C626: Mass produced consumer goods or mass culture pervades everyday life—and, arguably, the politics of everyday life—in modern societies. From macaroni and cheese to cars, carpeting, and khakis, chances are a preponderance of these goods surrounds you at almost any moment of the day. Their existence depends on an array of individuals, industries, and technologies working more or less in concert. Advertising and P.R. firms, distribution systems, retail establishments, financial institutions, communication networks, legal codes, public rituals, labor practices—these and other elements comprise the complex infrastructure or “social matrix” out of which mass culture emerges.

Despite (or perhaps because of) mass culture’s ubiquity, studying it can be a fraught undertaking. Indeed, the critical study of mass culture poses numerous challenges, beginning with the issue of how best to define the object of study: “mass” or “popular” culture? Delimiting the object domain can be no less confounding. Should we focus on production, distribution, exchange, or consumption? Texts, audiences, or apparatuses? Some combination thereof? If so, in what proportions? Assessing the politics of mass culture is a delicate endeavor as well. How do we respect people’s investments in mass produced consumer goods while at the same time taking stock of mass culture, critically?

This seminar will focus on developing a set of theoretical, methodological, and historical frameworks for making better sense of mass culture. We will take a specific orientation to accomplish this task: cultural studies. Cultural studies will push us to consider not only specific mass cultural artifacts and trends, but perhaps more important, to attend to, theorize, and historicize the broader sets of relations—the social matrix—within which mass culture is embedded.

Required Texts: Mark Andrejevic, iSpy; Yochai Benkler, The Wealth of Networks; Lizbeth Cohen, A Consumers’ Republic; Stuart Ewen, Captains of Consciousness; Christine Harold, OurSpace; Joseph Heath & Andrew Potter, A Nation of Rebels; Henri Lefebvre, Everyday Life in the Modern World; and Stephen Nissenbaum, The Battle for Christmas. In addition to these readings and some supplementary articles, we will also watch Adam Curtis’ documentary, The Century of the Self.