Topical Resource Collections
From Postmodernism explained through hipster beards to Harry Potter fan activism, Karl Marx in Rolling Stone and the Guardian on trolling ... Below you’ll find links to websites, videos, and articles on some of the most important concepts and people in Cultural Studies.
The links are organized by topic to make it easy for you to navigate to the resources that you need. The topic categories are:
1. CULTURE
For some different versions of culture
https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/department-for-culture-media-sport
www.google.com/culturalinstitute/
The Anthropocene: a new understanding of Nature-Culture
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=XLCa1njCK0E
Visual culture
Gillian Rose’s Visual/Method/Culture blog
https://visualmethodculture.wordpress.com/
Nicholas Mirzoeff homepage:
http://www.nicholasmirzoeff.com/
Azande
www.everyculture.com/wc/Brazil-to-Congo-Republic-of/Azande.html
www.therai.org.uk/film/volume-ii-contents/witchcraft-among-the-azande
YouTube has the ‘classic’ Granada TV Disappearing World documentary:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rmug_qvO15s
Trobriand Islanders
www.everyculture.com/Oceania/Trobriand-Islands.html
YouTube Planet Documentary
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0mcliwfs6Pg
Shakespeare
www.bbc.co.uk/history/people/william_shakespeare
2. FOUNDERS OF CULTURAL STUDIES
Raymond Williams
www.raymondwilliams.co.uk (The Raymond Williams Society)
www.raymondwilliamsfoundation.org.uk (The Raymond Williams Foundation – a more specific focus on Williams and adult education but also has more general information)
YouTube has some very good resources including:
Documentary on The Country and the City: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_XCjBTloxcA
An introduction to Brecht’s The Caucasian Chalk Circle: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tDujizxwa1E
A conversation with Derrida:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CeNZWlsDhr4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W_Mtznrz3F0
Richard Hoggart
Richard Hoggart: Cultural Critic and Educationalist, 24 September 1918–10 April 2014 (a detailed obituary):
Richard Hoggart’s Legacy and the New Uses of Literacy: http://www.rowmaninternational.com/news/richard-hoggarts-legacy-and-the-new-uses-of-literacy
Richard Hoggart’s Desert Island Discs:
www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0093p7j
E. P. Thompson
www.britannica.com/biography/E-P-Thompson
understandingsociety.blogspot.com/2008/02/what-was-e-p-thompson-up-to.html
YouTube: E.P. Thompson’s The Making of the English Working Class – a seminar from Vanderbilt University: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_6UJUcAXdHY
YouTube: E.P. Thompson at 1977 SSRC Seminar on Models of Social Change:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i3Rk-h9Ugd4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cD3Gsk8M94I
YouTube: Great Confrontations at the Oxford Union: Caspar Weinberger vs E.P. Thompson:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wMdTJJa3kVo
3. STRUCTURALISM, POSTSTRUCTURALISM AND SEMIOTICS
www.philosophybasics.com/movements_structuralism.html
http://www.buzzfeed.com/chrisr414d8a71a/post-structuralism-explained-with-hipster-beards-xwfz
YouTube: Yale courses – lots of lectures and material, for example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VsMfaIOsT3M
DVD: Gilles Deleuze from A to Z
The Partially Examined Life (A Philosophy Podcast and Philosophy Blog): Episode 51: Semiotics and Structuralism
London Review of Books: www.lrb.co.uk/v31/n22/michael-wood/presence-of-mind
YouTube: An Introduction to Roland Barthes’s Mythologies – A Macat Literature Analysis
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6GCzq8we-bI
YouTube: search for Roland Barthes’ Myth Today explained through literature
YouTube: What is semiotics? A short film by Creative Semiotics:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mA_LM-WMC1A
Derrida and meaning
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Zw04hraCVo
Danny Chandler’s semiotics site:
http://visual-memory.co.uk/daniel/Documents/S4B/
4. FREUD AND PSYCHOANALYSIS
www.simplypsychology.org/psychoanalysis
www.ipa.org.uk (International Psychoanalytical Association)
www.apsa.org (American Psychoanalytical Association)
There are several excellent Radio 4 In Our Time discussions of different aspects of Psychoanalysis:
Psychoanalysis and Democracy
www.bbc.co.uk › Factual › History › In Our Time
Psychoanalysis and its Legacy
www.bbc.co.uk › Factual › History › In Our Time
Psychoanalysis and Literature
www.bbc.co.uk › Factual › History › In Our Time
For an engaging deployment of psychoanalysis to analyse cinema and ideology see The Pervert’s Guide to Cinema (dir. Sophie Fiennes, 2006) and The Pervert’s Guide to Ideology (dir. Sophie Fiennes, 2012) both presented by Slavoj Žižek.
