COURSE INTRODUCTION AND APPLICATION INFORMATION


Course Name
Introduction to Cultural Studies
Code
Semester
Theory
(hour/week)
Application/Lab
(hour/week)
Local Credits
ECTS
CDM 104
Spring
3
0
3
4
Prerequisites
None
Course Language
English
Course Type
Required
Course Level
First Cycle
Mode of Delivery -
Teaching Methods and Techniques of the Course Discussion
Problem Solving
Case Study
Q&A
Critical feedback
Lecture / Presentation
Course Coordinator -
Course Lecturer(s)
Assistant(s) -
Course Objectives This course will introduce students to the basic concepts and analytical methods commonly employed in cultural studies. The emphasis is on audio-visual culture in particular and cultural products in general, taken in their broader social, aesthetic, ethical, and political contexts. The course emphasizes questions such as how do we make meaning of the audio-visual world? In what ways do social, political, cultural, ethical factors affect visual representation? What is the relationship between culture, images and power?
Learning Outcomes The students who succeeded in this course;
  • define contemporary visual culture
  • explain how viewers make meaning of images
  • argue with the basic concepts of cultural studies
  • * analyze images in their economic, social, political and cultural contexts
  • analyze images in their economic, social, political and cultural contexts
  • apply methods of cultural analysis to images
Course Description In an interactive lecture form, the course reviews visual cultural products ranging from newspapers to the Web, advertisements to the movies, from television to fine arts and discusses them in relation to their economic, social, political and cultural contexts. Students are expected to actively participate in class discussion.
Related Sustainable Development Goals

 



Course Category

Core Courses
X
Major Area Courses
Supportive Courses
Media and Managment Skills Courses
Transferable Skill Courses

 

WEEKLY SUBJECTS AND RELATED PREPARATION STUDIES

Week Subjects Required Materials
1 Introduction
2 What is Representation? Stuart Hall, Representation and the Media (MEF, 1997) https://www.youtube.com/watch ?v=84depWskwu0&t=4s Stuart Hall (Ed) 1997. Representation. Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices. Sage Publications. Marita Sturken & Lisa Cartwright. 2009. Practices of looking: an introduction to visual culture.
3 What is Visual Culture? Images, power, politics Episode 1, Ways of Seeing, John Berger (BBC TV series, 1972) ohn Berger, Ways of Seeing, Penguin, 1972. Pp. 7-33 (Chapter 1). Michel Foucault “Las Meninas” Chapter 1 in The Order of Things: An Archeology of Human Sciences (Les Mots et les choses) pp. 3-16.
4 Semiotics Mythologies Marita Sturken & Lisa Cartwright. 2009. Practices of looking: an introduction to visual culture. New York: Oxford University Press. Pp. 179-218. Roland Barthes (1977) “Rhetoric of the image” Image - Music - Text. Hill and Wang, pp.32-51. Roland Barthes “The Eiffel Tower” in The Eiffel Tower and Other Mythologies. University of California Press. pp. 3-17.
5 Culture Industry Screening Money for Nothing (MEF, 2001) Raymond Williams. 1976. “Culture” in Keywords, Oxford University Press. pp. 87-93. Theodor Adorno & Max Horkheimer. “The Culture Industry. Enlightenment as mass deception” in Gunzelin Schmid Noerr (Ed). 2009. Dialectic of enlightenment: philosophical fragments. Stanford Univ. Press. Pp. 41-72.
6 Stereotypes, Ideology, Identity, Otherness, Orientalism - Occidentalism. Screening: Edward Said on Orientalism (MEF, 1998) Screening Reel Bad Arabs (MEF, 2006) Do the Right Thing. Spike Lee. 1989 Marita Sturken & Lisa Cartwright. 2009. Practices of looking: an introduction to visual culture. New York: Oxford University Press. pp. 22-26. bell hooks (2015) “eating the other. desire and resistance” in Black Looks. Race and Representation. Routledge. Pp. 21-40. Edward Said. 1977. “Imaginative geography and the its representations: Orientalizing the Oriental” in Orientalism. Western Conceptions of the Orient. Penguin Books. Pp. 49-72. Meltem Ahıska “Occidentalism: The Historical Fantasy of the Modern” The South Atlantic Quarterly. Duke University Press. Volume 102, Number 2/3, Spring/Summer 2003, pp. 351- 379.
7 Gender. Screenings: Codes of Gender (MEF, 2010) Episode 3, Ways of Seeing, John Berger (BBC TV series, 1972) Judith Butler – "Performative Acts and Gender Constitution" (1988) John Berger “Chapter 3” in Ways of Seeing. 1972.
8 From Modernism to Postmodernism – Changing Regimes of Visuality Simulation Screening: Český Sen (2004) (90 min) Assignment 1 (20%) due Marita Sturken & Lisa Cartwright “Chapter 8: Postmodernism: Irony, Parody, Pastiche” in Practices of Looking. An Introduction to Visual Culture, Oxford University Press. 2018 (Third Edition), pp. 301-336. Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation.
9 Midterm week
10 Consumer cultures: From Nationalism to Globalism William Mazzarella "'Very Bombay': Contending with the Global in an Indian Advertising Agency." Cultural Anthropology 18, no. 1 (2003): 33–71. Derya Ozkan & Robert J. Foster “Consumer Citizenship, Nationalism, and Neoliberal Globalization in Turkey: The Advertising Launch of Cola Turka” Advertising & Society Review, vol. 6 no. 3, 2005.
11 Social media, digital culture Screenings Growing up Online (PBS) http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontli ne/film/kidsonline/ Generation Like (PBS) http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontli ne/film/generation-like/ SelfieCity Research Project http://www.selfiecity.net/. Assignment 2 (30%) due Lev Manovich & Alise Tifentale “Selfiecity: Exploring Photography and Self-Fashioning in Social Media” in Berry, David M. and Michael Dieter, eds. Postdigital Aesthetics: Art, Computation and Design (Palgrave Macmillan: 2015), pp. 109-122. Susan Murray (2008) “Digital Images, Photo- sharing, and our shifting notions of everyday aesthetics” Journal of Visual Culture. Vol 7(2), pp. 147-163 Geoffrey Batchen, “Specters of cyberspace,” in The Visual Culture Reader, Nicholas Mirzoeff, ed. (London: Routledge, 1998), 237–242.
12 Assignment 2 - In class Reviews
13 Artificial Intelligence Lev Manovich – AI Aesthetics (2018).
14 Project (%30)
15 Final Exams
16 Final Exams
Course Notes/Textbooks

