CURE3008: Global Cultural Theories

The Chinese University of Hong Kong

2024-25 Term 1

Lecture: Mondays, 10:30-12:15pm,

LPN Lecture Theatre (G/F), at YC Liang Hall (LHC)

Tutorials: Mondays, 12:30-1:15pm,

Venue 1: LPN Lecture Theatre (G/F), at YC Liang Hall (LHC)
Venue 2: Lee Shau Kee Building, Room 212
TA to be confirmed
Medium of Instruction: English

Dr Chieng Wei Shieng

Division of Cultural Studies
weishiengchieng@cuhk.edu.hk

Why study theories? What does it mean to theorise? For whom do we theorise? Where
are potential sites and mediums for theorising to happen? How could we theorise with
sensitivities to contexts, particularities and differences, and what are their relations to
theories and theorising? This course aspires to engage with some such questions, bearing
in mind how engagement with, and the use of theory does not mean theory is universal
and abstract, but understood as bodies of thought in response to, and informed by
prevailing shifts and complexities they may have been surrounded by.
Departing from the dominant canon of critical theory, this course aims to introduce
students to a wider, more diverse range of theoretical texts and frameworks by
marginalised voices and from peripheral locations. In the wake of epitaphs about the
poverty or death of critical theory, this course explores how theory might have continued
significance and impact through its intervention in social reality and creative practice.
First, theory could be applied as an analytical tool to comprehend and confront urgent
issues of inequality and injustice. Second, theory’s entanglement with verbal language
could be overcome through asking how film and visual art could potentially offer sources
for theorising.
This course seeks to also decolonise theory by multiplying the sites of intellectual
and critical inquiry. Instead of treating Benjamin, Adorno, Hall, Mulvey, and Grossberg as
representative of the corpus of theory, it engages with prevailing discussions in
Postcolonial Studies and Black Studies. It also moves beyond the call for ‘de-North
Americanisation’ by looking at theoretical texts and frameworks produced in Asia, Africa,
and Latin America. The course concludes by exploring work about environmentalism and
technology.
The course is designed for advanced undergraduates with familiarity in critical
approaches to literature, cinema, art, and media.
Learning Outcomes:
- To become acquainted with theoretical texts and frameworks in Cultural Studies by
marginalised voices from different peripheral social and geographic contexts
- To engage with theory as a body of thought to analyse the articulation of race, gender,
memory, and nature in literature, cinema, art, and media
- To formulate, develop, write, and revise an original critical essay using global cultural
theories

Assessment:
Class Attendance and Participation: 10%
You are expected to read the readings, and express your own thoughts and questions
relevant to the readings. This would translate to your contribution during class discussions
The questions I am looking for are not factual or general questions (eg. Who is theorist
so-and-so, what does ‘queer’ mean, etc.) that can be quickly answered by searching
online. Rather, the questions and thoughts should come from how you have understood
the reading, what you may not still understand, or in relation to the theories’ ideas/
concepts and argument of the readings.

Tutorial presentation (5-7mins) and response to two questions: 15% + 5%

After the add-drop period, each student would present one of the theories covered in
class and how this theory engages with your chosen cultural text from Asia (eg. Short film
clip, poster, advertisement, short segment of a song, artwork, social media video or
image, short video game scene or clip, etc). Presentation of the theory and your cultural
text example may also highlight some new insights, or possible challenges/limitations of
these theories.

Short critical reflection (400-600 words): 25%

Choose and comment on a piece of cultural text from Asia, engaging with one theory
covered in the course. Your reflection should briefly state your understanding of the
theory, and how and why you think this theory is relevant to the analysis of your chosen
cultural text, and how this cultural texts illustrates, expands and/or challenges the theory.
Submission deadline is 4 November 2024 (Monday), 11.59pm on Blackboard.

