124261 KO Critical Media Analysis (2017S)

If, for Cultural Studies, culture is "a particular way of life, which expresses certain meanings and values not only in art and learning but also in institutions and ordinary behaviour" (Williams, The Long Revolution), questions become relevant that address the everyday spaces in which such ways of life meander: Where can we go, and where can we not? And, if you can, why can’t I? And why do we keep off the grass?

This course sets out to explore space(s) in an Anglophone context: public spaces and private space; earphones and wireless speakers; urban nomads and orientalism; carnivals and prisons; comfort zones and heterotopias; exhibition spaces and hostile architecture; tactical tagging and guerrilla knitting; well-trodden paths and roads less traveled by; ruin porn, and pornography as the politics of space.

• Concepts of semiotics, multimodality and proxemics add up to a methodological toolkit that will equip students to critically analyse the complex meanings that structure space.
• Key theoretical concepts in Cultural Studies will be reviewed, and applied, in the second half of the semester.

Aimed at BA students and teacher trainees, this course is thus designed to contribute to both the methodological skills and theoretical understanding involved in critical media analysis. Readings, viewings and class discussions will be supplemented by online performance, group research and peer feedback.