Marita Sturken and Lisa Cartwright. Practices of Looking. An Introduction to Visual Culture, Oxford University Press. 2009.

Suggested Readings/Materials

John Berger. Ways of Seeing. 1972.

 

EVALUATION SYSTEM

Semester Activities Number Weighting
Participation
1
20
Laboratory / Application
Field Work
Quizzes / Studio Critiques
Portfolio
Homework / Assignments
1
50
Presentation / Jury
Project
Seminar / Workshop
Oral Exam
Midterm
Final Exam
1
30
Total

Weighting of Semester Activities on the Final Grade
2
70
Weighting of End-of-Semester Activities on the Final Grade
1
30
Total

ECTS / WORKLOAD TABLE

Semester Activities Number Duration (Hours) Workload
Course Hours
(Including exam week: 16 x total hours)
16
3
48
Laboratory / Application Hours
(Including exam week: 16 x total hours)
16
Study Hours Out of Class
14
2
28
Field Work
Quizzes / Studio Critiques
Portfolio
Homework / Assignments
2
10
Presentation / Jury
Project
Seminar / Workshop
Oral Exam
Midterms
Final Exams
1
20
    Total
116

 

COURSE LEARNING OUTCOMES AND PROGRAM QUALIFICATIONS RELATIONSHIP

#
Program Competencies/Outcomes
* Contribution Level
1
2
3
4
5
1

To be able to have fundamental knowledge about narrative forms in cinema, digital and interactive media, and the foundational concepts relevant to these forms.

X
2

To be able to create narratives based on creative and critical thinking skills, by using the forms and tools of expression specific to cinema and digital media arts.

3

To be able to use the technical equipment and software required for becoming a specialist/expert in cinema and digital media.

4

To be able to perform skills such as scriptwriting, production planning, use of the camera, sound recording, lighting and editing, at the basic level necessary for pre-production, production and post-production phases of an audio-visual work; and to perform at least one of them at an advanced level.

5

To be able to discuss how meaning is made in cinema and digital media; how economy, politics and culture affect regimes of representation; and how processes of production, consumption, distribution and meaning-making shape narratives.

6

To be able to perform the special technical and aesthetic skills at the basic level necessary to create digital media narratives in the fields of interactive film, video installation, experimental cinema and virtual reality.

X
7

To be able to critically analyze a film or digital media artwork from technical, intellectual and artistic perspectives.

X
8

To be able to participate in the production of a film or digital media artwork as a member or leader of a team, following the principles of work safety and norms of ethical behavior.

9

To be able to stay informed about global scientific, social, economic, cultural, political, institutional and industrial developments.

10

To be able to develop solutions to legal, scientific and professional problems surrounding the field of cinema and digital media.

11

To be able to use a foreign language to communicate with colleagues and collect data in the field of cinema and digital media. ("European Language Portfolio Global Scale", Level B1).

12

To be able to use a second foreign language at the medium level.

13

To be able to connect the knowledge accumulated throughout human history to the field of expertise.

*1 Lowest, 2 Low, 3 Average, 4 High, 5 Highest