A/P Philip Holden (email: ellhpj@nus.edu.sg)

Week 9: Beyond Literature--Cultural Studies

In this week, we'll be looking at Cultural Studies, a methodology which has grown in popularity in university and school settings in the past few years. Unlike more traditional Literary Studies, Cultural Studies is less concerned with evaluating literary merit than it is with thinking about the effect all cultural forms, and especially popular cultural forms, have on the societies from which they arise.

In this week, we will be considering Gurmit Singh's character Phua Chu Kang who has been the subject of considerable debate, seen as anything from an icon of Singaporeanness to a national disgrace. Cultural Studies as an approach would sidestep answering this question, and ask rather what the character's public presence asnd popularity/notoriety can tell us about Singapore society itself.

Reading

1. Ziauddin Sardar and Borin Van Loon. “What is Cultural Studies?” Introducing Cultural Studies. Cambridge: Icon, 1998. 3-21.

2.  Straits Times article on Phua Chu Kang and "The Amazing Race."

[Available from the IVLE Workbin: please print out and bring to our class meeting]

3. Straits Times article on Phua Chu Kang and BEST Classes.

[Available from the IVLE Workbin: please print out and bring to our class meeting]

4. John Fiske, "Television Culture." Literary Theory: An Anthology. Ed. Julie Rivkin and Michael Ryan. London: Blackwell, 1998. 1087-1098. [This will be provided for you as an extra reading]

Questions

1.  From the Fiske and the Sardar articles, what do you understand by the term "cultural studies"? Is there anything that needs further discussion or clarification?
2.  From your readings, what do you think the strengths of a cultural studies approach might be?
3.  From your readings, what do you think the weaknesses of cultural studies might be?
4.  What might Arnold, Leavis, Thumboo or Mao Zedong say about cultural studies as an approach?
5.  From evidence in the two ST articles, do you think PCK challenges or reiterates the "dominant ideology," in Fiske's terms?

Last updated: 22 September, 2003