230394 Cultural Theory: Ways of Thinking (S) (SoSe 2025)

This seminar is an introduction to the large field of cultural studies and its related cultural theories. Cultural studies is not an academic discipline quite like others. As a field it possesses neither a well-defined methodology nor clearly demarcated limits for research and investigation. What may be its shortcomings may also be its greatest potential. The field offers us to think, reflect and investigate about culture, lives, social and natural environment, and history in myriad ways. It also offers us to link the life practice of reading with many other life practices in our social world. In this seminar students will read theoretical texts by important authors in the field of cultural studies like Stuart Hall, Benedict Anderson, Donna Haraway, Gayatri Spivak, and Judith Butler among others. Conceptually, we will link these theoretical texts to life practices like reading, working, resisting etc. and explore how students can develop theoretical and methodological frameworks for their own investigation. To include actual “practice” we will have in-class workshops to experiment with the application of cultural studies ways of thinking to the analysis of images, texts, and performances. Each student is required to give an oral presentation about one cultural studies text for credit points.