3. description
• What is the mass media? What is the role of the mass media in relation both to culture
and identity? How do ideological forces shape our understanding of them? This course
provides students with the opportunity to investigate the intersections of media, culture,
and identity. Focus will be placed upon critical perspectives that have informed and
contributed to our understanding of the media and how meaning is made. By the end of
the class the student will be critically aware of the relationship between cultures, identities,
and the mass media. Further s/he will be able to apply this knowledge to the analysis of
visual and narrative texts.. We will also look at a number of objects including film,
literature, and music through an interdisciplinary lens from a variety of disciplines including
philosophy, literary studies, cultural studies, and cultural analysis. We will discuss texts by,
among others, Judith Butler, Michel Foucualt, Stuart Hall, Roland Barthes, Noam
Chomsky, and Marshall McLuhan.
4. evaluation
• Regular Attendance and Class Participation: 15%
• Presentations 25%
• Exam 60%
• Because this class is an interactive seminar, regular attendance is mandatory. More than
three missed classes without prior notice or documented excused will require you to
drop the class.
• Required Reading
• Sturken, Marita, and Lisa Cartwright. Practices of Looking: an Introduction to Visual
Culture. New York: Oxford UP, 2009. Print.
• Available at the Athenaeum Bokehandel, Spui 14-16
• PDF Reader will be available on BlackBoard (BB)
5. presentations
• Students will present their own object(s) of their choice as they relate to topics in the class
and according to the methodologies and theories that have been discussed in previous
sessions. The presentation will be no longer than 10 minutes with 5 additional minutes
allocated for question and answer.
• Note: we will also have a number of group exercises
6. Month: Feb
schedule
Week 2 Looking, Reading, and Negotiating
Date Feb 9 Read Introduction & Chapter 1, “Practices of Looking: Images, Power, and Politics”
pp. 1-43
Week 3 Making Meaning: Ideological Subjects
Date Feb 16 Read Chapter 2, “Viewers Make Meaning” pp. 45-70
Week 4 The Gaze: Lacan, Foucault and Mulvey
Date Feb 23 Read Spectatorship, Power, Knowledge, pp. 72 –102
Watch selections from Hitchcock, Lynch, and Zizek
7. schedule
Month: March
Week 5 Politics of Exhibiting Other Cultures
Date March 2 Read Hall, Stuart “The Poetics and the Politics of Exhibiting Other Cultures”
Week 6
Date March 9 FIELD TRIP: TROPENMUSEUM
Week 7 Images as Politics
Date March 16 Read Reproduction and Visual Technologies
Week 8 Critiquing the Mass Media
Date March 23 Read The Mass Media and the Public Sphere
Presentations
Week 9 Manufacturing Consent
Date March 30 Read Excerpt from Herman, Edward S., and Noam
Chomsky. Manufacturing Consent
Watch selections Manufacturing Consent (in class)
8.
9. Month: April
schedule
Week 10 Consumer Fetishism
Date April 6 Read Consumer Culture and Manufacturing of Desire, pp. 189-235
Selections from Karl Marx and Louis Althusser
Presentations on Culture Jamming
Week 11 Postmodernism
Date April 13 Read Postmodernism and Popular Culture, pp. 237-277
Presentations
Week 12 Queer Theory: Gaga Feminism or Not?
Date April 20 Watch Judith Halberstam Gaga Feminism
Read selection from Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble
Presentations
Week 13
Date April 27 FIELD TRIP: STEDELIJK MUSEUM
10. schedule
Month: May
Week 14 Global Visual Culture
Date May 4 Read The Global View of Visual Culture, pp. 315- 346
Guest Speaker
Presentations
Week 15
May 11 No Classes Public Holiday
Week 16 Images as Science
Date May 18 Read Scientific Looking, Looking at Science, pp. 279-313
Guest Speaker
Take Home Exam
*Take home exam due Wednesday May 25th by 9 am
12. plagiarism
What does the UvA consider fraud and plagiarism?
