This course examines the ways in which we use language performatively to construct our personal, social, and cultural realities. Specifically, we will examine how performance and other cultural productions generate, reproduce, and negotiate cultural meanings, identities, and differences.

Central to this course is an assumption that language is itself a performative endeavor -- we study not so much what language is as what language does. It is also assumed that culture is an ongoing process of cultivation -- through language, we perform in an ongoing and ever-changing process of the generation, reproduction, and negotiation of meanings and identities. We will focus on how we construct our culture, social, and individual identities through discourse and performance.

Additionally, we will spend the last part of the semester dealing with an extended case study of Los Angeles as a textual artifact. By exploring some of the various kinds of cultural performance available to us in Los Angeles, we will put into practice the theoretical notions developed during the first part of the semester.

Required Texts:

301 Reader and Sourcebook, available from Tam's Copy Center
James Carey, Communication as Culture: Essays on Media and Society
David Reid, Sex, Death, and God in L. A.

Course Requirements:

Midterm Exam: 30%
Outside Performance Analysis Paper: 30%
Written Presentation: 20%
Oral Presentation: 10%
PLACS Journal:3.33%
In Class Exercises:3.33%
Class Participation:3.33%

Outside Performance Event Analysis Paper: You will be responsible to attend one performance event outside of class and produce a 3-5 page (typed and double spaced) analysis of the event. Your analysis should refer to or be informed by some of the theoretical constructs you have learned in the course readings. The event you choose must be approved by me no later than October 2. (More detailed assignment explanation will follow).

Written and Oral Presentation: You will choose one of the essays in Sex, Death, and God in L. A., and write a presentation on the essay to be presented to the class. Your presentation should summarize the key arguments of the essay and take a position on those arguments, tying the essay into the overall context of the course.

PLACS Journal: You will be responsible for keeping a journal in this course. It will not be formally graded, but you will be expected to turn in your journal entries on November 20. You should have an average of about one or two entries per week. Journal entries should be free-form writings focusing on the essays and course discussions in which you work out on paper some of your thoughts and ideas which arise from these materials. These journal entries are informal; their primary purpose is to help you work out your opinions and ideas about the course materials. A typical journal entry should be about 1-2 typed pages but there is no minimum or maximum. While it is not required that you type your entries, I suggest that if you handwrite them you ensure that your writing is legible.

In-Class Exercises and Class Participation: While also not formally graded, your participation in class discussions and in in-class exercises is expected and required. I will not be marking attendance but will expect you to show up to class; in-class exercises cannot be made up.

Academic Honesty: I certainly hope you won't cheat in my class. If you are caught in any form of academic dishonesty, expect to fail the course and to be brought up on charges in accordance with the Student Conduct Code. If you are unsure what constitutes academic honesty, consult the university catalog or your therapist.

Course Schedule:

We will attempt to stick as closely to this schedule as possible. It is expected that you will complete the reading material on the date assigned and be prepared to discuss these essays in class. It may help to write a journal entry on the readings before the class discussion so that you have some notes with which to contribute.

Aug 28: Course Introduction

Video: Dr. Timothy Leary & RetinaLogic, "How to Operate Your Brain"

Sept 4: NO CLASS

Sept 11: An Anthropology of Performance

Required Readings:

Eduardo Santiago, "The Night Rodney King Kissed Me"
Kathy Acker, "Against Ordinary Language: The Language of the Body"
Dwight Conquergood, "Poetics, Play, Process, and Power: The Performative Turn in Anthropology"
Dwight Conquergood, "Performing as a Moral Act: Ethical Dimensions of the Ethnography of Performance"

Sept 13: Internet Training Workshop (optional)

Music Lawn 208
4-6 PM

Sept 18: Communication, Language, and Culture

Required Readings:

James Carey, Communication As Culture, 1-110

DEADLINE FOR PRESENTATION SCHEDULE FORM

Sept 25: Technology and the Need for Cultural Studies

Required Readings:

James Carey, Communication As Culture, 113-230
Julian Dibbel, "A Rape in Cyberspace"

Oct 2: Culture, Language, and Political Economy

Required Readings:

Tom Frank, "Dark Age: Why Johnny Can't Dissent"

