1st Week (5 Oct.)
Introducing the Course against the Cultural Studies Context
Presentation of the
aims and prerequisites of the course.
A short introduction to the methodology and agenda of cultural studies.
Positioning the study of postcommunism and postcolonialism in the context of
cultural studies.
Legitimating the comparative approach of postcommunism and postcolonialism in a
British Cultural Studies programme.
2nd Week (12 Oct.)
What is Cultural Studies?
Mandatory reading (one
of the following):
- „Cultural Studies” din The Johns Hopkins Guide to Literary Criticism
and Theory, editat de Michael Groden and Martin Kreiswirth, The Johns
Hopkins UP, 1994.
- Stuart Hall, „Cultural Studies and Its Theoretical Legacies” in S. During
(ed.) The Cultural Studies Reader,
Routledge 2001, pp. 97-109.
Further Reading
- Mircea Martin, „Cultural Studies – There and Here”, Euresis 2014,
pag. 180-186.
3rd Week (19 Oct.)
The Power of Discourse – Language in/as action, language and representation.
Discourse Study in Pragmatics and the Philosophy of Language
Mandatory reading:
-
J. L. Austin, How to Do Things with Words, Oxford: Oxford UP, 1962,
1-11;
- George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, Metaphors We Live By, London:
University of Chicago Press, 2003 (1980), 8-22.
4th Week (26 Oct.)
SOFT APPROACHES I. The Discursive Turn in the study
of societies and cultures. Language and power in the formation of cultural
identity.
Mandatory reading:
- Michel Foucault, “The Order of Discourse”, R. Young (ed.), Untying
the Text: A Post-Structuralist Reader, Boston & London: Routledge and
Keegan Paul, 1981, 48-78.
(and one of the following)
- Ruth Wodak, “Introduction: Discourse Studies – Important Concepts and Terms”,
R. Wodak and M. Krzyzanovski (eds.), Qualitative Discourse Analysis in
the Social Sciences, Houndmills & New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008,
1-20;
or
- Bogdan Ştefănescu, Postcommunism / Postcolonialism: Siblings of Subalternity,
EUB 2013, 82-98.
5th Week (2 Nov.)
MAIN CONCEPTS OF COLONIALITY – Coloniality, colonialisms, colonies;
Colonialism versus imperialism, colonialism and modernity.
Mandatory reading:
- Bogdan Ştefănescu, Postcommunism / Postcolonialism: Siblings of Subalternity,
EUB 2013, 47-65, 112-117.
and one of the following:
- Osterhammel, Jürgen. Colonialism: A Theoretical Overview.
Princeton: Marcus Wiener Publishers and Kingston: Ian Randle Publishers, 1997
(1995), 1-22. or
- ‘Modernism’ and ‘modernity’ entries in Ashcroft, B. et alia, Key
Concepts in Post-colonial Studies. London & New York,
Routledge, 1999 (1998), 143-7.
Further reading:
- ‘Imperialism’ and ‘neo-colonialism’ entries in Ashcroft, B. et
alia, Key Concepts in Post-colonial Studies. London & New
York, Routledge, 1999 (1998). (pp. 122-7; 162-3)
- C. Venn. Occidentalism. London, Thousand Oaks, New
Delhi: Sage Publications, 2000. (pp. 51-67)
-
Ch. Jencks. The
Post-modern Reader. London: Academy Editions/New York: St.
Martin’s Press, 1992. (pp. 196-207; 250-66)
- M. Waters. Modernity: Critical Concepts. London & New
York: Routledge, 1999. (vol.4, pp. 5-16)
- Th. Docherty, Postmodernism. A Reader, Harvester Wheatsheaf, Lond
on, 1993, pp. 120-140, 323-363;
- R. Boyne, & A. Rattansi, Postmodernism and Society, Basingstoke,
Hampshire: Macmillan Education, 1990, pp. 1-70, 97-117;
- L. Hutcheon. The Politics of Postmodernism. London & New
York: Routledge, 1995. (pp. 23-9) (L. Hutcheon. Politica
postmodernismului. Bucuresti: Univers, 1997.)
6th Week (9 Nov.)
CONTRASTING
POSTCOMMUNISM AND POSTCOLONIALISM: generic and typological similarities vs.
historical and ideological differences.