The UvA defines the following as examples of fraud and plagiarism: copying answers during
examinations, cutting and pasting from another source or using a text without proper
acknowledgement of the source. University students must follow standard academic practices.
What does the complete and correct acknowledgement of a source entail?
If you write a text and refer to information written by another person, you must state the source
involved, whether it is a book, article or a text on the Internet. If you do not cite the source,
thereby creating the impression that the text or information was written or thought up by you,
this is known as plagiarism. Creatively cutting and pasting or rearranging the work of another
person is considered plagiarism and will not be tolerated. You are never allowed to take
another person’s ideas – even if you put them into your own words – and pass them off as your
own.
If you use a text written by someone else in one of your own papers, you must always cite the
source and location in the notes and/or bibliography. This is because all information used in
academic papers must be traceable, such that other parties can verify the sources and
arguments used. This applies to scholars and academics, but also to university students.
Are you allowed to use Internet sources?
Yes, but certain rules apply. Be critical when using Internet sources, because they are not
always reliable or up to date. When using an Internet source, you must always state the
website where you found it in a note.
13. plagarism
How does the UvA detect fraud and plagiarism?
Instructors use anti-plagiarism software, consisting of electronic detection programmes that
allow them to trace plagiarism.
What sanctions are imposed in cases of fraud and plagiarism?
A paper or thesis that shows evidence of plagiarism will be immediately declared invalid. If
fraud or plagiarism is suspected, the examiner or instructor will notify the Examination
Board. The Examination Board will evaluate the case and may impose sanctions. A student
may be excluded from participation in all examinations for the maximum period of one year.
14. citations
The Modern Language Association (MLA) Style is widely used for identifying research sources. In
MLA style you briefly credit sources with parenthetical citations in the text of your paper, and give the
complete description of each source in your Works Cited list. The Works Cited list, or Bibliography, is
a list of all the sources used in your paper, arranged alphabetically by author's last name, or when
there is no author, by the first word of the title (except A, An or The). [5.1-5.5]
For example:
In the text of your paper:
The first gambling Web site appeared in 1995, and online gambling has since become the most lucrative
Internet business (Will 92). or, George Will reported that in 2002 Internet gambling surpassed
pornography to become the Internet's most lucrative business (92).
In your Works Cited list:
Will, George F. "Electronic Morphine." Newsweek 25 Nov. 2002: 92.
The following examples are based on the MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers, 6th ed., by
Joseph Gibaldi. (Ref LB2369 .G53 2003) The numbers in [ ] refer to the appropriate chapters in the
handbook.
15. citations examples
This is the basic format for a Works Cited entry.
Take the title from the title page, not the cover.
The author's name should be written Last Name, First Name.
One Author [5.6.1]
Brinkley, Alan. The Unfinished Nation. New York: Knopf, 1993.
Editor or Compiler [5.6.2]
If the person named on the title page is the editor or compiler, rather than the author, add a comma then the
abbreviation "ed." or "comp."
Carpenter, Allan, comp. Facts About the Cities. New York: Wilson, 1992.
Kreider, Jan F., ed. Handbook of Heating, Ventilation, and Air Conditioning. Boca Raton: CRC, 1993.
Journal with Issues Paged Separately [5.7.2]
Author. "Title of Article." Title of Journal Volume number. Issue number (Year): Page(s).
Give both the volume and issue numbers, separated by a period. e.g. volume 12, no. 8 = 12.8
Murphy, Karen L., Roseanne DePasquale, and Erin McNamara. "Meaningful Connections: Using Technology in
Primary
Classrooms." Young Children 58.6 (2003): 12-18.
17. blackboard (BB)
make sure to check BB for class updates and texts
also to check for discussions and or assignments
18. do you know what to
do for next week?
Buy your text book or go to BB and find the scanned text
READ
Introduction & Chapter 1, “Practices of Looking: Images, Power, and Politics” pp. 1-43 in
Sturken, Marita, and Lisa Cartwright. Practices of Looking: an Introduction to Visual
Culture. New York: Oxford UP, 2009. Print.