids __________________ ;___________________________; __________________________ ;

Dec. 9 Final Take-Home Exam paper due; 15 pages applying methods and theories of cultural studies to a chosen artifact, film, and PKD's Androids; due 5:00 pm; minus for everyday late; no incompletes;

Opening Comments

What is Cultural Studies and why is cultural studies so important? what are some of its themes and methods? and why focus on media culture?

1) It is obvious to many of us that we are living in a new high tech consumer and Media Culture in which the media are our educators and our socializers, which provide our role models and heroes, models of
good and bad behavior, gender models, and thus provide the substance of our very identity....

Hollywood, TV, style and fashion in everyday life: image culture; dominant images of gender, style, morality, politics, identity and everything else come from media culture

Media Culture: media of communications and cultural forms like film, television, popular music, mass-circulated magazines and newspapers and the like which shape how we feel, think, look, and act --

The argument of the seminar will be that if media culture is a dominant form of pedagogy, which teaches us right and wrong, good and bad, positive and negative role models, produces the material for constituting our very identity, then it is important to develop a media pedagogy and media literacy

cultural studies: discipline that provides methods, concepts, and insights to analyze and criticize all cultural forms from media culture to high culture and that therefore provide conceptions of media pedagogy and media literacy...

by literacy, I mean the ability to read the codes and texts of media culture, to be literate, to read media culture, to analyze, to criticize, to interpret and thus to empower yourself over media culture and to be media-literate

To the array of Media Culture that I mentioned; i.e. media of communications and cultural forms like film, television, popular music, mass-circulated magazines and newspapers and the like, I should add computer-mediated culture to the forms of media culture and argue that in the future we are going to seenew synthesis or implosions between media culture and computer culture -- but that is topic for another seminar, or maybe the end of this seminar...

Today, however, it is clear that the forms of media culture -- of television, film, popular music, computer culture, -- are simply the dominant culture today like it or not--

This is certainly true in the US and increasingly throughout the world as global culture expands everywhere.

Cultural Studies provides methods to study, analyze, interpret and critique all forms of media culture, as well as other cultural forms ranging from architecture to political events like the Gulf war or Election 2000 and just about any and every cultural phenomenon and event.

2) Theorizing Media Culture

just as you have technophobes who deplore new technologies, who demonize them, who blame all sorts of problems on them, so too do you have those who attack media culture en toto and celebrate print culture or high culture; i.e. Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death;

For cultural conservatives, media culture proliferate forms of barbarism

Others celebrate media culture as the coolest of the cool, or affirm a media and cultural populism, seeing Media Culture as the culture of the people, as a democratic culture where the people through their consumption choices in the market constitute the popular; thus in this populist view, Media Culture is where the people rule, where they constitute the popular

I mediate between wholly negative and populist approaches, and adopt the term media culture rather than mass culture or popular culture because the former is too derogatory and the latter is too celebratory

"mass" implies homogeneity, manipulation, massification and is tied to derogatory theories of mass society

"popular" implies from the people, refers to bottoms up participatory culture in many languages --

Spanish: popular culture or forces signifies "of the people" where media culture comes from culture industries so I like the neutral term media culture rather than mass or popular culture (debates with Fiske)

Anyway, whatever you call it and whatever you think of it, it is our dominant culture and thus my thesis is that:

a) radio, television, comics and magazines, films, forms of music, and now computer culture dominate leisure time and are the most popular forms of culture, especially with younger people and are supplanting book culture and previous forms of high culture

Media Culture is becoming a dominant form of culture, it is culture for most people -- not books, or concerts, or art galleries, or museums, but Media Culture -- stats on TV viewing: average family TV on over 7 hours a day with average viewer over four hours --phenomenal and now Webcrawling or Net surfing taking hours per day -- students four hours or more

b) media culture is of fundamental importance for social theory, for understanding society, because it is becoming major force of socialization

it used to be the family, church, and schools which were dominant modes of socialization, but now it is Media Culture

mid-1970s, major texts on socialization did not mention media culture; now obvious that the images, sounds, and spectacles of media culture help produce the fabric of everyday life, dominating leisure time, shaping political views and social behavior, and providing the materials out of which people forge their very identities.

