Master’s: Cultural Studies Languages, Literatures and the Arts
Presentation
Description
This Master’s programme in Cultural Studies offers theory-based, methodology-based and applied course units. It is based on research activity and experience of the professional context.
The programme of study contains a single subject pathway entitled ‘Cultural Studies’, which is geared towards research-oriented professions and draws primarily on the scientific output of the team of teaching staff and university lecturer-researchers who contribute to the programme.
Required languages: English, Spanish, Italian or Portuguese.
Objectives
The Master’s in Cultural Studies is based on theoretical knowledge and applied-research seminars.
The theory-based course unit on Cultural Studies (CS) retraces the genealogy of a particularly unique scientific culture that seeks to destabilise the humanist conception of culture, favouring instead the notion of culture in its broader, anthropological sense. This unit enables students to understand the concepts behind the theories, from those put forward by the founding fathers at the Birmingham Centre – Richard Hoggart, Raymond Williams, Edward Thompson – to Stuart Hall’s model of reception theory and Paul Gilroy’s concepts of migration and cultural identity. The contribution of other inspirational figures must not be overlooked, such as that made by the Italian Marxist theorist Antonio Gramsci. Nor can we ignore the influence of the French poststructuralist thinkers whose writings helped to destabilise the ‘Great American Novel’ thanks to French deconstructionism and the influence of hermeneutics. In the second semester this class goes on to examine developments and turning points in Cultural Studies, the influence they had and their reception in other scientific contexts - in the USA, Latin America and Europe (Spain, Portugal, Italy). The class examines the way in which other academic fields developed their own specific characteristics by drawing on and appropriating these cultural theories, which were spreading quickly by the end of the twentieth century.
Students may choose applied seminar units from the bundle of classes available within the Departments of English, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Literatures and the Arts. These seminar units will revolve around specific themes: postcolonial studies; art and memory; hyper-modernism; works and their audiences. They will be conducted in French with the exception of those seminar units taught by the English department.