DEADLINE FOR APPROVAL OF OUTSIDE PERFORMANCE EVENT

Oct 9: MIDTERM EXAM

Oct 16: The Performance of Subcultural Identity

Required Readings:

Dick Hebdige, Subculture: The Meaning of Style, 1-70

Oct 23: The Analysis of Subcultural Identity

Required Readings:

Dick Hebdige, Subculture: The Meaning of Style, 73-140

Oct 30: Performance and Identity I: The Politics of "Coming Out"

Required Readings:

Cliff Arnesen, "Coming Out to Congress"
Susie Bright, "BlindSexual"
Michael Ambrosino, "Choosing Not To"
Amanda Udis-Kessler, "Present Tense: Biphobia as a Crisis of Meaning"

DUE OCT 30: OUTSIDE PERFORMANCE ANALYSIS PAPER

Oct 30: Performance and Identity II: A Credit to His Race

Required Readings:

Thomas Nakayama, "Dis/Orienting Identities: Asian Americans, History, and Intercultural Communication"
Margarita Gangotena, "The Rhetoric of La Familia Among Mexican Americans"
Thurmon Garner, "Oral Rhetorical Practice in African American Culture"
Patricia Eakins, "Manifesto of A Dead Daughter"
Joel Gilbert (as told to Noel Ignatiev), "Who Lost An American?"
Bob Snyder, "Exchange With a Socialist Critic: Socialism Without Abolition Isn't Worth a Bucket of Warm Piss"

Nov 13: Los Angeles as Text

STUDENT PRESENTATIONS BEGIN

ALL WRITTEN PRESENTATIONS DUE NOV 13

Required Readings:

David Reid, Sex, Death, and God in L. A., 3-71

Required Readings:

Reid, 75-150

Nov 27: Los Angeles As Text (cont.)

Required Readings:

Reid, 153-255

Dec 6: Los Angeles As Text (cont.)

Required Readings:

Reid, 259-354

performance n (15c) 1 a: the execution of an action b: something accomplished: DEED, FEAT 2: the fulfillment of a claim, promise, or request : IMPLEMENTATION 3 a: the action of representing a character in a play b: a public presentation or exhibition 4 a: the ability to perform: EFFICIENCY b: the manner in which a mechanism performs 5: the manner of reacting to stimuli: BEHAVIOR 6: linguistic behavior

perform vb [ME performen, fr. AF performer, alter. of OF perfournir, fr. per- thoroughly (fr. L) + fournir to complete -- more at FURNISH] -->vt (14c) 1: to adhere to the terms of: FULFILL 2: CARRY OUT, DO 3 a: to do in a formal manner or according to prescribed ritual b: to give a rendition of: PRESENT --> vi 1: to carry out an action or pattern of behavior: ACT, FUNCTION 2: to give a performance: PLAY

language n [ME, fr. OF, fr. langue tongue, language, fr. L lingua -- more at TONGUE] (13c) 1 a: the words, their pronunciation, and the methods of combining them used and understood by a considerable community b (1): audible, articulate, meaningful sound as produced by the action of the vocal organs (2): a systematic means of communicating ideas or feelings by the use of conventionalized signs, sounds, gestures, or marks having understood meanings (3) the suggestion by objects, actions, or conditions of associated ideas or feelings {body --} (4): the means by which animals communicate... 2 a: manner of verbal expression; specif: STYLE b: the vocabulary or phraseology belonging to an art or a department of knowledge c: PROFANITY

culture n [ME, fr. MF, fr. L cultura, fr. cultus, pp.] (15c) 1: CULTIVATION, TILLAGE 2: the act of developing the intellectual and moral faculties esp. by education 3: expert care and training 4 a: enlightenment and excellence of taste acquired by intellectual and aesthetic training b: acquaintance with and taste in fine arts, humanities and broad aspects of science as distinguished from vocational and technical skills 5 a: the integrated pattern of human knowledge, belief, and behavior that depends upon man's capacity for learning and transmitting knowledge to succeeding generations b: the customary beliefs, social forms and material traits of a racial, religious, or social group 6: cultivation of living material in prepared nutrient media; also: a product of such cultivation