Mandatory reading (one of the following):
- David Chioni Moore, „Is the Post- in Postcolonial the Post- in Post-Soviet?
Towards a Global Postcolonial Critique”, Violeta Kelertas (ed.) Baltic
Postcolonialism, Amsterdam & New York: Rodopi, 2006,
11-44.
or
- S. Chari and K. Verdery, „Thinking between the Posts: Postcolonialism,
Postsocialism, and Ethnography after the Cold War”, Comparative Studies
in Society and History 51.1 (2009), 6–34.
or
- Henry F. Carey and Rafal Raciborski, “Postcolonialism: A Valid Paradigm for
the Former Sovietized States and Yugoslavia?”, East European Politics
and Societies 18 (2004), 191-235.
Further reading:
- Adrian Otoiu. ‘An Exercise in Fictional Liminality: the Postcolonial, the
Postcommunist, and Romania’s Threshold Generation’. Comparative
Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East, 23:1&2
(2003) (pp. 87-95) http://www.cssaame.com/issues/23/15.pdf
- Boris Buden. ‘Ce este postcolonial in postcomunism?’. Suplimentul de
cultura nr. 144, 8 – 14 septembrie 2007 www.suplimentuldecultura.ro/numarpdf/144_Special.pdf- Lefter, I.B. ‘Poate fi
considerat postcomunismul un post-colonialism?’. Caietele
Echinox, vol. 1, (‘Postcolonialism & Postcomunism’), Cluj: Dacia,
2001. (pp. 117-119)
7th Week (16 Nov.)
The coloniality of (post)dependent cultures:
Cultural trauma as unifying concept for Western and Soviet coloniality - I
Mandatory reading (one of the following):
- Piotr Sztompka, “The Trauma of Social Change: A Case of Postcommunist
Societies”, J. Alexander et al. Cultural Trauma and Collective Identity,
University of California Press, 2004, 149-189.
or
- Rebecca Saunders and Kamran Aghaie, “Introduction: Mourning and
Memory”, Comparative Studies of South Asia Africa and the Middle East vol.
25, no.1 (2005), 16-29;
Further reading:
-
Bogdan Ștefănescu, “Filling in the Historical Blanks: A Tropology of the Void
in Postcommunist and Postcolonial Reconstructions of Identity”, D, Pucherova
and R. Gafrik (eds.) Postcolonial Europe? Essays on Post-Communist
Literatures and Cultures, Brill/Rodopi, 2015, 107-120.
8th Week (23 Nov.)
The coloniality of (post)dependent cultures: Cultural trauma as unifying
concept for Western and Soviet coloniality - II
Mandatory reading (one of the following):
- Robert Eaglestone, “’You Would Not Add to My Suffering If You Knew What I
Have Seen”: Holocaust Testimony and Contemporary African Trauma
Literature’, Studies in the Novel vol. 40, 1&2 (2008),
72-85.
or
- Kiossev, Alexander, “Notes on Self-colonising Cultures”, Art and
Culture in post-Communist Europe. Eds. B. Pejic. & D. Elliott.
Stockholm: Moderna Museet, 1999, 114-8. and Aili
Aarelaid-Tart, Cultural Trauma and Life Stories (Estonia),
Kikimora Publications, 2006, pp. 57-61.
9th Week (7 Dec.)
Main Concepts of Postcolonial Cultural Studies and their potential
applicability in Postcommunist Cultural Studies
Mandatory reading:
- Entries for agency, alienation, authenticity, cartography,
center/margin, comprador, creolization, counter-discourse, cultural
diversity/difference, dependency theory, essentialism, Eurocentrism,
exotic(ism), hybridity, liminality, negritude, Orientalism, subaltern, world
systems theory in Ashcroft, B. et alia, Key Concepts in
Post-colonial Studies, London & New York: Routledge, 1999
(1998).
Further reading:
- Amia
Loomba, Colonialism/Postcolonialism, London: Routledge, 1998.
10th Week (14 Dec.)
The West and the rest. Self and
exotic other in the creation of European identity.
Mandatory reading (either a. or b.):
a) - Edward W. Said, “Introduction,” Orientalism, new and rev. ed.,
New York: Vintage Books, 1994 (1983), 1-28.
