Course Syllabus
Fall 2018
MESAAS W3000
MW: 1:10-2:25
Professor Gil Z. Hochberg
TAs: Jared Sacks jared.sacks@columbia.edu & Navid Zarrinnal nz2254@columbia.edu
Office hours for Jared Sacks: Thursdays 1-2pm @ 113 Knox
Office hours for Navid Zarrinnal: Tuesdays 12-2 PM @ 115 Knox
Theories of Culture: Middle East, South Asia & Africa
What is Culture? Why do we hear so often about “cultural differences” or even about “cultural wars”? How does a culture come about? Is culture what we read, what we think, what we eat, what we wear, what we believe in? Do different nations have different cultures? And how about religions: is religion a culture? Is culture determined geographically? Linguistically? Does gender have anything to do with culture? Is there, for example, something like a women’s culture? Is sexuality part of culture? Is dominant culture, for example, heterosexual, and if so, is gay culture a separate socio-political reality? Is one always bond to a culture of origins? Can one choose a culture? Is culture the link between the individual and broader society? And what role do “cultural differences” play in our current political reality? For example, when a distinction is made between “the west” and “the rest” along the lines of “cultural difference” as in a familiar discourse that goes more or less like this: “we don’t treat women like this here! This is Europe. They (the immigrants for North Africa, India, Pakistan, Turkey, Syria etc.) treat women poorly but if they want to live here then they need to learn from us and change their ways. Adopt to our culture and our cultural norms.”
There are many more questions one could pose about “culture” and that is also why there are plenty of theories about culture. We obviously won’t be able to address each and every one of these questions in the course, but we will surely address many of them as we read, analyze, discuss and compare a broad range of texts (mostly theoretical but also some fiction) about “culture” in the context of the Middle East, South Asia and Africa.
Required Books:
Freud, Civilization and its Discontents
Freud, Totem and Taboo
Benedict Anderson Imagined Communities
Franz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks
JM Coetzee, Waiting for the Barbarians"
Edward Said, Orientalism
Toni Morrison Beloved
Jamaica Kincaid, A Small Place
Judith Butler, Gender Trouble
Mary Douglas, Purity and Danger
Below you will find a link that will take you directly to the course materials required for my class. Click here to purchase your course materials.
Grading and course requirements:
Regular attendance and participation in lecture and in discussion sections: 35%
Weekly online commentary (on class webpage) 15%
Mid Term (book review): 20%
Final Paper: 30%
Syllabus
Week 1: Introduction
September 5
Syllabus, course requirements and opening comments: what is culture for you?
Watch in class: What does culture mean to you?
Watch at home: Everything you always wanted to know about culture | Saba Safdar | TEDxGuelphU
Week 2: Theorizing Culture
September 10
- Clifford Geertz “Thick Description: Toward an Interpretive Theory of Culture”
- Susan Wright, “The Politicization of 'Culture”
- Roger M. Keesing, “Theories of Culture”
September 12
1.Freud, Civilization and its Discontents, Ch 1, 2, 5, & 8.
- Freud, Totem and Taboo, Ch 1 & 4.
Week 3: Culture, the Nation, and the Culture of Nation
September 17
- Benedict Anderson Imagined Communities Chapters 1-3, 6
September 19
- Watch BEFORE class: Moufida Tlatli, Silences of the Palace:The Silences of the Palace (Samt el qusur) / Moufida Tlatli, Full Multisubtitles Movie
- Jameson “Third-World Literature in the Era of Multinational Capitalism”
- Hochberg, “National allegories and the emergence of female voice”
Week 4: The Legacy of Colonialism
September 24
- Franz Fanon Black Skin, White Mask
Oct 1
1.Jamaica Kincaid, A Small Place
2.Anthony C. Alessandrini “Small places, then and now: Frantz Fanon,
Jamaica Kincaid, and the futures of postcolonial criticism”
Week 5: Postcolonial Realities: Migration and Multiculturalism
October 3
- Homi Bhabha “Culture’s In-Between”
- Watch BEFORE class: HANIF Kureishi, My Beautiful Laundrette (1985)
Week 6: Barbarism and Civilization
October 8
JM Coetzee, Waiting for the Barbarians
October 10:
Franz Kafka “The Great Wall of China”
Week 7: Gender and Sexuality
October 15
- Hélène Cixous, “The Laugh of the Medusa”
- Judith Butler, Gender Trouble selections (Chapter 1, 3)
October 17
1.Chandra Talpade Mohanty “Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourses”
- Audrie Lorde, “Age, Race, Class, and Sex: Women Redefining Difference”
- Afsaneh Najmabadi, “Beyond the Americas: Are Gender and Sexuality Useful Categories of Historical Analysis?”
Oct 22: *Midterm/ book review due
Week 8: Continuing "Gender" and moving to Religion and Secularism
October 22
1.Chandra Talpade Mohanty “Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourses”
- Audrie Lorde, “Age, Race, Class, and Sex: Women Redefining Difference”
- Afsaneh Najmabadi, “Beyond the Americas: Are Gender and Sexuality Useful Categories of Historical Analysis?”
October 24
1 .Asad, “Religion and Politics: An Introduction
2.Talal Asad, “French Secularism and the “Islamic Veil Affair”
3. J. Scott: watch BEFORE class:
The Politics of the Veil in Contemporary France
Week 9: Orientalism as a Cultural concept
October 29
Edward Said, Orientalism intro and chapter 1 (1-110)
November 31
1. Ali Behdad, “Orientalism after Orientalism”
2. Gyan Prakash, “Orientalism Now”
3. Ian Buruma, “The Origins of Occidentalism”
Week 10: Class Matters
November 5:
Academic Holiday No Classes Held
November 7:
- Karl Marx, The Communist Manifesto
- Stuart Hall, “Marxism and Culture”
Week 11: Memory, History, Haunting
November 12: Toni Morrison Beloved
November 14: Toni Morrison Beloved
Week 12: Authenticity, Self, Culture
November 19:
1. V. Chandra, The Cult of Authenticity
2. A. Mufti “the Aura of Authenticity”
November 21: University Holiday, No class
Week 13: Culture, Purity, Impurity.
November 26:
- Mary Douglas, selections from Purity and Danger: Introduction, chapter 2 and chapter 6.
- Mary Douglas, “Speaking Dirty”
November 28:
1. Robbie Duschinsky “The politics of purity”
- Maria Lugones “Purity, Impurity, Separation”
Week 14: Race, Culture, Identity
December 3:
1. Walter Benn Michaels “Race into Culture: A Critical Genealogy of Cultural Identity”
2. Avery Gordon “White Philosophy”
- Benn Michaels “the No Drop Rule”
December 5:
- Cornel West “The New Cultural Politics of Difference”
- Lila Abu-Lughod, “Writing against Culture:
Week 15: Conclusion
Dec 10: So what do we make of "culture"?
Course Summary:
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