1. Chapter 9: Cultural Studies A Handbook of Critical Approaches to Literature

2. I. Defining Cultural Studies “Culture” is hard to define and so is “cultural studies” It is not so much a discrete approach as a set of practices influenced by many fields It concentrates on social and cultural forces that either create community or cause division and alienation Four goals: (1) transcending confines of a particular discipline, (2) remaining politically engaged, (3) denying the separation of high and low culture, and (4) analyzing the means of production as well as product Joins subjectivity to engagement

3. II. U.S. Ethnic Studies A. African American Writers Gates: uses “race” in quotation marks as “a dangerous trope” The Other Du Bois: double-consciousness

4. II. U.S. Ethnic Studies A. African American Writers (cont’d) Sollors, Appiah, Morrison African American women writers versus male protest writers Irony, autobiography, naturalism, tragedy Myth of persecuted people (cf Hebrews) Periods of Colonial, Antebellum, Reconstruction, pre- World War II, Harlem Renaissance, Naturalism and Modernism, Contemporary

5. II. U.S. Ethnic Studies B. Latina/o Writers Problem of naming Latina/os Gender differences History of the United States and Mexico Anzaldúa; code-switching; mestizaje La Virgen, La Malinche, La Llorona

6. II. U.S. Ethnic Studies C. Native American Literatures Oral versus written traditions, traditional versus mainstream ritual, performance, community; art not disconnected from everyday life Occom, Apess, Hopkins, Mournin Dove, Zitkala-  a, Erdrich, Harjo

7. II. U.S. Ethnic Studies D. Asian American Writers Autobiography Immigrant literature (paper sons and picture brides) Women overshadow men Far, Kingston, Tan, new Pacific voices

8. III. Postmodernism and Popular Culture A. Postmodernism Modernist literature recognized fragmentation and alienation of life but mourned them; postmodernism celebrates them Disillusionment with institutions; irony, ambiguity, self- conscious play of meanings, parody, pastiche; suspicion and subversion of “master narratives” Eagleton: postmodernism offers a “depthless, decentered, ungrounded, self-reflexive, playful, derivative, unstable, indeterminate, eclectic, pluralistic” meaning Eco: awareness of “the already said” Baudrillard: “simulacra” of “real” objects

9. III. Postmodernism and Popular Culture B. Popular Culture Production Textual Audience Historical analyses “Subject-positions”