Courses

CLMD 6101 T2 Perspectives on Interdisciplinarity in Cultural Theory (Credit value 1.0)


This course will address the theory and practice of interdisciplinarity and interdisciplinary studies of culture. Attention will be paid to those issues in cultural theory of the twentieth-century that inform current interdisciplinary work in literature, film, music, art and new media: the nature of the text and textuality; the status of representation; the role of technologies of production and reception; the formation of the subject and modes of subjectivity; the construction of difference (gender, ethnicity, social class); the functioning of ideology; the problematics of affect and corporeality; and the meaning and ethics of cultural value.

Specific works from literature, film and other cultural practices, including new media, will be introduced in relation to questions of theory.

While the course does not aim to survey the entire body of twentieth-century cultural theory, students can expect to become familiar with key theoretical texts in and across a number of disciplines that address the issues in question and to acquire a knowledge of the historical and intellectual contexts within which such work was produced. It is expected that the theoretical issues at hand and the debates they provoke will be situated both within and against the dominant Western tradition.





CLMD 6900 T2 Interdisciplinary Research Methods (Credit Value 0.5)


Students will be introduced to a range of methods of inquiry, procedures and practices across related disciplines, using both traditional and electronic research tools. The immediate aim of the course is to help students develop research methods that will enable them to prepare, write and defend the doctoral dissertation successfully in either print or electronic form. Students will also become familiar with the practices of academic publishing, the preparation of conference presentations and academic articles, along with private and public sector writing and research protocols.

Students are required to complete successfully at least two of the courses listed below in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree.

These five courses articulate the complex formed by the conjunction of the context, the work, the individual and the apparatus. They are intended to address specific works of literature, film and other cultural practices both from inside and outside the dominant Western, cultural tradition. Because cultural forms and practices themselves generate particular ways of knowing and seeing, these courses will consider how specific examples of print, visual, aural and electronic culture speak to epistemological, social and libidinal operations that continually call for new conceptual and analytical approaches.





CLMD 6102 F1, W1, S1 Issues in Transnationalism  (Credit Value 0.5)


This course will consider cultural production in the context of global exchange, examining the processes of mediation —  conflict, collaboration, transformation and hybridization —  that govern the movement of populations, objects, and ideas as they travel across borders and between societies.





CLMD 6103 F1, W1, S1 Issues of Cultural Mediation and Representation (Credit Value 0.5)


This course will examine how works from different cultures or works in the same or different media from the same culture pose questions about the nature of representation, interpretation, meaning and affect. The emphasis will be upon the relation between the social intelligibility of these practices and their textual features. Intertextual and interdiscursive cultural practices invite questions about the epistemological consequences of formal and stylistic overlap between these practices and about the way in which one practice may change the conditions of production and reception of another.

Examples might include narrativity in literature and film; the roles and practices of avant-gardes; the issue of realism; problems of signification in music; issues of signification and affect in music and cinema; the film, video, and mixed media work of specific practitioners; the problematics of applying “first world” theoretical and interpretive protocols to “third world” cultural practices; the challenges of new media simulacra to old media representations.





CLMD 6104 F1, W1, S1 Issues of Subjectivity and Difference (Credit Value 0.5)


This course will concern itself with understanding the theory of the subject and its relations, with examples from specific cultural practices in literary studies, film, music, art, popular culture and new media.





CLMD 6105 F1, W1, S1 Issues in the Technologies of Culture (Credit Value 0.5)


This course concerns itself with the role that the technologies of print, visual and auditory cultures plays in changing models of literacy, visuality and aurality. The technologies of the cultures of print, vision and sound will be discussed through specific examples of cultural practices in various media. The course will be informed by an understanding of technology as a cultural and social practice. The course will therefore raise questions about the objective and subjective foundations of knowledge.

Examples to be discussed could include the technologization of the body; the urban world as a visual and aural space; the relations between global information systems and local knowledges; geographies of culture; the construction of time and space; the inter-related histories of cinema and sound, music and soundcarriers, film and painting, or literature and image-making; cultural practice and the law; the scopic and auditory regimes instituted by film, video, changing soundcarriers and electronic applications.





CLMD 6106 F1, W1, S1 Issues in History and Culture (Credit Value 0.5)


This course will consider history as an object of representation and a condition of human experience. It will examine historical approaches to print, visual, and auditory culture in relation to theoretical texts and specific periods and genres. Topics may include history and the novel, visual culture in history, and historiography.

Students may elect to complete one or more of these courses successfully in partial fulfilment of the requirements of the degree.





CLMD 6901 F1, W1, S1 Directed Reading in Cultural Mediations (Credit value 0.5)


This tutorial is designed to permit students to pursue research on topics chosen in consultation with members of faculty and the Graduate Supervisor.





CLMD 6902 F1, W1, S1 Special Topic in Cultural Mediations (Credit value 0.5)


This in-class course offers selected topics in interdisciplinary studies of culture not
available in the regular course offerings.





CLMD 6903 F1, W1, S1 Special Topic in Cultural Mediations (Credit value 0.5)


This in-class course offers selected topics in interdisciplinary studies of culture not available in the regular course offerings.





CLMD 6904 F1, W1, S1 Special Topic in Cultural Mediations (Credit value 0.5)


This in-class course offers selected topics in interdisciplinary studies of culture not
available in the regular course offerings.

CLMD 6907 Comprehensive I (Credit value 1.0)


The first comprehensive will be a general examination of the broad range of cultural theory of the twentieth-century as it informs interdisciplinary work today and the historical, intellectual and cultural frames of reference that this work invokes. The full credit core course, 25.611, may be considered preparatory to the writing of this comprehensive. To complement the preparation provided by the core course, a list of key texts for study will be drawn up by the graduate committee of the program. The examination will normally be set and graded by a board of at least two core faculty attached to the program and who have been involved in the instruction of the full credit core course, 25.611. Students will normally sit this comprehensive within twelve months of their registration in the program.

CLMD 6908 Comprehensive II (Credit value 1.0)


The second comprehensive will be a discipline-specific examination in a specialised area of study chosen by the student in consultation with the graduate supervisor. Four comprehensive areas have been identified 1) Literary Studies 2) Visual Culture 3) Musical Culture 4) New Technologies. Within his or her comprehensive area, a student may choose to specialise in a national cinema, a field within a national literature, a musical tradition, world musics, etc. Based on a list of key texts in the discipline (primary, critical, theoretical), the examination will be set and graded by a board of at least two core faculty attached to the program who have the disciplinary background in question. Students will normally sit this comprehensive within twenty-four months of their registration in the program.

On the official University transcript of the student’s academic record, he or she will receive the notation of a “Specialisation” to indicate a research concentration based on the choice of the comprehensive area, as per:

• Specialisation: Literary Studies
• Specialisation: Visual Culture
• Specialisation: Musical Culture
• Specialisation: Technology and Culture

Such a notation will help to identify the research areas of the program in a shorthand way for the purposes of public knowledge and give the student some advantage by communicating on the transcript and the curriculum vitae his or her strengths.

CLMD 6909 Thesis (Credit value 5.0)