Socialization, by the way, should be conceived as a form of pedagogy; we get socialized through education, including media.

Radio, television, film, and the other products of the culture industries provide the models of what it means to be male or female, successful or a failure, powerful or powerless.

Media culture helps shape the prevalent view of the world and deepest values: what are considered good or bad, positive or negative, moral or evil.

Media stories and images provide the symbols, myths, and resources which help shape a common culture for the majority of individuals in many parts of the world today.

c) Media culture also provides the materials out of which many people construct their sense of class, of ethnicity and race, of nationality, of sexuality, of "us" and "them."

it shapes behavior, identities, and fosters new forms of identity politics

contested: Spike Lee's Kings of Comedy; hip hop versus old school

Media culture provides the materials to create identities whereby individuals insert themselves into this form of culture, which is dominant in contemporary techno-capitalist societies and which is producing a new form of global culture.

Media culture spectacles demonstrate who has power and who is powerless, who is allowed to exercise force and violence, and who is not.

media representation is power; ability to shape images of gender, class, ethnicity, sexuality... positive or negative

They dramatize and legitimate the power of the forces that be and demonstrate to the powerless that if they fail to conform, they risk incarceration or death.

It is media culture that organizes consent to prevailing policies, that get people to accept the gulf war, or nafta, or republican party market ideologies or whatever; media culture provides images of presidential candidates so you come to like and perhaps vote for Gore or Bush, or whoever;

image and election: Kennedy versus Nixon; Reagan

candidates on talk shows; new phenomenon; Clinton, now Gore and Bush

3) Media Culture and Cultural Pedagogy

Thus since media culture is the dominant form of culture today, since it has replaced the forms of high culture as the center of cultural attention and impact for large numbers of people, we need to learn to read Media Culture critically.

Since visual and oral forms of media culture are supplanting forms of book culture, we require new types of media literacy to decode and properly interpret the emerging forms of media culture.

Since media culture is a form of pedagogy, teaching us values, shaping our view of the world we need a form of counterpedagogy, to each the critical decoding and analysis of media culture, to produce media literacy

We need to see how media culture is becoming a dominant force of socialization, with media images and celebrities replacing families, schools, and churches as arbitrators of taste, value, thought, and behavior, producing new models of identification and resonant images of style, fashion, and behavior.

For those immersed from cradle to grave in a media and consumer society, it is therefore important to learn how to understand, interpret, and criticize its meanings and messages.

Summary: In a contemporary media culture, the media of information and entertainment are a profound and often misperceived source of cultural pedagogy: they contribute to educating us how to behave and what to think, feel, believe, fear, and desire -- and what not to.

Consequently, the gaining of critical media literacy is an important resource for individuals and citizens in learning how to cope with a seductive cultural environment.

Learning how to read, criticize, and resist media manipulation can help individuals empower themselves in relation to dominant media and culture.

It can enhance individual sovereignty vis-a-vis media culture and give individuals more power over their cultural environment.

Feuerbach: You are what you eat; you are what you culturally ingest

So you see why I think cultural studies is important; key aspect of critical pedagogy, empowering people vis-a-vis the dominant culture

what is at stake, however, is what kind of cultural studies, with what methods, projects, goals

Many attack cultural studies as becoming increasingly apolitical, neglecting primary role of capitalism, as having taking a postmodern turn and become increasing academic and esoteric and of limited value

others, like John Fiske, Henry Giroux, Larry Grossberg, or myself think that cultural studies is of major political and social value

-- although we have different conceptions of cultural studies and could have had a nice debate....

you'll obviously get my version, but I'll expose you to a variety of other models..

avoid all too quick dismissal a la some of its critics or too quick an appropriation of dominant models such as the Fiskean one that affirms an uncritical cultural populism

For next week, read Intro and first chapter of Kellner's Media Culture and look through KeyWorks to see what themes and theories you want to deal with in this seminar; I'll discuss methods of cultural studies and try to give an overview of the project some we'll do in class some concrete examples of doing cultural studies.

Fall 2002; Douglas Kellner