The Place of Culture

1. The Place of Culture GEOG 301 Monday, October 5th

2. Community Events • Son De Madera, Martha Gonzalez, and Francisco Orozco Seattle Fandango Project Panel Discussion When: Tuesday, Oct 6, 2009 - 7:00 PM Where: Ethnic Cultural Center Son De Madera, Martha Gonzalez (Women Studies, Quetzal), and Francisco Orozco (Ethnomusicology) will discuss the Fandango culture, the Son Jarocho genre, and its connection to a transnational dialogue. • Girish Karnad Danz Lecture: Entertaining India When: Thursday, Oct 8, 2009 - 6:30 PM Where: Kane 130 Encounters with British colonialism profoundly altered the perception Indians had of themselves. Girish Karnad—a celebrated playwright, actor, and author—will look at how this engagement with the West reshaped the world of Indian entertainment. Until the nineteenth century, entertainment in India was the sole prerogative of communities which had traditionally specialized in specific performing forms and crafts. With colonialism came the notion of entertainment as a business enterprise, open to all castes and subject to the free play of market forces: anyone with the requisite capital (money, talent, or daring) could now invest in it. This development fundamentally reoriented the entire cultural sphere.

3. Community Events • Symposium Eugenics and Disability: History and Legacy in Washington When: Friday, Oct 9, 2009 Where: UW Tower Auditorium, 4333 BrooklynAvenue NE In 1909, Washington became the second state to enact a forced sterilization law. This event will provide a forum for dialogue about this eugenic past and its current implications. Panels will feature national and local scholars and advocates. The intended audience includes academics, clinicians, community advocates, individuals with disabilities, service providers, policy makers, and interested members of the general public. Registration is required. • David Shumway The Revolution Was on Columbia (and Capital, RCA, Warner Brothers, etc.): How Rock and Rock Stars Changed American Culture When: Friday, Oct 9, 2009 - 4:00 PM Where: Communications 202David R. Shumway (English and Literary & Cultural Studies, Carnegie Mellon) recently finished a book about rock stars as cultural icons—including Elvis Presley, James Brown, Bob Dylan, The Rolling Stones, The Grateful Dead, Joni Mitchell, and Bruce Springsteen—to be published by NYU Press. • Girish Karnad Screening and Discussion: A Lamp in the NicheWhen: Saturday, Oct 10, 2009 - 4:00 PM Where: Kane 210 Girish Karnad will screen A Lamp in the Niche, a documentary on Sufism that has won much acclaim, and also will lead a post-screening discussion.

4. Websites http://staff.washington.edu/jaimek2/index.html https://eres.lib.washington.edu/eres/courseindex.aspx?error=&page=search

5. Syllabus Changes • Monday, November 16th Reviewing Identity Struggles • Mitchell, Don (2000). Cultural Geography: A Critical Introduction. Blackwell Publishing. Chapter 11 (pp287-294) • Fraser, N. (2000). Rethinking Recognition. New Left Review 3 (May/June), p107-120. • Stepan, N. L. (1998). Race, gender, science and citizenship. Gender and History, 10(1), 26-52. Topic 4: TBA • Wednesday, November 18th TBA • Monday, November 23rd TBA • Wednesday, November 25th Cancelled Class is cancelled so that students can take a trip to the Wing Luke Museum. A handout will be distributed for completion after this trip. • Monday, November 30th Discussing our Wing Luke Museum Trips • Wednesday, December 2nd TBA • Monday, December 7th Paper Presentations • Wednesday, December 9th Paper Presentations

6. In-Class Facilitation Guidelines Over the course of the term you will be required to facilitate discussion of two assigned articles. This means that you will be expected to have completed and be able to discuss the assigned readings for that day. This is of course something I will expect from all students every day but on your assigned day you can expect me to call on you and hold you particularly accountable for the material. You will also be required to formally present the readings. Formal presentations should include the following: • To identify 1-3 key concepts or words that emerged from the readings • To provide an overview of the readings and discuss the articles in detail. You can either do this in the style of a lecture or you can provide a short movie, pictures or audio material that you feel ties into the materials. • To make connections to earlier articles, film material, lecture material etc that we have covered in the course • Perhaps to make connections to current events occurring outside the classroom • Most importantly with 1-3 questions that you have for the other students. These may be questions you have about the piece that you want to discuss further or didn’t understand, or questions that arose for you as you read. • Presentations should be at least 15 minutes and at most 25 minutes. In addition to your in-class participation and presentation please come with typed notes including your comments and questions to hand in at the end of session. ½-1 page, 12 point font is sufficient.

