Alternative Cultures (P4101)
Alternative Cultures, Utopian Politics and New Horizons
Module P4101
Module details for 2022/23.
30 credits
FHEQ Level 6
Module Outline
Global society is at an impasse. Ecology is in decline; the finance system unchecked; identity, community and politics are in crisis. The future seems foreclosed. So, what happened to the alternative? What happened to utopian imaginings, and liberated futures? Have we forgotten how to know them? This module explores these questions. Through a review of alternative, utopian and liberatory cultural and political ideas, it reacquaints students with the imagination and realisation of different horizons. Drawing on diverse cases (from sound and the city, to ecology and mutuality) it asks where these alternatives can be found today, and how we evaluate them.
Library
Akomfrah, John. 1996. Last angel of history UK: Black Audio Film Collective.
Back, Les. 1994. New ethnicities and urban culture: racisms and multiculture in young lives. London: UCL Press.
Beer, David. 2013. Popular culture and new media: the politics of circulation. Basingstoke: Palgrave.
Bennett, Andy. 1999. "Rappin' on the Tyne: white hip hop culture in Northeast England - an ethnographic study". The Sociological Review, vol.47, no.1, pp.1-24.
Brah, Avtar. 1996. Cartographies of diaspora: contesting identities. London: Routledge.
Bramwell, Richard. 2012. "The aesthetics and ethics of London based rap: a sociology of UK hip-hop and grime", Available from: http://etheses.lse.ac.uk/189/. Accessed 4th September 2012.
Bull, Michael & Back, Les. 2003. The auditory culture reader Oxford: Berg.
Butler, Judith. 1988. 'Performative acts and gender constitution: an essay in phenomenology and feminist theory'. Theatre Journal, vol.40, no.4, pp.519-531.
Butler, Judith & Athanasiou, Athena. 2013. Dispossession: the performative in the political London: Polity.
Cooper, Carolyn. 2004. Sound clash: Jamaican dancehall culture at large. New York ; Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Du Bois, W. E. B. 2007. The souls of black folk. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Ellison, Ralph. 1995. "Change the joke and slip the yoke", in Ralph Ellison and John F. Callahan eds. The collected essays of Ralph Ellison. New York: Modern Library, pp.100-112.Eshun, Kowdo. 1998. More brilliant than the sun: adventures in sonic fiction. London: Quartet Books.
Eshun, Kowdo. 1998. More brilliant than the sun: adventures in sonic fiction. London: Quartet Books.
Forman, M. & Neal, M.A., 2012. That's the joint! : the hip-hop studies reader, 2nd ed. ed. London: Routledge.
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Gilroy, Paul. 1993. The black Atlantic: modernity and double consciousness. London: Verso.
Gilroy, Paul. 2004. After empire: melancholia or convivial culture? London: Routledge.
Gilroy, Paul. 2010a. Darker than blue: on the moral economies of Black Atlantic culture. Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.
Goodman, Steve. 2009. Sonic warfare: sound, affect, and the ecology of fear. Cambridge, Mass. ; London: MIT Press.
Halberstam, Judith. 2008. "The anti-social turn in queer studies", vol.5, no.2. Available from: http://gjss.org/images/stories/volumes/5/2/0805.2a08_halberstam.pdf. Accessed 12th January 2012.
Hall, Stuart, et al. 1976. Resistance through rituals: youth subcultures in post-war Britain. London: Hutchinson.
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Harris, Roxy. 2006. New ethnicities and language use. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Hewitt, Roger. 1986. White talk black talk: inter-racial friendship and communication amongst adolescents. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
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Jones, Simon. 1988. Black culture, white youth: the reggae tradition from JA to UK. Basingstoke: Macmillan Education.
Kochman, T., 1972. Rappin' and stylin' out: communication in urban black America London: University of Illinois Press.
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Moten, Fred. 2003. In the break: the aesthetics of the Black radical tradition. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Nayak, Anoop. 2003. Race, place and globalization: youth cultures in a changing world. Oxford: Berg.
Noble, Denise. 2000. "Ragga music: dis/respecting black women and dis/reputable sexualities", in Barnor Hesse ed. Un/settled multiculturalisms: diasporas, entanglements, "transruptions". London: Zed Books, pp.148-169.
Pryce, Ken. 1986. Endless pressure: a study of West Indian life-styles in Bristol. 2nd edition. Bristol: Bristol Classical.
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Schafer, R. Murray. 1994. The soundscape: our sonic environment and the tuning of the world. Rochester, Vt.: Destiny Books.
Sharma, Sanjay. 2013. "Black Twitter? Racial hashtags, networks and contagion". New Formations, vol.78, pp.46-64.
Sharma, Sanjay, et al. 1996. Dis-orienting rhythms: the politics of the new Asian dance music. London: Zed Books.
Small, Christopher. 1987. Music of the common tongue: survival and celebration in Afro-American music. London: Calder.
Wemyss, Georgie. 2009. The invisible empire: white discourse, tolerance and belonging. Farnham: Ashgate.
West, Cornel. 1994. Race matters. New York: First Vintage Books.
Woods, Clyde. 2007. "Sittin' on top of the world". In K. Mckittrick & C. Woods (eds.) Black geographies and the politics of place. Cambridge MA: South End Press, pp. 46-81.
Zuberi, Nabeel. 2010. "Worries in the dance: post-millennial grooves and sub-bass culture", in Andy Bennett and Jon Stratton eds. Britpop and the English music tradition. Farnham: Ashgate, pp.179-192.
Module learning outcomes
Evaluate key substantive transformations in alternative and utopian cultural and political ideas and practices.
Analyse historical debates on the alternative, utopian and liberation and freedom.
Synthesise and develop theoretical tools for analysing alternative and utopian cultural and political ideas and practices.
Create original and independent analysis of aspects of alternative and utopian cultural and political ideas and practices.
| Type | Timing | Weighting |
|---|---|---|
| Coursework | 100.00% | |
| Coursework components. Weighted as shown below. | ||
| Essay | A2 Week 1 | 100.00% |
Timing
Submission deadlines may vary for different types of assignment/groups of students.
Weighting
Coursework components (if listed) total 100% of the overall coursework weighting value.
| Term | Method | Duration | Week pattern |
|---|---|---|---|
| Spring Semester | Seminar | 2 hours | 11111111111 |
How to read the week pattern
The numbers indicate the weeks of the term and how many events take place each week.
Dr Malcolm James
Assess convenor, Convenor
/profiles/355671
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