REQUIRED CORE COURSES
CUL 609: International Cultural Studies: Speaker Series
Each semester, the International Cultural Studies Certificate Program organizes a Speaker Series. These guest presentations are typically held every other week (usually Wednesdays) from 12:00 noon until 1:20 pm and include a question and answer session. Guest speakers include University of Hawai'i faculty, East-West Center Fellows, visiting faculty, as well as graduate students and other community members conducting work relevant to International Cultural Studies.
Students enrolled in CUL 609 are required to attend all of the presentations in the series. Additionally, students meet periodically with
the convenor and must write journals for at least eight of the
presentations. Credit for this course is one (1) unit.
If you are curious about the topics addressed in the Seminar Series or would like to see examples of previous titles, please click on Colloquia.
CUL 610: International Cultural Studies: History and Theory
This seminar provides an introduction to the history and theory of cultural studies, an interdisciplinary field that examines the meanings and functions of “culture” from various perspectives. Rather than seeing “culture” as something that is fixed and inherent to particular nations or groups, cultural studies approaches “culture” as something that is constructed and evolves through specific historical, political, economic, and social processes. As such, cultural studies examines “culture” not only through purely formal or aesthetic perspectives but more in the context of the material conditions in which it is created, disseminated, controlled, and/or practiced. We will read and discuss various frameworks and methods used for such analyses.
Cultural studies has intellectual foundations in the works of various European thinkers and theorists of the twentieth century. The course will cover some of these most influential theories that have broad applications in many areas of inquiry. At the same time, the course will also analyze—and sometimes question—the applicability of these theories to the creation of “situated knowledge” in our own context. In other words, we will discuss how the specific conditions of the world today—i.e. the increasing flows of culture, capital, people in the age of globalization—and also our location in the Pacific—with the history of (neo)colonialism, immigration, and cultural hybridity—both necessitate and enable re-thinking of the theoretical questions posed by cultural studies.