Methods in Cultural Studies 3700-ISSC-23-MCS

The course will show two distinct ways of looking at cultural phenomena in the form of extended case studies.
The first part will explore the contemporary pop-culture, and cultural texts such as TV series and video games and will look at ways to analyze and theorize them. We will try to use our non-academia experience in an academic environment, trying to adopt a new perspective of looking at - well-acquainted - objects.
In the second part of the course, we will explore the fundaments of participatory action research, focusing on working with minority or Indigenous communities. We will also open a discussion about the role of academia in the contemporary world and non-dominant approaches to research. Linda Tuhiwai Smith, a leading theorist of the decolonization of Maori in Aotearoa / New Zealand, wrote that “research is not an innocent or distant academic exercise but an activity that has something at stake and that occurs in a set of political and social conditions” (Smith L. T. 1999/2012, 5). In different local contexts, Indigenous scholars propose a valid alternative to the “Western” way of doing research. They focus on “deconstructing Eurocentric hierarchies and dichotomies and highlighting holistic thinking” and prove that “research can be transformative, drawing from Indigenous ways of knowing” (Virtanen et al. 2021, 13).