Graduate Programme in
Cultural Studies

Course Descriptions

CLTR6030: Dynamics of Caribbean Culture

This course is designed to provide an understanding of the cultural dynamics of Caribbean societies and their diasporas. It will explore issues of identity, critical consciousness, ways of knowing and provide insights into music, festivals, visual art, sport, language, literary and oral discourse and the religious expressions of Caribbean societies.

CLTR 6230: Caribbean Popular and Creative Culture

This graduate course will build on some of the work covered in the two undergraduate courses in Caribbean popular culture. This course acknowledges that "popular culture" is a very broad area of study and engagement within the academy. It however wants to provide an avenue by which students can begin to undertake analysis of specific areas within this field. It recognizes that "popular culture" often refers to those areas of expression that are subversive, counter-cultural, and which challenge more traditional ways of knowing and ways of doing. While this course will engage and interrogate notions of the "popular" and other important contested concepts, it also wants to provide a context for an examination of popular expression as creative process. In effect, the course therefore examines the contradictory nature of popular expression. The reference to "creative culture" in the title also allows for an examination of late 20th century responses by Caribbean governments, practitioners, private sector institutions, and education centres to the repositioning of culture globally. The course takes note of the ways in which Caribbean culture is affected by and responds to international phenomena. To this end, the course will concern itself with a set of areas. These areas relate to specific genres of expression, or specific movements, or specific conceptual and practical phenomena which continue to preoccupy scholars of popular culture.

 

CLTR: 6500 Research Methodology for Cultural Practitioners

This course affords students the tools required to conduct research

in Caribbean culture. It will examine the conceptual formulations that constitute knowledge while it assesses how that knowledge is
validated and verified. The course places emphasis on such aspects as the language of scholarship, the preparation and presentation of a scholarly paper as well as the research techniques for the study of culture. It also highlights the importance of reading culture as a text, and will take students through the process of shaping a theory of culture. As a result, student will develop the necessary tools in which they can articulate the process of the creative enterprise. They will also be afforded the opportunity to examine the process of developing cultural policy at a national and regional level.