106-092 Theorising the Spectator

Note

Credit Points

HECS Band

Coordinator

Prerequisites

Usually admission to Fourth Year Honours, see Honours entry.

Semester

Contact

Subject Description

This subject looks at and evaluates a wide range of competing theories of and arguments about spectatorship. It mobilises spectatorship as a way of profiling and analysing a number of issues and debates within the inter-related fields of cultural, film and television studies. The subject is designed to provide students with a broad over-view of and solid grounding in contemporary media theory. Students should become familiar with the question of spectatorship in psychoanalytic-semiotic theories of the cinematic apparatus; Marxist accounts of ideological interpellation in the mass media; cultural studies models of audience negotiation and subcultural resistance; critical theories about the cultural transformations of modernity; feminist and queer debates about the sexual dynamics of popular culture; postmodern accounts of the virtual subjectivities of cyberculture.

Assessment

Written work totalling 5000 words.

Prescribed Texts

A subject reader will be available.