• This postgraduate degree takes a philosophical, theoretical, and historical approach to cultural studies, exploring the work of cultural criticism, reception, and production through new critical perspectives, interdisciplinary insights, and a vast spectrum of applications and opportunities.
  • These theoretical and historical perspectives allow us to tease out the critical charge embedded in the notion of culture itself, and the transformative potential of creative and critical work in the arts and humanities.
  • The first compulsory module, Cultural Theory, offers an introduction to key paradigms, focusing on theories of the commodity, language, discourse, subjectivity, and sexuality.
  • The second compulsory module, Cultural History, explores the genealogies of contemporary theory with a long tradition of cultural criticism that emerged, with modernity itself, in the 18th century. Emphasis is given to practices of close reading, the question of textuality, and the case study.
  • Students will develop an understanding of the ideas of ‘commodity’ and ‘commodity fetish’ that are central to the study of consumer culture, as well as issues around language, sign and discourse, and subjectivity.