j.gilbert@uel.ac.uk
For an application form, please email: ssmcsadmissions@uel.ac.uk
Cultural Studies is the most exciting thing to happen to the humanities and social sciences during the past 50 years, transforming the way we think about every aspect of society, power relations and personal experience. UEL has been central to this process, being the home of the oldest BA (Hons) Cultural Studies in the world and the only Department of Cultural Studies in Britain to receive a '5' (the top numerical score) in the last two national Research Assessment Exercises.
The MA Cultural Studies engages with key contemporary debates in the discipline of cultural studies. Debates about
modernity, post-modernity, the changing nature of our complex society and our shifting experiences of selfhood are central to contemporary thought. The MA offers an advanced grounding in the core themes of cultural studies and an opportunity to explore the full range of cutting edge debates in the field.
As bell hooks, the African-American feminist argues, when we study culture 'we decolonize our minds and our
imaginations'.
The programme is suitable for graduates of cultural studies, humanities, and social science subjects who wish to deepen
their knowledge of the theoretical approaches and thematic content of cultural studies. It will prepare students for higher level academic work and will also be appropriate for those seeking employment in the cultural industries and social agencies.
"The Cultural Studies programme at the University of East London has a well-deserved reputation for excellent teaching, committed staff and imaginative students, and is internationally recognised for its important and innovative work."
Stuart Hall, Emeritus Professor in Cultural Studies and Media Studies
What is distinctive about the Cultural Studies programme at the University of East London?
Since the formation of the first full Department of Cultural Studies in 1984, the work in this institution has been characterised by a commitment to the idea of Cultural Studies as a form of political analysis, trying to use the most appropriate and effective theoretical tools to look at the intersections between specific cultural phenomena and wider configurations of social and economic power. Our recent conference, Cultural Studies Now (see http://www.uel.ac.uk/culturalstudiesnow/) was widely regarded as a huge success for re-asserting the value of this ideal of what Cultural Studies can be.
While many institutions, publications and degree programmes today call themselves ‘Cultural Studies’, many of them show little interest in pursuing this rigorous intellectual programme. Practising either a kind of ineffectual aesthetic criticism, or studying pure philosophy for its own sake under the heading of ‘cultural theory’, there is a strong tendency to behave as if questions of power and justice no longer matter in the world of ‘smooth global flows’ of money, people and information, or to treat theory as an end in itself rather than as a set of tools for the political analysis of culture. Theory and theorists are today often taught and lauded for their supposed fashionability rather than because they are actually useful for anything. ‘Texts’ are endlessly analysed without any consideration of how they fit into the wider historical moment. These are the versions of ‘cultural studies’ which we try to avoid.
This is not to say that we’re not interested in the most cutting-edge debates within cultural theory, as well as in long-standing ones that can never be fully resolved. Philosophy and theory are indispensable tools for thinking about the world, and it is often necessary to pursue philosophical and theoretical lines of enquiry at very high levels of abstraction. This is why we teach both the core texts in the development of cultural theory and also offer students the chance to consider the most recent philosophical and theoretical debates in the field, with reference to the various competing ideas of thinkers such as Negri, Deleuze, Zizek, Agamben, Stiegler, Derrida, Nancy, Butler, Grosz, Laclau, Foucault, Laplanche etc. We try to take a comparative rather than a dogmatic approach to this study, considering the political and metaphysical implications of a range of different positions rather than just concentrating on one tradition or set of texts and assuming that it can hold all the answers. A number of our key MA modules, including the core Cultural Studies module ‘Modernity and Culture’ and the optional ‘Contemporary Cultural Theory’ offer the chance to pursue such study to a very high level.
