Theory of culture

The lecture focuses on various cultural processes and phenomena associated with postmodernism and post-postmodernism.

The lecture offers an overview of major cultural processes and phenomena associated with postmodernism and post-postmodernism. It begins with an analysis of a number of postmodern texts and practices, presenting the major critics and approaches associated with the period, in order to consider some critical proposals to describe the post-postmodern.

Content distribution:

- postmodernism in science, literature, and architecture

- postmodernism and philosophy (post-structuralism)

- popular culture and postmodernism (anti-consumerist movements, culture jamming, performance)

- network culture and post-postmodernism

- metamodernism

- digimodernism

- automodernism

- altermodernism

- post-postmodernism in literature and film

Selected readings from:

Best, Stephen and Douglas Kellner. 1991. Postmodern theory: critical interrogations. The Guilford Press.

Jenkins, Henry. 2008. Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide. NYU Press.

Kirby, Alan. 2011. Digimodernism: How New Technologies Dismantle the Postmodern and Reconfigure Our Culture. New York: Continuum.

Samuels, Robert. 2008. “Auto-Modernity after Postmodernism: Autonomy and Automation in Culture, Technology, and Education," in Digital Youth, Innovation, and the Unexpected, ed. Tara McPherson. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.

Toth, Josh. 2010. The passing of postmodernism: A spectroanalysis of the contemporary. SUNY Press.

Vermeulen, Timotheus and Robin van den Akker. 2010. “Notes on metamodernism,” Journal of Aesthetics and Culture. Vol. 2.

Wallace, David F. 1993. “E Unibus Pluram: Television and U.S. Fiction,” The Review of Contemporary Fiction. 13:2.

Assessment methods:

- tests – W1, U1

- lecture participation - W1, U1, K1

Assessment criteria:

- participation in lectures – oral assignments and comments on Moodle (30%)

- tests at the end of each unit (please note that all tests must be passed - mid-term and final test) (70%)

Assessment criteria:

fail- (59%)

satisfactory- (60-67%)

satisfactory plus- (68-75%)

good - (76-84%)

good plus- (85-90%)

very good- (91-100%)

N/A