Culture, Power, and Difference
This course examines the relationship between culture, power, and difference through theoretical frameworks and creative practice. Students explore how emotions function as forms of power, investigate methods of visual documentation and resistance, and analyze how sound and speech operate within systems of representation. The course emphasizes embodied research methodologies that bridge theory and practice, asking students to observe, document, and critically reflect on their own experiences of difference in everyday life.
Through sustained engagement with Black feminist theory, queer theory, and critical race studies, students develop analytical frameworks for understanding how power operates through cultural forms while simultaneously creating media projects that intervene in dominant representational practices.
☞ Key Themes
- Theories of power through Foucault, Bourdieu, and Habermas
- Emotions as political force (anger, rage, sass, hate, queer feelings)
- Visual documentation as resistance and counter-archive
- Sonic practices and listening as analytical method
- Speech acts and protest as performance
- Settler colonialism and landscape memory
- The politics of recognition and strangeness
The semester unfolds in three creative modules:
- Assignment 1: Image Collection & Visual Essay — Students photograph moments of “feeling difference” over several weeks, building a personal archive that documents race, gender, class, and citizenship in everyday environments. The ongoing observation practice culminates in a curated visual essay.
- Assignment 2: Soundwalk & Sonic Installation — Working in groups, students conduct soundwalks on campus using Guy Debord's theory of the dérive, creating field recordings and developing site-specific sonic installations.
- Assignment 3: Speech Act Performance — Students research historical speech acts (from performance art to political oratory) and create their own interventions engaging issues of power, voice, and public space.
☞ Skills Students Develop
- Visual documentation and photographic composition
- Critical analysis of affect and embodied experience
- Sound recording and basic audio editing
- Collaborative research and group facilitation
- Writing that integrates theory with creative practice
- Archive research methods
- Public presentation and critique
Pedagogical Approach
This course centers creative practice as a form of theory-making. Rather than treating media production as mere illustration of concepts, students use image-making, sound recording, and performance as methods of inquiry that generate new knowledge. The semester-long documentation assignments ask students to develop sustained observational practices, while the collaborative soundwalk project builds skills in collective research and site-responsive art.
Weekly "image reflections" create space for students to share work-in-progress and receive peer feedback, emphasizing process over product. The course integrates specialized visits from librarians and archivists, connecting classroom learning to institutional resources.
Bibliography
Theory & Cultural Studies
- Ahmed, Sara. The Cultural Politics of Emotion (2004)
- Ahmed, Sara. “Recognizing Strangers” (2000)
- Christiensen, Gerd. “Three Concepts of Power: Foucault, Bourdieu and Habermas”
- Williams, Raymond. “Culture”
Black Feminist Thought
- Cooper, Brittany. Eloquent Rage: A Black Feminist Discovers her Superpower
- Lorde, Audre. “Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power” (1978)
- Lorde, Audre. “The Uses of Anger” (1981)
Visual Culture & Representation
- Campt, Tina. Excerpts from A Black Gaze
- Sontag, Susan. Selection from Regarding the Pain of Others
Sound & Listening
- Debord, Guy. “Theory of the Dérive”
- Ellis, JJJJJerome. Selection from Aster of Ceremonies
- Farianati, Lucia and Claudia Firth. The Force of Listening (Introduction, Prelude, Chapter 1)
Performance & Speech
- Cohen, Kris. “Our Broken Genres: Sharon Hayes's Love Addresses”
- Hayes, Sharon. “Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA) Screeds”
- Morris, Tracey. “From Slave Sho' to Video, Black But Beautiful”
Place & Memory
- Brown, Nicholas and Sarah Kanous. Re-collecting Black Hawk: landscape, memory, and power in the American Midwest
- McKee, Yates. “Wake, Vestige, Survival: Sustainability and the Politics of the Trace in Allora and Calzadilla's Land Mark”
Artists Referenced
- Flying Lotus. “Until the Quiet Comes”
- Jafa, Arthur. “Love is the Message and the Message is Death”
- Allora and Calzadilla. “Returning A Sound”
Previously taught: Spring 2025, Fall 2024. Previously offered as Cultural Politics of Difference: Fall 2022, Fall 2021, Spring 2021, Fall 2020.