But the difference between doing Cultural Studies and just doing ‘pure’ theory is this: Cultural Studies takes an experimental attitude to theory itself, always seeking to test the assumptions of abstract theories by applying them to the here and how of current cultural, political and social situations. We look to see how these sets of ideas can help us to understand the changing nature of power relationships and personal experience of all kinds in the world today. So, for example, how can Foucault or Deleuze help us to think about changing attitudes to work and the family, and what do these changes have to do with the historical legacy of the women’s movement, the economic impacts of the rise of China, and the different ways in which men and women are negotiating their domestic space? These are the kinds of question that we are ultimately interested in. This is why the core module ‘Modernity and Culture’ is not only concerned with abstract theoretical issues but also with ways of understanding the changing shapes of contemporary ‘postmodern’ societies and the new and inherently complex forms of capitalism made possible by new technologies, various social changes, and the political success of neo-liberalism. It’s also why we’re planning to introduce a new module on ‘Doing Cultural Studies’. This module will consider the applicability of a range of theoretical and historical ideas from the history and the cutting-edge of Cultural Studies to understanding newly emerging configurations of power and possibility.
For there is no question that the world is changing rapidly. Globalisation, new patterns of migrancy, the emergence of a world culture on the internet, the ecological crisis, the transformation of sexual relationships and the return of religion to the world stage are all re-drawing the political maps which orient our actions. Politics is transformed in this new context, with old divisions between left and right, radical and conservative, no longer being clearly relevant at all times. This does not mean that politics is over, however, or that issues of oppression and injustice no longer matter. In many ways, it means just the opposite: political struggle now takes place across a range of sites, from the global to the very local to the personal, and the fault-lines and stakes of those struggles are not always immediately apparent. As citizens of the world, the only way we can hope to act effectively – be it in our ‘private’ lives or as public agents – is by trying to understand the new shapes which our world is taking. That’s what Cultural Studies is about.
Potential applicants who want to get a feel for the kind of Cultural Studies that we are interested in and the range of things that they might study here might want to look at the following selection of books:
Raymond Williams (1961) TheLong Revolution.
Stuart Hall et. al. (1978) Policing the Crisis: Mugging, the State and Law and Order.
Elizabeth Grosz (1994) Volatile Bodies: Towards A Corporeal Feminism
John Clark & Janet Newman (1997) The Managerial State: Power, Politics and Ideology in the Remaking of Social Welfare
Jacques Derrida (2001) On Cosmopolitanism and Foregiveness
John Gray (2004) Al-Quaeda and What it Means to Be Modern
Michael Hardt & Toni Negri (2005) Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire
Angela McRobbie (2005) The Uses of Cultural Studies: A Textbook.
Lawrence Grossberg (2005) Caught in the Crossfire: Kids, Politics and America’s Future
Joanna Zylinksa (2005) The Ethics of Cultural Studies
Juliet B. Schor (2006) Born to Buy: The Commercialised Child and the New Consumer Culture
Gary Hall & Clare Birchall (eds) (2006) New Cultural Studies: Adventures in Theory
Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (2007) Conversations with Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak
Unfortunately, however, just reading books like these cannot substitute for the experience of actually studying together. On our programme we try to promote a relaxed and relatively informal atmosphere which can encourage a healthy and helpful environment in which we can all learn, students and staff, alone and together, from many sources and from each other. So where possible, we make student-led seminars the core of the learning experience, although we also recognise that students need staff to be able to deliver their expertise in enabling them to get to grips with new areas of knowledge and developing skills in writing and research. Education – learning, teaching, researching, thinking - is a collaborative process in which the multiple connections that can be made between ideas, experiences and individuals shouldn’t be stifled by unnecessary hierarchies or divisions, between students or between disciplines. But that doesn’t mean that we just leave students alone to struggle with the challenging task of completing an MA. As Stuart Hall once remarked, intellectual work is a deadly serious business: it doesn’t need to be made any harder by excessive formality or competitiveness, but students do need help and support right through the process, and we recognise that.
Hopefully this gives you some idea of what to expect on the MA Cultural Studies at the University of East London. If you have any further questions then please don’t hesitate to contact the programme leader Jeremy Gilbert: j.gilbert@uel.ac.uk
Semester A
Semester B
Students are invited to select, by negotiation, one option per semester (please refer to the module descriptors)
A full programme specification can be found in the ' programmes' section of the main UEL site.
© 2005
"The Cultural Studies programme at the University of East London has a
well-deserved reputation for excellent teaching, committed staff and
imaginative students, and is internationally recognised for its
important and innovative work."
Stuart Hall, Emeritus Professor of Sociology at the Open University and
author of many classic works in Cultural Studies, Media Studies and
Sociology.
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