Final paper (2000-3000 words) and presentation (5-7minutes): 40% + 5%

For this final paper, you could either
1. Choose a cultural text (eg. short story, fairy tale, song, poem) that you may have been
discontented with, and rewrite/recreate it (1000-1500 words), after having engaged
with one to at most two of the theoretical texts discussed in this course. You would
also include a short commentary piece (1000-1500 words), explaining your
discontentment with the original cultural text, and how the theories have been
relevant in your rewriting of this cultural text; OR
2. Choose two to at most three theoretical texts covered in this course, and analyse it
alongside an Asian cultural text. The paper should include your understanding of
 these theoretical texts’ key concepts and ideas, as well as demonstrate how your close
and concrete analysis of the cultural text engages with these theories.
Submission deadline is 8 Dec 2024 (Sunday), 11.59pm on Blackboard.

Course Schedule:
Week 1 (2 Sept): No Classes
Inauguration Ceremony for Undergraduates

Week 2 (9 Sept): What does it mean to theorise culture?

How has culture been typically defined and analysed in Cultural Studies? How can we
move beyond dominant frameworks of Cultural Studies?
Required:
- Lawrence Grossberg, “The Heart of Cultural Studies,” in Cultural Studies in the Future
Tense (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010), pp. 7-30
Recommended:
- Shih Shu-mei and Françoise Lionnet, “Introduction: The Creolisation of Theory”, in The
Creolisation of Theory (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2011), pp. 1-33
- Melani Budianta, “Smart kampung: doing cultural studies in the Global South”,
Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies, 16:3, pp. 241-256

Week 3 (16 Sept): Postcolonialism and Anticolonialism

How has the epistemic and military violence of colonialism been critiqued using theory?
Required:
- Jini Kim Watson and Gary Wilder, “Thinking the Postcolonial Contemporary,” in The
Postcolonial Contemporary: Political Imaginaries for the Global Present, eds. Jini Kim
Watson and Gary Wilder (New York: Fordham University Press, 2018), pp. 1-29
Recommended:
- Mohandas K. Gandhi, “Civilization,” “What is True Civilization,” “Brute Force,” “Passive
Resistance,” and “Machinery,” in Hind Swaraj or Indian Home Rule (1909; Ahmedabad,
India: Navajivan Publishing House, 1938)
- Gayatri Spivak, “Subaltern Studies: Deconstructing Historiography,” The Spivak Reader:
Selected Works of Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, eds. Donna Landry and Gerald MacLean
(New York: Routledge, 1996), pp. 203-236

Week 4 (23 Sept): Decolonial Thought/s and Knowledge Production

What are the efforts to uncover alternative methods to the dominant frameworks of
knowledge production?
Required:
- Chen Kuan Hsing, “Asia as Method: Overcoming the Present Conditions of Knowledge
Production”, in Asia as Method: Toward Deimperialization (Durham, NC: Duke
University Press, 2010), pp. 211-256
Recommended:
- Arturo Escobar, “Worlds and Knowledges Otherwise: The Latin American modernity/
coloniality research program”, Cultural Studies, Vol. 21, Nos. 2-3, March/May 2007, pp.
179-210
- Raewyn Connell, “Chapter 6: Islam and Western Dominance”, in Southern Theory: the
Global Dynamics of Knowledge in Social Science (London and New York: Routledge,
2007, pp. 111-137

Week 5 (30 Sept): Image as Critique

How can images from film and visual art offer sources for intellectual and critical inquiry?
Required:
- Laura Marks, “The Memory of Touch,” in The Skin of the Film: Intercultural Cinema,
Embodiment, and the Senses (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2000), pp. 127-193
Recommended:
- Trinh T. Minh-ha, “The Totalizing Quest of Meaning,” in When the Moon Waxes Red:
Representation, Gender, and Cultural Politics (New York: Routledge, 1991), pp. 90-107
- Hito Steyerl, “In Defense of the Poor Image,” in The Wretched of the Screen (Berlin:
Sternberg Press, 2012), pp. 31-45

Week 6 (7 Oct): Gender

How can feminist or queer readings subvert fixed norms of cultural identity and
representation?
Required:
- Maria Lugones, “Chapter 3: On the Logic of Pluralist Feminism”, in Pilgrimages/
Peregrinajes: Theorising Coalition against Multiple Oppressions (United States of
America: Roman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.), pp. 82-91
Recommended:
- Radhika Govindrajan, "Chapter 6: The Bear Who Loved a Woman-the Intersection of
Queer Desires”, in Animal Intimacies: Interspecies Relatedness in India's Central
Himalayas (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 2018), pp. 146-172
- Petrus Liu, “Chinese Queer Theory,” in Queer Marxism in Two Chinas (Durham, NC:
Duke University Press, 2015), pp. 34-84

