Cultures of Everyday Life
| Code | School | Level | Credits | Semesters |
| CULT1004 | Cultural, Media and Visual Studies | 1 | 20 | Spring UK |
- Code
- CULT1004
- School
- Cultural, Media and Visual Studies
- Level
- 1
- Credits
- 20
- Semesters
- Spring UK
Summary
This course examines the notion of 'everyday life' as it comes into contact with a range of 19th, 20th and 21st century cultural theories and modes of representation. While we may take the idea of the everyday for granted, associating it with routine, familiar and repeated experiences, our everyday lives are, simultaneously, punctuated by the exceptional, the random and the disruptive. Traditional theoretical attempts to account for the everyday tend to overlook aspects of daily life that refuse system and order: sociology, anthropology, cultural and media studies, for example, deal with activities such as work and leisure but neglect the unique texture of everyday experience. This course thus emphasises the everyday world as problematic and fraught with difficulty in terms of seeing, theorising and representing, and looks at a wide range of attempts to register day to day existence from the modernist novel to photography to film to time capsules to poetry to video diaries to comic books.
A single coursework assessment will replace all failed assessment components at the reassessment stage.
Target Students
Only available for International Media and Communication Studies students, Liberal Arts students and Exchange students.
Classes
- One 1-hour seminar each week for 11 weeks
- One 2-hour lecture each week for 11 weeks
The School of Cultures, Languages and Area Studies operates an attendance policy. The details of this policy can be found in the student handbook on Workspace and in module handbooks.
Assessment
- 100% Coursework: Coursework - 3,000 words portfolio of written work and equivalent
Assessed by end of spring semester
Educational Aims
- To question the taken-for-grantedness of the 'everyday'.- To appreciate the dense, complex and contradictory nature of day to day experience. For instance, to see how the everyday is both idiosyncratic and normative.- To examine public consecrated representations of everyday life (e.g. soaps, dramas, museums and archives) with a view to unmasking their ideological effects.Learning Outcomes
a) Knowledge and Understanding: This module will provide students with:
- an informed realisation of the ethics at stake in representing 'the everyday' (i.e. whose everyday?);
- an appreciation of the rich diversity of applications of Cultural Studies;
- a firm grasp of the methodological and epistemological problems associated with archiving and representing the everyday.
b) Intellectual Skills: This module will encourage:
- verbal group and individual written communication skills;
- theoretical application;
- critical awareness.
c) Professional Practical Skills: This module will enhance the ability to:
- compile and interpret archive/exhibition materials critically, practically and creatively;
- develop technical skills involving video and/or sound production/photography/illustration/literary fiction/autobiography;
- articulate complex arguments;
- work effectively in groups;
- approach concepts ethically, politically and critically;
- construct logical written argumentation.
d) Transferable (Key) Skills: This module will enhance transferable skills such as:
- communicating clearly in oral and written forms;
- working effectively in groups;
- giving oral presentations;
- retrieving and presenting information.