Summer School in Philosophy of Culture

In conjunction with sister conferences in Mexico City and Portland, this interactive gathering--with local sponsorhip by the Common Core@HKU and the HKU Museum & Art Gallery--moves in multiple ways between philosophy and the city, with walking-working groups focused on mobilities, foodways, art and architecture, the city of images, and Wan Chai on the move.

Following the very successful inaugural conference on the theme of the work of Paulo Freire, the Department of Educational Studies (in collaboration with the Centre for Culture, Identity and Education), University of British Columbia, invites individual paper and full panel proposals for its second Departmental conference on the theme Cultural Studies and Education. In addition to traditional papers and presentations, the conference welcomes proposals for performative cultural studies (music, skits, dance, spoken word, rap, art, multimedia). Both fields that draw on the traditional disciplines in various ways (application of the individual disciplines and interdisciplinary work), cultural studies and education have had a long but mutually ambivalent relationship. What could be described as " the cultural studies turn " in the 1990s marked the taking up of cultural studies as both articulation of and successor regime to a disparate collection of identity based and social justice aimed forms of education (e.g. critical pedagogy, feminist pedagogy, integrative anti-racist, queer, critical multicultural education). While many in both fields saw this as the emergence of cultural studies and/of education, the history of the imbrication of cultural studies and education goes as far back as the 1960s and 1970s work of the apparently not well known successive " Education Groups " of the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies at Birmingham University, UK, and indeed arguably to the very origins of cultural studies as the extramural (adult education) work of an acknowledged founding father, Raymond Williams. Cultural studies has been rather reticent to acknowledge its education origins, preferring the story of the crises of the humanities and social sciences as its definitive origin. In fact, cultural studies has treated education rather like a dotty old aunt kept hidden in the attic when good, cutting edge theory company like postmodernism, poststructuralism and digital media studies have come calling. In turn some in education, engaged in praxis projects, have been put off by what they perceive as the theoreticism that characterizes much of contemporary cultural studies work. On the other hand, some cultural studies figures (e.g. Larry Grossberg, who in the late 1990s proclaimed education to be " one of the most pressing, promising, and paradoxical sites of

PHILOSOPHY OF CULTURE

Until the twentieth century it could be thought that culture and language were not subjects of philosophy, or that they were dispensable subjects. Starting from the linguistic turn and the universalization of hermeneutics, not only language and culture have occupied pre-eminent places in this field, but they have even become the key themes of philosophy. Or, the philosophy of language and culture have become the first philosophy. Without the security offered by the grands récits of history, Gerhart Schöder main-tains, it is about reaching a new point of view from which the visual field of what happens can be obtained. In the globalization process lies a need for the total. The actuality of the concept of culture lies in the fact that the concept seems to offer it. The weakness of the concept lies precisely in the fact that it now encompasses the totality of the real. Culture has become, in the current discussion, a necessary medium for the totality of human think-ing and acting.

This course explores the relations of cultural artifacts in the contemporary world to their various social contexts. Culture is understood as the material expressions and images that people create and the social environment that shapes the way diverse groups of people experience their world and interact with one another. The course focuses on the critical analysis of these various forms of media, design, mass communications, arts, and popular culture. DETAILED COURSE DESCRIPTION & OBJECTIVES The present era is often characterized as an age of global integration and a truly world economy as well as an era of social and environmental crises. In the midst of these changes we can often hear " culture " invoked as both a positive expression of this globalism and sometimes as something that opposes it. The full meaning of culture remains a topic of fierce debate and so " culture " is used as a political weapon, a claim of privilege, a rallying point for identity, a reservoir of resistance, or refers to various artifacts and practices that must be either preserved (good culture) or eliminated (degenerate culture). Cultural Studies emerged from the attempts to understand these complex social and political uses of " culture " in such debates as those over " high & low " art, the value of the artifacts of popular culture (cinema, television, music, etc.), the deployments of knowledge and authority in the social relations of everyday life. We will examine how Cultural Studies offered a critical understanding of what Max Horkheimer termed " life as it is lived. " Attention will be paid to the fate of Cultural Studies as it became accepted and absorbed by various academic disciplines. In the final sessions, special attention will be given to the reception of Cultural Studies in the United States. This course is designed to give you a foundation in Cultural Studies. It will show you how Cultural Studies emerged and its subsequent variations and lines of descent. You are not expected to already know this, nor are you expected to already be familiar with the texts we will use and issues that will be raised. You are expected to engage the course materials seriously. You will finish the course with an introduction to different ways of understanding the history of the present day and the social relations of everyday life.

This course introduces students to the work and significance of representation and power in the understanding of culture as social practice. It helps students to understand the relationships among sign, culture and the making of meanings in society. From this base it approaches the question of ideology and subjectivity in the shaping of culture. With reference to various cultural texts and social contexts, we study examples of cultural production from history and politics to lived experiences of the everyday, from photography and art to cinema and museum, from popular culture to lifestyle etc. In appreciating divergent concerns in the critical analysis of culture and power, we focus on selected topics both mainstream and emergent, with an emphasis on contemporary developments in the Asian contexts. A brief account of the intellectual formations of Cultural Studies will be provided to allow students to appreciate the global, regional and local perspectives in the evolving field of study.

Taylor and Francis Ltd., 2011

Lyceum Institute, 2022

In this seminar, we shall introduce the philosophy of culture, defining what culture is and where the study of culture fits into philosophy. We will then explore how there exists a speculative dimension to the philosophy of culture (i.e., explaining how culture exists in reality through human subjectivity and how it is determined by human nature), as well as a practical dimension (i.e., cultural values). After establishing the principles of this study, we will then look to its application to Western culture, in particular, the transition between the three major epochs of antiquity, the Middle Ages, and modernity. We will then analyze modern culture in particular with an eye toward its trajectory into the next age. Finally, we shall conclude with a practical examination of what the philosophy of culture (as we have studied throughout the course) tells us about the present age and our expectations in this life.