YouTube: some good introductions and a creative series of talks from Emory University – Emory Looks at Hollywood that does psychoanalyses of e.g. Bruce Wayne and Clark Kent:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL9F42317B29475C05
5. MICHEL FOUCAULT AND DISCOURSE
BBC Radio 4 Thinking Allowed on Michel Foucault:
www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b038hg73
The Partially Examined Life (A Philosophy Podcast and Philosophy Blog): Episode 49 Foucault on Power and Punishment
https://www.partiallyexaminedlife.com/2012/01/11/episode-49-foucault-on-power-and-punishment/
YouTube: any useful lectures on Foucault and Discourse:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BBJTeNTZtGU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uNcQA3MSdIE
6. BIRMINGHAM CENTRE FOR CONTEMPORARY CULTURAL STUDIES (CCCS) AND SOME KEY ‘GRADUATES’
http://www.birmingham.ac.uk/cccs
This is a project website with much useful material about CCCS including links to papers, interviews and so on.
Stuart Hall
http://spartacus-educational.com/HIShallS.htm for a summary of Stuart Hall
www.radicalphilosophy.com/obituary/stuart-hall-1932-2014 where a number of writers discuss different aspects of Hall’s work
The Stuart Hall Project DVD from the BFI. (A documentary by John Akomfrah).
YouTube: there are many useful clips and films featuring Hall.
www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0094b6r for Stuart Hall’s Desert Island Discs
Angela McRobbie
www.gold.ac.uk/media-communications/staff/mcrobbie/
https://www.twitter.com/angelamcrobbie
YouTube: many resources including recent lectures and so on.
Professor Angela McRobbie, Unpacking the Politics of the Creative Economy: Hipsters as the Flaneurs of Neoliberal Times, www.a-r-c.ca
Paul Gilroy
www.theguardian.com/profile/paul-gilroy on Twelve Years a Slave
Stories of Black Britain in Pictures, an interview. http://socialistreview.org.uk/318/stories-black-britain-pictures
YouTube: many useful clips.
7. MARX AND MARXISM
Karl Marx
www.britannica.com/biography/Karl-Marx
www.nybooks.com/articles/2013/05/09/real-karl-marx
YouTube: political theory – Karl Marx
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fSQgCy_iIcc
YouTube: What is Marxism? (Karl Marx and Super Mario Bros)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vz3eOb6Yl1s
Antonio Gramsci, Hegemony, Ideology
www.theory.org.uk/ on Gramsci
www.powercube.net/other-forms-of-power/gramsci-and-hegemony
www.internationalgramscisociety.org The International Gramsci Society site with lots of resources.
YouTube: Gramsci: Everything that Concerns People
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=51DhvS9abyI
YouTube: Hegemony 10 Minute Philosophy
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=js8E6C3ZnJ0
YouTube: Cultural Hegemony: The Undoing Project
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6cHThwyA8RE
The Pervert’s Guide to Ideology (dir. Sophie Fiennes, 2012) presented by Slavoj Žižek.
