Thoughts on a Syllabus?

Dear Friends.

I am in the process of outlining a syllabus that approaches the
study/history/teaching of cultural studies though its relationship to
communication models and or theories/philsophies of communication. The goal
is to teach graduate students in communication studies, as well as some from
outside the discipline, who nonetheless have an interest in cultural studies
and might be looking for a way to map the relationship between CS and Comm.
I am probably going to end the class with the current attempts and emerging
debate over whether or not Cultural Studies can or should abandon
communication models/textuality etc.  So  the very very rough outline of
such a project on my desk looks something like this (my categories are very
problematic, but bear with me) this is also terribly British-US centric for
now, but I hope to be changing that

A. The ghost of F. R. Levis in Cultural Materialism

textualist/Literary models of reading; bottom up history; Williams,
Communication and Structures of Feeling

B. Chicago School Symbolic Interactionism/Dewey

think here of someone like James Carey

C. Semiotic-Structuralist (toward Encoding/decoding)

Barthes-Althusser hybrid from BCCS (thinking about the News photograph work,
some of the McRobbie's work on girls popular magazines, some of the
subcultrual stuff, Hebdige's Style (more Barthes) etc)

Debate with Screen Style High Textualism (Coward's critique of BCCS work and
the responses by Hall et, al.)

Encodiing/Decoding as an event in the invention of a communication
theory/model for Cultural Studies


This is actually to get me started, After here the list seems to be, well, a
list of possibilities or perspectives, Hegemony and Audiences; Foucauldian
Discourse analysis; speechact/post-structuralist/perforamtive etc.,

At this point, even if I can get away with the story from A to C with some
sort of historical sensitivity, after encoding/decoding the relationship to
communication, seems more driven by different theoretical forms of uptake to
study "objects" or to do so with an implied model of communication. Until
perhaps Grossberg's claim starting in roughly 93 that cultural Studies might
not be happy anymore in communication studies departments and/or that CS has
embraced a communication model of culture, which he, believes to be
problematic. (While my history is likely off, the time between
encoding/Decoding 1980 and Grossberg's 93 critique is a very rich period of
different philosophical-critical approaches finding some room to exist (I
suspect "The post's" might be one way to describe that period)

So I was wondering, if anyone else has thought about this peculiar
relationship between Cultural Studies and Communication
Theor(ies)/Philosophies.  Do folks have other ways of approaching the
Cultural Studies/Communication Hybrid (I.e. do you go through object domains
instead; do you focus on different points on the communication circuit, some
other model of communication (for example, CS and producers of texts, CS and
the audiences of texts, CS and the message of texts....etc). This is
something I want to say is an historical moment, a peculiar conjuncture with
a history, and not necessary the future or even present of cultural studies.
But that is the question I am thinking about as I write this syllabus, what
might your question be?

In the end I would take any advise or suggestions folks have. I would also
be interested in trying to see if we cannot make such a syllabus on the
list.  Basically, my thought is that there is "no necessary corresponence"
between the history of Cultural Studies and Communication theory/philosophy.
Yet, it happened and I am wondering if folks would like to help me document
that encounter with suggestions, their own thoughts and ideas about what
would be on such a reading list--with a reason or two why this reading and
not some other reading.

Ok, that's what I am working on, anyone want to help out?

cheers
ron greene


---
You are currently subscribed to cultstud-l as: gcsg-cultstud-l@xxxxxxxxxxx
To unsubscribe send a blank email to 
leave-cultstud-l-144941Q@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
The FAQ: http://www.cas.usf.edu/communication/rodman/cultstud/faq.html