106-448 Theorising the Spectator

Usually admission to the postgraduate diploma or fourth year honours in English, cultural studies or women's studies, see Honours entry.

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 overview 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.

Written work totalling 5000 words for 4th year, 6000 words for masters students.

A subject reader will be available.