8. THE FRANKFURT SCHOOL AND WALTER BENJAMIN
bbc.co.uk: In Our Time Discussion of the Frankfurt School
www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00pr54s
The Frankfurt School of Critical Theory: Open Yale Courses
oyc.yale.edu/English/engl-300/lecture-12
The Naysayers
www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/09/15/naysayers
9. EDWARD SAID AND ORIENTALISM
Edward Said explains Orientalism in five minutes:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=KkEbi_rojII
Miles Ogborn (author of Introducing Cultural Studies Chapter 6) takes a little longer:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=wiDTpr6fSOg
10. FEMINISM (SUBORDINATION OF WOMEN AND PATRIARCHY)
YouTube: many resources on patriarchy
Judith Butler on gender and performativity
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=fndkPPJBi1U
This BBC article examines why sexism persists in the video games industry: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-27824701
A really useful resource here is the Feminist Frequency website and YouTube channel, which features a number of videos on the representation of women in the media, and in particular video games: https://www.youtube.com/user/feministfrequency
Another useful video from the Feminist Frequency series focuses on the ‘Bechdel Test’: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bLF6sAAMb4s
The Vagenda Magazine
http://vagendamagazine.com/about/
Everything you wanted to know about feminism but were too afraid to ask at
https://bitchmedia.org/article/everything-about-feminism-you-wanted-to-know-but-were-afraid-to-ask
Bitch Media is a nonprofit, independent, feminist media organization dedicated to providing and encouraging an engaged, thoughtful feminist response to mainstream media and popular culture, more articles can be accessed at https://bitchmedia.org/
The Everyday Sexism Project, catalogues instances of sexism experienced on a day to day basis.
Are we witnessing a shift from third-to fourth-wave feminism, Ealasaid Munro examines the history of feminism and looks at what contemporary developments might mean for feminist politics. https://www.psa.ac.uk/insight-plus/feminism-fourth-wave
11. MAX WEBER (BUREAUCRACY AND PROTESTANT ETHIC)
BBC In Our Time radio discussion of Max Weber’s The Protestant Ethic
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03yqj31
The School of Life on Max Weber’s The Protestant Ethic https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ICppFQ6Tabw
thephilosophersmail.com/.../the-great-philosophers-9-max-weber/
SocioSite: Max Weber (1864–1920), for many resources on Weber: www.sociosite.net/topics/weber.php
Stephen Fry narrates a brief animated introduction to Max Weber’s The Protestant Ethic https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j-0sIHDzsU4
12. NEW AND DIGITAL MEDIA
Henry Jenkins
Material on YouTube includes:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ibJaqXVaOaI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1gPm-c1wRsQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1nrWcFPjnCc
HenryJenkins.org is his website.
Power and control within the media: http://www.channel4learning.com/sites/lifestuff/content/whorules/media/whorules_m_oac.html
How the news distorts our worldview
In this TED talk Alisa Miller looks at the proliferation of American news stories in American newspapers (largely ignoring international stories): https://www.ted.com/talks/alisa_miller_shares_the_news_about_the_news?language=en#t-185299
Can we trust the media?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5RwhEHzuulA&list=PLghL9V9QTN0gCZia2u-YnLxhetxnC_ONF&index=33
Media effects and violence
The American Sociological Association has a useful media violence project here: http://www.asanet.org/introtosociology/StudentResources/Exploring%20Data%20Resources/DataMediaViolence106.html
http://sociologytwynham.com/2013/10/03/media-effects-on-audiences/
Performative society and selfies:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QMxm-aXAwc4&index=15&list=PLghL9V9QTN0gCZia2u-YnLxhetxnC_ONF
The impact of ‘new media’:
http://www.podology.org.uk/#/the-impact-of-new-media/4563962604
http://www.everydaysociologyblog.com/2009/08/new-media-revolution.html
Jesse Schell and his address to the 2010 DICE:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nG_PbHVW5cQ
Convergence of media ownership:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ona0jYWa6s
Vlogging
Perhaps the most famous young vlogger (‘video blogger’) who includes some haul videos in her YouTube channel is Zoella. Zoella (aka Zoe Suggs) has over 8 million subscribers to her YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/zoella280390?gl=GB&hl=en-GB. Here is an example of one of her haul videos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zPdEzRb8Gzs.
