MA in Cultural Studies

Attendance

The taught programme is organised into two terms. The autumn term runs from early October to mid-December and the spring term from mid-January to the end of March. The two teaching terms are followed by a short assessment term, which runs from early May to mid-June, during which you are expected to complete work for assessment and prepare yourself for examination, as well as consult supervisors on your dissertation. Full-time students normally find they need to attend on at least three days of the week.

Structure

The MA consists of:
Two compulsory core courses:

> Cultural Theory

> Text and Image

Two standard-length option courses or equivalent (two half-length courses may be taken in place of a standard course where available)

Dissertation (Methodology and Research) – includes submission of a 5,000 word methodology report and a final dissertation of 10,000-12,000 words.

You must successfully complete all the above components to complete the MA.

Full-time students take the core course Cultural Theory in the autumn term, and the core course Text and Image in the spring term. Option courses can be taken in either autumn or spring term, depending on when they are offered and on your individual workload. A methodology report, including a dissertation proposal/outline, is submitted in May. The final dissertation (10-12,000 words) is submitted at the end of August/beginning of September.

Part-time students have some flexibility. They must however take core courses in Cultural Theory and Text and Image in their first year. Progression into the second year depends upon successful completion of these courses. The Dissertation is submitted at the end of the second year. 

Core courses

Cultural Theory

This course adopts a unique approach; it enables you to study post-structuralist or Continental philosophical thought whenever possible as it ‘plays out’ among cultural practitioners – in art, architecture and urbanism, in digital media, in lifestyles, in design, in the press and televisual communications, in cinema.

The course seeks to depart from a tradition in cultural studies which understands culture in terms of domination on the one hand and resistance on the other; or commodification on the one hand and authenticity (or ‘singularity’) on the other. Here we aim to understand the culture industries (for example, digital media, architecture, art, design, new journalism), not just in terms of domination through the commodity, but as far more complex arenas in which a complex texture of innovation, creativity, and restructured power relationships are emerging.

Text and Image

This course traces lines of intersection and divergence between theories of language or of textual media and theories of the image. It aims to familiarise students with the epistemological as well as political and ideological problems that contemporary cultural theory has inherited from previous attempts to think the relations among looking, seeing, knowing and writing, description, or inscription. We will explore the shifting investments of theories of text and of image in disparate ontologies and publics through readings in optics, aesthetics, and literary theory, as well as through theories of race and photography. Specific topics will include mimesis; aura and fetishism; rhetoric and sophistry; the effects of mass and technological reproduction on the media of collective or cultural memory; aestheticism and decadence; movement and transience; capital, the society of the spectacle, and other theses about an increase in the significance of the image in public space and life.

Dissertation (Methodology and Research)

The dissertation provides students with an opportunity to undertake a research project on a topic of significance to Cultural Studies, drawing on the knowledge, understanding and skills developed through the taught courses studied during the rest of the programme. General preparation in addressing methodological questions relating to the dissertation, and training on specific research methods, are provided through taught sessions in the first two terms of the year in which the dissertation is taken. This aspect of the course culminates in a 5,000 word essay/report comprised of a reflection on research methods and incorporating a design/outline of the proposed dissertation. Students then go on to conduct the research and complete the 10,000-12,000 word dissertation under the guidance of a dedicated supervisor.

You also choose two standard-length option courses (or equivalent – see Structure above) from a range of relevant courses across Goldsmiths.