This course aims to introduce students to an interdisciplinary framework that will allow them to explore and theorize on the intersections of literature, culture, and media. The students will get the opportunity to analyse the complex ways in which literary and cultural products/texts inter-animate each other to produce and reproduce the ways in which society and culture give rise to new forms of perspectives and ideologies; in turn, determining the ways in which identities are constructed.The course will highlight the ways in which new forms of media (TV, films, internet, digital media) transform and reinvent traditional literary and cultural forms. The course will stimulate a nuanced discussion on the historical, empirical, and cultural analyses of contemporary forms of culture, literature, identity, and power relations. A variety of theoretical approaches—Intersectionality, Feminism, Marxism, and Deconstruction—will deepen and complicate the problematics of defining literature and culture in a digital and post-industrial society that constantly reinvents the binaries of high and low/popular culture.
INTENDED AUDIENCE: None
CORE/ELECTIVE: Elective
UG/PG: UG and PG
PREREQUISITES: None
INDUSTRY SUPPORT: None
1180 students have enrolled already!!
ABOUT THE INSTRUCTOR:
Professor Rashmi Gaur teaches courses of Communication, Culture, Gender Studies and Media (Film and Literature) at IIT Roorkee. In her career, spanning three decades, she has guided about 12 Ph.D. theses, published four books, more than ninety research papers in national and international journals, besides participating in many conferences in India and abroad. Widely travelled, she also runs consultancy projects in related areas. She has worked across disciplines and cultures in different research and cultural milieus and formed strong intercultural networks through international collaborations. She is also a member of several academic bodies. At present she is working in the area of Media and Digital Humanities.
COURSE LAYOUT:
Week 1 : Introduction, Aims and Objectives; Defining Literature; Defining Culture; Relationship between Literature and Culture; Literature, Culture and Media Week 2 : Introduction to Cultural Studies; Cultural Studies I: Raymond Williams; Cultural Studies II: Stuart Hall; High Culture and Popular Culture; Subculture and Counterculture Week 3 : Modernism and Postmodernism I and II; Lyotard’s The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge; Foucault’s Notion of Knowledge and Power; Poststructuralism and Deconstruction Week 4 : Introduction to Feminism I and II; Theories of Gender; Men’s and Masculinity Studies; Queer Studies and Representations of Gender in Media Week 5 : Intersectionality; Introduction to Postcolonial Theory; Key Concepts in Postcolonial theory; Said, Spivak and Bhabha; Postcolonial Reading of Achebe and Amitav Ghosh Week 6 : Theories of Ideology; Adorno and Horkheimer on Culture; Culture Industry and Mass Deception,Walter Benjamin; Interconnections between Literature, Culture and Identity: Woolf and Deshpande I and II Week 7 : The Evolution of Media: Print forms; Media and Culture; Media, Culture and Technology I and II; Harold Innis Week 8 : Introduction to Marshall McLuhan; Media and the Electric Age; Hot and Cool Media; Postmodern Media I; Postmodern Media II and Formation of Public Opinion Week 9 : Word and the Image: Drama, Photography, Birth of the Cinema; Film and Literature I and II; Language of Films: Mise-en-scene, Type of Shots, Camera angles/movements, Montage; Reading of 12 Years a Slave: Film and Text Week 10 : Development of Media: Radio; Development of Media: Television; Film, Television and Literature; Impact of Technology on Literary Genres: Novel; Media in the 21st Century Week 11 : Approaches to Digital Forms of Media; Literature, Internet and Culture; Digital Culture, Media, and Literature; Representation of Partition in different Media: A historical and Cultural Analysis I and II Week 12 : Game Studies I and II; Body Culture Studies and Representation of Women in the Media; Media and Gender; Media and Language, Glass Ceiling in Media
SUGGESTED READING MATERIALS:
Best, Steven and Kellner , Douglas (2012). The Post Modern Turn, New York: The Guilford Press. 2. Hall, S. (1975). “Encoding and Decoding in the Television Discourse”, Education and Culture 6 (Strasbourgh: Council of Europe). 3. Lister, Martin; Dovey,Jon and Giddings, Seth (2008) New Media: A Critical Introduction . New York: Routledge. 4. Parker, Robert Dale, (2012). Critical Theory: A Reader for Literary and Cultural Studies. U.K.: Oxford University Press. 5. Raessens, J. (2014) “The ludification of Culture”. Fuchs, Mathias; Fizek, Sonia; Ruffino, Paulo, and Schrape, Niklas (eds). Rethinking Gamification. Lüneburg: Meson press. pp. 91-114. 6. Rivkin, Julie and Michael Ryan (1998) Literary Theory: An Anthology. UK: Blackwell Publishers. 7. Willis, Paul. (1978) Profane Culture. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
CERTIFICATION EXAM :
The exam is optional for a fee.
Date and Time of Exams: April 28 2019(Sunday). Morning session 9am to 12 noon; Afternoon Session 2pm to 5pm.
Registration url: Announcements will be made when the registration form is open for registrations.
The online registration form has to be filled and the certification exam fee needs to be paid. More details will be made available when the exam registration form is published.
CERTIFICATION:
Final score will be calculated as : 25% assignment score + 75% final exam score
25% assignment score is calculated as 25% of average of Best 8 out of 12 assignments
E-Certificate will be given to those who register and write the exam and score greater than or equal to 40% final score. Certificate will have your name, photograph and the score in the final exam with the breakup.It will have the logos of NPTEL and IIT Roorkee.It will be e-verifiable at nptel.ac.in/noc.