A Zoella article in Vogue: http://www.vogue.co.uk/news/2014/11/06/zoella-full-interview-vogue-november-2014-issue provides some further reading on Zoe Suggs.
The London Symphony Orchestra and Social Media Disconnection
Free/open access article on this study:
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/1369118X.2013.877953
Trolling
Is technology bad?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l_JOM-sVbKI&list=PLghL9V9QTN0gCZia2u-YnLxhetxnC_ONF&index=32
13. PIERRE BOURDIEU (DISTINCTION, CULTURAL CAPITAL, HABITUS)
For a very short animated introduction to Bourdieu see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=87BPL62wyyU
YouTube: Pierre Bourdieu material includes:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=flz6shD3g2s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7FXPnkwSCyE
Sarah-Thornton.com, website of the writer and sociologist.
For an obituary of Bourdieu from the Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/news/2002/jan/28/guardianobituaries.books
14. GEORG SIMMEL AND THE CITY
An extensive resource for Simmel’s work: http://socio.ch/sim/work.htm
An extensive resource for Simmel’s life: http://socio.ch/sim/bio.htm
15. POWER, RESISTANCE, TRANGRESSION
Do we need governments?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ttu8va9_x1g
Aleks Krotoski asks if the internet fuels the breakdown of social and moral boundaries.
Available as a podcast at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01n7094/episodes/downloads?page=2
YouTube: Jeffrey Alexander discusses Obama as a performer:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=61x7VZMtlu4
16. GLOBALISATION, COLONIALISM, POSTCOLONIALISM, SPACE, PLACE, LANDSCAPE, HYBRIDITY
John Berger (1973) Ways of Seeing, Episode 3: Representation and property. The discussion of landscape painting begins at 18.55, but it is worth watching the whole thing (you should also think how TV has changed since the 1970s!):
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Z7wi8jd7aC4
Cultural hybridity: the example of graphic novels:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=MYSEJOyGKok
http://yaleglobal.yale.edu/ is an online magazine which draws on the intellectual resources of Yale University, US, and other experts from around the world to analyse and promote debate on all aspects of globalization. See, for example http://yaleglobal.yale.edu/sites/default/files/flash/Movie2.html for a media presentation which shows how the globalisation of the supply chain has dramatically lowered the price of television worldwide.
The Centre for Global Research at RMIT examines the current direction of global change, emphasising the implications of political, social and cultural transformation for communities and organisations: http://www.rmit.edu.au/research/research-institutes-centres-and-groups/research-centres/centre-for-global-research/
The BBC World Service provides a good introduction to many of the issues raised by globalisation, from the power of multinational companies to the global spread of Western pop music http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/programmes/globalisation/
17. MODERNISM AND POSTMODERNISM
Alan Kirby on Post-postmodernism:
https://philosophynow.org/issues/58/The_Death_of_Postmodernism_And_Beyond
For Modernism in art: www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/m/modernism
https://www.moma.org/learn/moma_learning/themes/what-is-modern-art
For Modernism in design: www.vam.ac.uk/page/m/modernism/
On Star Wars and postmodernism:
For Postmodernism in art and design: www.vam.ac.uk/page/p/postmodernism/
For Postmodernism in art: www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/p/postmodernism
18. MODERNITY AND POSTMODERNITY
Discusses a number of issues: faculty.georgetown.edu/irvinem/theory/pomo.html
infed.org/mobi/post-modernism-and-post-modernity/
19. SUBCULTURES AND FANS
Fred Perry and subcultures:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tSPloCOMExg
British youth subcultures:
Guardian article written by Wayne Hemingway, founder of Red or Dead: http://www.theguardian.com/culture/gallery/2011/jul/10/10-best-british-youth-cultures
Neo-tribes:
http://www.businessinsider.com/afp-urban-tribes-thriving-in-modern-society-2014-10?IR=T
Rites of passage:
https://www.globalcitizen.org/en/content/13-amazing-coming-of-age-traditions-from-around-th/
http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2014/jan/03/adolescents-need-rites-passage-into-adulthood
Ethnomethodology:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h_ny2GSDcIY
Girls and bedroom culture:
http://www.media-ucn.co.uk/Seminar%20Readings/Soc%203016/Sian's%20article%20on%20bedrooms+teens.pdf
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-28677674
http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/672/1/Chapter8_Children&ChangingMediaEnvironment.pdf.