Week 7 (14 Oct): Race

How can theory expose and disturb unspoken structures and practices of racism?
Required:
- Sara Ahmed, “Chapter 3: The Orient and Other Others”, in Queer Phenomenology:
Orientations, Objects, Others (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2006), pp.
109-156
Recommended:
- Frantz Fanon, “The So-Called Dependency Complex of the Colonized,” in Black Skin,
White Masks (1952; New York: Penguin, 2019), pp. 64-88
- Simone Browne, “B®anding Blackness: Biometric Technology and the Surveillance of
Blackness”, in Dark Matters: On the Surveillance of Blackness (Durham, NC: Duke
University Press, 2015), pp. 89-130

Week 8 (21 Oct): Migration and Mobility

How do the departures and arrivals of migrants trouble and transform fixed national and
ethnic identities?
Required:
- Benedict Anderson, “Introduction” & “Cultural Roots,” in Imagined Communities:
Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, rev. ed. (New York: Verso, 1991),
pp. 1-7 & 9-36
Recommended:
- Arnika Fuhrmann, “The Ghost Seer: Chinese Thai Minority Subjectivity, Female Agency,
and the Transnational Uncanny in the Films of Danny and Oxide Pang”, in Ghostly
Desires: Queer Sexuality and Vernacular Buddhism in Contemporary Thai Cinema
(Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2016), pp. 87-121
- Paul Gilroy, “‘Jewels Brought from Bondage’: Black Music and the Politics of
Authenticity,” in Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness (London: Verso,
1993), pp. 72-110

Week 9 (28 Oct): History, Memory and Trauma

How do conceptions of history and time provide a means for imagining alternate futures
amid an oppressive present?
Required:
- David Scott, “Futures Past”, in Conscripts of Modernity: The Tragedy of Colonial
Enlightenment (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2004), pp. 23-57
Recommended:
- Saidiya Hartman, “Notes on Method” and “An Intimate History of Slavery and
Freedom,” in Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments: Intimate Histories of Riotous Black
Girls, Troublesome Women, and Queer Radicals (New York: Norton, 2019), pp. xiii-xv
and 45-76
- Marisol de la Cadena, “Mariano’s Archive: The Eventfulness of the Ahistorical,” in Earth
Beings: Ecologies of Practice across Andean Worlds (Durham, NC: Duke University
Press, 2015), pp. 118-151

Week 10 (4 Nov): Film Screening

Pendatang (2023), a Malaysian dystopian drama thriller, written by Lim Boon Siang,
directed by Ng Ken Kin

Submission of short critical re ections (4 Nov, 11.59pm)

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Week 11 (11 Nov): Ecology and the Non-Human
How do indigenous and vernacular beliefs about the natural and animal world offer new
ideas about the relationship between humans and the environment?
Required:
- Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing, "Part I Interlude: Smelling, Chapter 11: Life of the Forest” and
“Chapter 13: Resurgence”, in The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the
Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press,
2015), pp. 45-52, and pp.179-190
Recommended:
- Brianne Cohen, “Visualising Animal Trauma and Empty Forest Syndrome in the Moving
Imagery of Tuân Andrew Nguyẽn”, Art Journal, 81:4, 2022, pp. 44-61
- Cajetan Iheka, “Waste Reconsidered: Afrofuturism, Technologies of the Past, and the
History of the Future,” in African Ecomedia: Network Forms, Planetary Politics (Durham,
NC: Duke University Press, 2021), pp. 26-63

Week 12 (18 Nov): Final paper consultation

Week 13 (25 Nov): Technology and Society

How have theories of technology allowed deeper understandings of its relations,
promises and anxieties with societies?
Required:
- Toshiya Ueno, "Techno-Orientalism and Media-Tribalism: On Japanese Animation and
Rave Culture”, Third Text 13, no. 47 (1999): 95-106
Recommended:
- Shoshana Zuboff, “The Elaboration of Surveillance Capitalism: Kidnap, Corner,
Compete”, in The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the
New Frontier of Power (New York: Public Affairs, 2019)
- Yuki Sone, “Chapter 2: Robotics and Representation”, in Japanese Robot Culture:
Performance, Imagination and Modernity (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017), pp. 37-60

