Speech Communication 301
Performance, Language, and Cultural Studies
Syllabus and Course Schedule
We will try to stick as close to this schedule as possible. It is expected that readings will be finished on the date assigned. Due Dates for assignments and exam dates will not be changed. Missed assignments or exercises cannot be made up and will receive a "0".

Jan 30: Course Introduction

UNIT I: Theories of Performance, Practices of Language

Feb 1: An Anthropology of Performance: Some Definitions.

Feb 6: An Anthropology of Performance (continued)

Dwight Conquergood, "Review Essay: Poetics, Play, Process, and Power: The Performative Turn in Anthropology"

Turn in Forms for Class Reading Assignments

Feb 8:Ethnographic Research and Performance Studies

Dwight Conquergood, "Performing as a Moral Act"

Feb 13:Ethnography By Example: Things to do with Shopping Malls

Peter Gibian, "The Art of Being Off-Center"

Feb 15: Ethnography By Example: Hard Bodies

Stuart Ewen, "Hard Bodies"
Kathy Acker, "Against Ordinary Language: The Language of the Body"

Feb 20: Performance and the Everyday: Performing Race

Thomas Nakayama, "Dis/Orienting Identities: Asian Americans, History, and Intercultural Communication

Feb 22: Performance and the Everyday: Street Performance and Gang Culture

Léon Bing, "Faro"
Anne Campbell, "The Praised and the Damned"
Maasik and Solomon, "Signs of the Street: A Conversation"
Vigil, "Gang Styles"

Feb 27: Performance and the Not-So-Everyday: Alternative Sexualities

Eduardo Santiago, "The Night Rodney King Kissed Me"
Billy Jean Jones, "Genderflex"
Cliff Arnesen, "Coming Out to Congress"

UNIT II: Cultural Studies

Feb 29: Culture and Subculture: Some Preliminary Orientations

Dick Hebdige, Subculture: The Meaning of Style, 1-19

Mar 5: Culture and Power: The Performance of Subcultural Identity

Hebdige, 23-70

Mar 7: Culture and Power: The Analysis of Subcultural Identity

Hebdige, 73-end

Mar 12: Subculture and the Question of Style: Resistance or Commodification?

Elizabeth Wilson, "Oppositional Dress"

Mar 14: EXAM I

Mar 19: Culture, Power, and Resistance: The Role of Political Economy

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

Mar 21: Culture, Power, and Resistance: The Role of Mass Media

Tom Vanderbilt, "The Advertised Life"

Mar 26: Culture, Power, and Resistance: The Role of Mass Media (cont.)

Michael Parenti, "The Myth of Cultural Democracy"

Mar 28: Culture, Power, and Resistance: Disney as Case Study

Pauline Uchmanowicz, "Babes in Toyland"

Apr 2-4: SPRING BREAK

UNIT III: Cultural Hierarchy and the Performance of Struggle: Case Studies

Apr 9: Musical Performance and Cultural Struggle: Rap Music as Case Study

Kristal Brent Zook, "Reconstructions of Nationalist Thought in Black Music and Culture"
Imani Perry, "It's My Thang And I'll Swing It the Way I Feel"
Tricia Rose, "Fear of a Black Planet"

Apr 11: Musical Performance and Cultural Struggle II: Madonna as Case Study

Pat Califia, "Sex and Madonna, or, What Did you Expect from a Girl Who Doesn't Put Out on the First Five Dates?"

Apr 16: Sexuality, History, and Cultural Struggle

Gayle S. Rubin, "Thinking Sex"

Apr 18 SECOND EXAM

Apr 23: Los Angeles as Text: An Urban Ethnography of Downtown L.A.

Alexander Cockburn, "On the Rim of the Pacific Century"
Mike Davis, "Chinatown Revisited?"
Mike Davis, "The Empty Quarter"

Apr 25: Los Angeles as Text: Wrap-up

Apr 30: STUDENT PRESENTATIONS

May 2: STUDENT PRESENTATIONS

May 7: STUDENT PRESENTATIONS

FINALWRITTEN PRESENTATION DUE

May 9: STUDENT PRESENTATIONS

May 14: STUDENT PRESENTATIONS

This page maintained by Ben Attias
Modified by: Ben Attias
Institution: California State University, Northridge
Last Updated: 6-Feb-96
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