- Milica Bakic-Hayden, „Nesting Orientalisms: The Case of Former
Yugoslavia”, Slavic Review, 54. 4 (1995), pp. 917-931.
or
b)- Mbembe, Achille. On the Postcolony. Berkeley, Los
Angeles, London: University of California Press, 2001, 1-23.
- Larry Wolff, Inventing Eastern Europe. The Map of Civilization on the
Mind of the Enlightenment, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997, 1-16.
Further reading:
- „Postcolonial Cultural Studies” din The Johns Hopkins Guide to Literary
Criticism and Theory, editat de Michael Groden and Martin Kreiswirth, The
Johns Hopkins UP, 1994.
- Gayatri
Chakravorty Spivak, „Can the Subaltern Speak?”, C. Nelson and L. Grossberg
(eds), Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture, London:
Macmillan, 1988.
-
Homi Bhabha, The Location of Culture, London and New York:
Routledge, 1994, 66-84.
11th Week (4 Jan.)
Main Concepts of Postcommunist Cultural Studies and their potential
applicability in Postcolonial Cultural Studies.
Mandatory reading (one of the following – a or b):
a) - Entries for Balkanism, postcommunism, communization/decommunization,
transition, wooden language in Monica Bottez et
al. Postcolonialism/Postcommunism: Dictionary of Key Cultural Terms, EUB
2011.
- Bogdan
Ștefănescu, „Viză respinsă. Anevoioasele călătorii teoretice dintre lumea
postcolonială şi cea postcomunistă”, Dus-întors. Rute ale teoriei
literare în modernitate, ed. de Oana Fotache, Magda Răduță, Adrian
Tudurachi, Humanitas, 2016.
or
b) - Monika Albrecht (ed.). “Introduction” to Postcolonialism
Cross-Examined: Multidirectional Perspectives on Imperial and Colonial Pasts
and the Neocolonial Present. London, New York: Routledge., 2019, pp. 1-47.
- Dumitru
Tucan, “The Adaptability of Theory: Postcolonialism Vs. Postcommunism in
Romanian Literary Studies”, in Dacoromania litteraria vol.II /
2015, pp. 101-116.
Further reading:
- Steven Totosy de Zepetnek, “Comparative Cultural Studies and the Study of
Central European Culture”, Steven Tötösy de Zepetnek (ed.), Comparative
Central European Culture. West Lafayette: Purdue UP 2002, 1-12.
- Dusan I. Bjelic & Obrad Savic (eds.), Balkan as Metaphor, MIT
Press, 2002.
- Maria Todorova, Imagining the Balkans (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1997), 3-20, 161-189.
12th Week (11 Jan.)
The Other(ing of) Europe.
Mandatory reading:
- Larry Wolff, Inventing Eastern Europe. The Map of Civilization on the
Mind of the Enlightenment, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997, 1-16.
- Milica Bakic-Hayden, „Nesting Orientalisms: The Case of Former
Yugoslavia”, Slavic Review, 54. 4 (1995), pp. 917-931.
13th Week (?)
THE MISSING LINK: SOVIET EASTERN EUROPE
AND THE THRID WORLD - The Connection between the Second and Third World in a Colonial Context.
Mandatory reading:
- Benyamin Neuberger, “The African Concept of Balkanisation”, The
Journal of Modern African Studies, Vol. 14, No. 3 (1976), 523-529.
- Monica Popescu, “Lewis Nkosi in Warsaw: Translating eastern European
experiences for an African audience”, Journal of Postcolonial Writing Vol.
48, No. 2 (2012), 176–187.
Further reading:
- Eboe Hutchful, “Eastern Europe: Consequences for Africa”, Review of
African Political Economy, No. 50, Africa in a New World Order (Mar.,1991),
51-59.
- Ádám Mayer, „Afrikanizacija: Eastern European Epistemologies and African
Labour”, Intersections. EEJSP 2.1 (2016), 54-73.
- S. Mestrovic. The Balkanization of the West: The Confluence of Postmodernism
and Postcommunism. London & NY: Routledge, 1994.
14th Week (?)
PREPARATION AND TUTORING FOR FINAL ESSAY.