Week 14 (2 Dec): Final paper presentation

Final paper submission: 8 Dec, 11.59pm
Grading Rubric:
A (Exceptional):
The paper or project greatly exceeds the expectations for this requirement. Fresh insights
are presented not only about the chosen example but also about the concepts used. The
paper or project displays a comprehensive understanding of the chosen example and the
concepts used that goes beyond the scope of the class discussion. The language used to
explain the concept and its application is complex yet lucid. The writing is grammatically
correct and coherently organised. The chosen example is unique for the topic. The paper
or project was submitted by the deadline.

A- (Outstanding):
The paper or project exceeds the expectations for this requirement. Fresh insights are
presented about the chosen example. The paper or project displays a comprehensive
understanding of either the chosen example or the theory used that goes beyond the
scope of the class discussion. The language used to explain the theory and its application
is complex yet lucid. The writing is grammatically correct and coherently organised. The
chosen example is unique for the topic. The paper or project was submitted by the
deadline.

B+ (Very Good):
The paper or project more than meets the expectations for this requirement. Fresh
insights are presented about the chosen example. The paper or project displays a
comprehensive understanding of the chosen example and the theory used. The language
used to explain the theory and its application is lucid. The writing is coherently organised.
The chosen example is suitable for the topic. The paper or project was submitted by the
deadline.

B (Good):
The paper or project more than meets the expectations for this requirement. The insights
presented about the chosen example could have been developed further. The paper or
project displays a sufficient understanding of the chosen example and the theory used.
The language used to explain the theory and its application is lucid. The writing is
moderately coherent. The chosen example is suitable for the topic. The paper or project
was submitted by the deadline.

B- (More than Satisfactory):

The paper or project meets the expectations for this requirement. The insights presented
about the chosen example or theory used lack elaboration or development. The paper or
project displays a sufficient understanding of either the chosen example or the theory
used. The language used to explain the theory and its application is understandable. The
writing is moderately coherent. The chosen example is suitable for the topic. The paper or
project may have been submitted late.
C+ (Satisfactory):
The paper or project meets the expectations for this requirement. The insights presented
about the chosen example or theory used lack elaboration or development. The paper or
project displays a basic understanding of the chosen example and the theory used. The
language used to explain the theory and its application is understandable. The writing is
slightly coherent. The chosen example may not be suitable for the topic. The paper or
project may have been submitted late.

C, C- (Fair):
The paper or project barely meets the expectations for this requirement. The insights
presented about the chosen example or theory used are vaguely elaborated. The paper
or project fails to display a sufficient understanding of the chosen example and the theory
used. The language used to explain the theory and its application is virtually
understandable. The writing is incoherent. The chosen example may not be suitable for
the topic. The paper or project may have been submitted late.

D+, D (Pass):
The paper or project does not meet the expectations for this requirement. No additional
insights are presented about the chosen example or the theory used on top of what was
discussed in class. The language used to explain the theory and its application are almost
incomprehensible. The writing is incoherent. The chosen example is irrelevant. The paper
or project may have been submitted late.

F (Fail):
The paper or project does not meet the expectations for this requirement. The language
and writing are poor. The chosen example is irrelevant. The theory used was not covered
in class. The paper or project may have been submitted long past the deadline.

Academic Ethics
You are expected to abide by the university’s principles and regulations on academic
honesty. Please take some time to familiarise yourself with the information on the
following webpage: http://www.cuhk.edu.hk/policy/academichonesty/
Violations such as plagiarised papers or multiple submissions will not be tolerated
in any form. These will be subject to disciplinary action. Remember that all words,
phrases, or ideas taken from sources other than your own submitted assignment must be
properly cited. By submitting your papers for assessment, you are acknowledging that
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assignment.
All written assignments must be accompanied by a VeriGuide receipt, a signed
declaration acknowledging your awareness of and subscription to the university’s policies
and regulations on academic integrity. Written assignments submitted without a
VeriGuide receipt will not be accepted and graded.
When in doubt about an assignment with a possible violation, please feel free to
consult me.