7. Looking Back…. The Enlightenment • What is the Enlightenment Period? • What is its legacy? • How has it been represented?

8. Looking Back… Positivism • What is positivism? • Critiques of this Approach • Empiricism • Exclusivity • Autonomy • Universality

9. Modes of Representing Culture • What is topography? • Why do Duncan and Ley take issue with topography? • What does mimesis mean? • Why are mimetic understandings of representation problematic? • What are the four modes of representing according to Duncan and Ley?

10. Postmodernism “A movement in philosophy, the arts, and the social sciences characterized by scepticism towards the grand claims and grand theory of the modern era with its privileged epistemological vantage point for the artist, theorists, or observer…and bearing an equal suspicion of changeless, foundational relationships that escape the contingencies of time and space. Instead, interpretations and the authority of the observer are regarded as socially constituted, contingent, and partial, so that postmodern positions stress an openness to a range of voices and perspectives in social inquiry, artistic experimentation, and political empowerment” -- Dictionary of Human Geography

11. Epistemology Epistemology or theory of knowledge is the branch of philosophy concerned with the nature and scope (limitations) of knowledge. It addresses the questions: • What is knowledge? • How is knowledge acquired? • What do people know? • How do we know what we know? Much of the debate in this field has focused on analyzing the nature of knowledge and how it relates to similar notions such as truth, belief, and justification. It also deals with the means of production of knowledge, as well as skepticism about different knowledge claims. ---Wikipedia

12. Hermeneutics • “The study of interpretation and meaning” • Asks us when looking at any text to interrogate the purposes of the author, an idea which challenges the very foundations of the scientific method and attempts at objectivity • Asks us when looking at representations to look at our own interpretations of that interpretation • Focuses on a critical, reflexive sensibility

13. Finding meaning: The Hermeneutic Model of Interpreting a Text • Constant dialogue between our own presuppositions and the text, and between individual parts of the texts and its whole • The process is thus: • Circular • Indeterminate • Perspectival

14. Distinguishing… • What is the difference between a postmodern and a hermeneutic approach? • What are some pitfalls of a hermeneutic approach? • What are some problems with a postmodern approach?

15. Sauer’s Contribution • Concerned with how industrialization and modernization were changing our relationship with landscapes and our understandings of it and those relationships • “[proposed] landscape as the organic unit upon which the ever-changing human-environment relationship could be observed, measured, and recorded….culture played the key role as the agent of change emanating from the human side of that relationship”– Oakes and Price (2008) • Contested the Enlightenment • Contested environmental determinism • Contested Ethnocentrism • Forwarded Cultural Relativism • Some weakness: too focused on material aspects of culture and their representation in landscapes, did not interrogate the inner workings of culture

16. Raymond Williams • How does Mitchell distinguish Sauer’s concept of culture with that of Williams? • What is a materialist approach to cultural studies?

17. Raymond Williams “As Raymond Williams observes…the important point about culture is not that it escapes a single definition, but that it captures an ongoing conviction among human scientists that understanding behavior necessarily involves accounting for ‘the material’ and ‘the symbolic’” ---Oakes and Price (2008)

18. Hoogart and Hall • How does Mitchell define Hoggart’s contribution to cultural studies? • What was Hall’s contribution? • How do the backgrounds of both of these men, along with Williams, play into their work?

19. Gramsci and Cultural Hegemony • What is the question of hegemony? • What does Mitchell/Gramsci mean when he says that cultural hegemony sets the terms of the debate? • How is the idea of hegemony different from that of ‘false consciousness’?

20. Feminism What contributions did feminists make in this period? How did their ideas challenge the base-superstructure problematic? What does it mean to claim that the personal is political?