Dr Jana Reynolds

This course is available on the MA in Modern History and MSc in Culture and Society. This course is freely available as an outside option to students on other programmes where regulations permit. It does not require permission. This course uses controlled access as part of the course selection process. For information on controlled access courses, including eligibility, application processes, deadlines, and departmental contact details, please refer to the Controlled Access Courses webpage.

This course has a limited number of places. For information on how to apply for a place on this course, please see Courses offered and related information.

Cultural Theory and Cultural Forms considers recent developments in cultural analysis in sociology and beyond, focusing on queer, crip and more-than-human approaches. This course aims to foster ways of thinking that move beyond the idea of culture as a strictly human pursuit and practice and undo the "nature vs culture" dichotomy that implicitly dominated much of the earlier (20th century) cultural theories. It invites students to engage with works of art and philosophy as well as sociological writing, and to consider cultural forms that embody, or lend themselves to, non-anthropocentric approaches to culture. Such cultural forms may include cultural objects, cultural practices, cultural institutions, or cultural attitudes. Each week course materials will include both "Cultural Theory" (i.e., theoretical readings) and "Cultural Forms" (i.e., artworks, artists' texts and films, viral videos, memes or media articles discussing particular practices or objects). The latter are meant as case studies that can be analysed and critiqued using the theories we read.

This course has a reading week in Week 6 of Winter Term.

This course is usually delivered through a combination of lectures and seminars. There will be two hours or more of teaching each week in WT.

1500-word essay that applies ONE theoretical framework discussed in the course to a cultural form of the student’s choosing OR a creative artifact - i.e., visual essay, body of creative writing, film, collage... (with a minimum 800 words explication in an essay format) that creatively and critically evaluates one of the theoretical approaches discussed in the course. 

Ahmed, S. 2004. "Affective economies", Social text, 22: 117-139.

Barad, K. (2014) Diffracting Diffraction: Cutting Together-Apart, Parallax, 20:3, 168-187.

Braidotti, R. (2013) The Posthuman. Cambridge: Polity Press.

Freeman, E. (2010) ‘Introduction: Queer and Not Now’, in Time Binds: Queer Temporalities, Queer Histories. Durham and London: Duke University Press.

Halberstam, J. (2005). In a Queer Time and Place: Transgender Bodies, Subcultural Lives. New York: NYU Press.

Kafer, A. (2013) Feminist, Queer, Crip. Bloomington: Indiana UP.

Latour, B. (2004) Why Has Critique Run out of Steam?: From Matters of Fact to Matters of Concern. Critical Inquiry 30 (Winter 2004), 225–248.

Mignolo, W. D. (2014) 'Chapter 4. Sylvia Wynter: What Does It Mean to Be Human?' in On Being Human as Praxis, edited by Katherine McKittrick, Durham, NC: Duke University Press, pp.106-123.

Tsing, A. L. (2015) The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press.

Course participation (15%).

Essay (85%, 4000 words) in May.

Attendance at all seminars and submission of all set coursework is required.