Riot grrrls: http://www.bl.uk/learning/histcitizen/21cc/counterculture/doityourself/riotgrrrl/riotgrrrl.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a9G45K6FgaI
Moral panics:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rFL54R9g5Io
http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/sociology/crime-and-deviance/moral-panic/
Sarah Thornton and club culture:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=65OP7w1NlHo.
Paul Willis, ‘Learning to Labour’:
http://sociologytwynham.com/2008/12/27/willis-anti-school-subculture/
The impact of hip hop:
http://content.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,55624,00.html
The Harry Potter Alliance:
Nerdfighteria:
Stanley Cohen and moral panic:
YouTube: much material here including:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r61ks18Bd7I
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=daZOE8Ra1NA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vMvG8sYWD0I
Author Camille Bacon-Smith’s website:
20. CONSUMPTION, FASHION AND SHOPPING
Fight Club, men and shopping:
The film Fight Club provides one illustration of how shopping and consumption are often seen as a ‘woman’s’ activity, and to engage in shopping and consumption is often seen as emasculating men.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vBot8SOLWBQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YqI6jgTUGmc&list=PLghL9V9QTN0hRWpPpyh6T7_V2Nmah6rHj&index=11
The Devil Wears Prada and the lumpy blue sweater:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yj8mHwvFxMc
Children and advertising:
https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/digital-online-advertising-children-privacy
Fred Perry and the importance of ‘Branding’
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YUxTAnI33uY
21. BODIES AND CULTURE
Mauss’s essay available online at:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/29890878/Marcel-Mauss-Techniques-of-the-Body#scribd
Presentation on Mauss’s essay:
https://prezi.com/veacp4084wbj/techniques-of-the-body-by-marcel-mauss/
More on Mauss:
https://bodyperformanceandarchitecturalspace.wordpress.com/2015/02/03/more-about-mauss/
http://www.anthrobase.com/Dic/eng/pers/mauss_marcel.htm
Young, throwing like a girl:
http://ndpr.nd.edu/news/24880-on-female-body-experience-throwing-like-a-girl-and-other-essays/
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/08/24/what-does-it-mean-to-throw-like-a-girl/?_r=0
Embodied actions in everyday life:
http://www.ericlaurier.co.uk/Texts/
Norbert Elias:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z63V3XfFKes (The first of series of eight short videos covering many aspects of Elias’s work.)
http://www.faculty.rsu.edu/users/f/felwell/www/Theorists/Elias/Presentation/Elias.pdf
Dieting and obesity:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S1X5FhoZFFs#t=63.670541
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qhEwXEMlSXU (interview with Professor Abigail Saguy)
The Next Black is a documentary film that explores the future of clothing:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XCsGLWrfE4Y
Gail Dines, anti-pornography activist, TedX talk:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_YpHNImNsx8
Porn Studies (an academic journal):
http://www.tandfonline.com/toc/rprn20/current
Fitness regimes:
http://www.bodybuilding.com/fun/workout.htm
‘Fit Bodies’ (Sassatelli):
Body shapes of sports people compared:
http://www.boredpanda.com/athlete-body-types-comparison-howard-schatz/
22. ETHNOGRAPHY AND QUALITATIVE METHODS
Forum: Qualitative Social Research (an online journal):
http://www.qualitative-research.net/index.php/fqs
Ethnography (a Sage journal):
Cultural Studies <=> Critical Methodologies (a Sage journal):
Howard S. Becker’s homepage: