Course description

The course aims to introduce the critical analysis of culture through the scrutiny of the power dynamics that regulated cultural production in the Western world during the 20^th century. More specifically, we will investigate how major thinkers and intellectual movements determined significant shifts in our understanding of culture, in order to consolidate epistemological tools that will facilitate the interpretation of our contemporary context. 

The overarching narrative of the course will include some key moments of 20^th-century intellectual history. Namely, we will consider the notion of cultural hegemony, postwar debates on Eurocentrism, anthropological relativism, and the current deindividualization of spaces and places, in order to explore the influence that Western conceptualizations of culture have had on the perception of the world that we inhabit. Readings will include Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, T. S. Eliot, Claude Lévi-Strauss, Edward Said, Marc Augé, and the screening of a movie by Belgian filmmaker Agnès Varda.

Course taught in English. All materials will be made available by the instructor in this shared Google Drive folder: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1wMdcLyoKXP9V5MUPOwuwNMZuAdymmTw5?usp=sharing  

Grading and assessment

Students will be graded based on the following class components:

Reading, attendance, and participation in class (10%). Students are asked to attend every meeting and to keep up with the readings assigned for each class. This is a discussion-based course and students are required to respectfully and actively participate in the conversation (both groupwork and plenary discussion).

Home assignment (20%). A written assignment consisting of a close reading exercise.

Midterm exam (30%). In-class exam consisting of three open questions (1h30).

Final group presentation (40%). Students will work in groups of 2/3 towards the preparation of a 15-minute presentation to be recorded with Microsoft Teams. Students may alternatively choose to submit a short argumentative essay if they prefer to do so. More detailed guidelines will follow.

Bibliography

Marc Augé, Non-Places: Introduction to an Anthropology of Supermodernity, London, New York: Verso, 1995. 

T. S. Eliot, Notes toward the Definition of Culture, New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co., 1949.

Clifford Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures, New York: Basic Books, 1973.

Claude Levi-Strauss, Race and History, Paris: UNESCO, 1952. 

Edward Said, Orientalism, New York: Vintage Books, 1979.

Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, “Can the Subaltern Speak?” in C. Nelson & L. Grossberg, Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture, Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1988.

George Steiner, In Bluebeard’s Castle. Notes toward the Redefinition of Culture, New Haven, Yale UP, 1971.

Yoko Tawada, Where Europe Begins, New York: New Directions Book, 2002 [1991].

Agnès Varda, Les glaneurs et la glaneuse, 2000.

For a detailed class schedule, please see the "Anexos".