Communication 7933
The Role of the Critic
Spring 2001

Prof. Gil Rodman
Office Hours: Tu-12p or by appointment
CIS 3040 // 974-3025 // gbrodman@mindspring.com
CourseInfo site:
http://scholar.acomp.usf.edu:8050/
This course will examine the various roles that intellectual work plays in contemporary culture and society. In particular, we will wrestle with the following questions: In keeping with the spirit of this as a doctoral seminar, I will assume that anyone enrolled in this course already has (1) at least a roughly defined research area and (2) enough existing expertise in that area to write and speak about it with passable fluency. The writing assignments for this course will require you to apply and disseminate more traditional forms of academic knowledge to broader contexts and audiences than professional scholars are typically expected to address -- which will be a more frustrating experience for you if you're trying to write about subject matter that's largely new to you.
required course materials
  1. Books. Available at Inkwood Books, 216 S. Armenia, Tampa (253-2638).

  2. Photocopied essays.
    In the past, my graduate classes have used cooperative photocopying "trees" to facilitate the distribution of photocopied essays. Participation in the tree is optional, but strongly encouraged, as it's proven to be a cheaper, quicker, and more efficient way for the whole class to get the non-book readings.

  3. Reliable, regular access to the World Wide Web.
    All of the written work for this class -- and a significant amount of our discussion -- will be submitted and conducted online, so you will not be able to complete the course successfully without being able to access the Web on a consistent basis. If you don't already have an Internet account and/or access to the Net from your home or workplace, you will need to make use of the e-mail account and open-use computer labs that Academic Computing (LIB 608) provides free of charge to registered students.
writing

Over the course of the semester, each of us -- myself included -- will produce a total of 6250-7500 words (~25-30 pages) of (hopefully) publishable "public intellectual" prose that will be shared with the class as a whole. This prose can consist of one long "feature" essay, a dozen short columns, or any other combination of pieces that collectively add up to a total word count in the range listed above. Each essay you write should have a specific non-academic venue (e.g., a magazine, newspaper, webzine, etc.) in mind as a potential target, and you should approach these essays with the full intention of submitting your finished work to the venue(s) in question at the end of the semester (if not before). Because we will spend the last two weeks of the semester workshopping the various essays written by the class, the final due date for all your work will be two weeks in advance of your scheduled workshop date. More details about these papers and the workshopping part of this assignment will be made available on a separate handout.
CourseInfo Discussion Board participation

The CourseInfo site for this class can be reached by going to:

http://scholar.acomp.usf.edu:8050/

From there, you should click on the button labeled "Login." You will be prompted for a username and password (both of which I will provide you with during our first class session). Once logged in, you will be taken to your "myUSF" portal page, which will contain links for all the CourseInfo sites associated with any courses you're taking this semester -- including this one.

The primary purpose of the Discussion Board is to provide an informal space that's always available for discussion of the issues raised by the assigned readings and our class sessions. Prompts intended to spur on the dialogue will be posted as necessary. I expect everyone to participate in these discussions on a more or less regular basis. While there's no hard and fast rule here for what constitutes "enough" participation, if the bulk of your contributions consist of one-line replies to other people's longer messages (e.g., "Well said, Chris. Thanks.") or if more than 7-10 days go by between your posts, you're probably not pulling your weight here.

Additionally, the CourseInfo site may occasionally be used to make important course-related announcements (e.g., "please add everything on the third floor of the USF library to next Thursday's reading") or to pass word on about other topics that may be of interest to the class (e.g., calls for papers, upcoming conferences, recently published articles and books, etc.). So check the site frequently.
grading policy

Those of you who've had classes with me before know that I'm not a big fan of grades at the graduate level. Presumably, your main reason for being here is that you have a genuine desire to learn something, not whether you can maintain a 4.0 GPA. Assuming you show up for class consistently, participate in our discussions (both in class and online) on a regular and meaningful basis, and complete the required writing/workshopping in satisfactory fashion, you should get an A. That being said, in cases where people are clearly slacking off, I reserve the right to go deeper into the alphabet when I fill out my final grade sheet (and I've actually done so in the past). Under such unfortunate circumstances, your grade will be calculated as follows:

Attendance/participation 20%
CourseInfo Discussion Board participation 20%
Writing/workshopping 60%
introduction

Jan 9 [to be distributed and read in class]
John Leo, "Intellectuals Get the Blame"
Bill Maxwell, "Ph.D.s Don't Have What It Takes"
Jeffrey Williams, "Spin Doctorates: From Public Intellectuals to Publicist Intellectuals"
Bruce Bawer, "Public Intellectuals: An Endangered Species?"

the role of the critic

Jan 16 Edward Said, Representations of the Intellectual
Michael Bérubé, "Bite-Size Theory: Popularizing Academic Criticism"
Michael Bérubé, "Cultural Criticism and the Politics of Selling Out"
Jan 23 Virginia Wolff, A Room of One's Own
Michael Eric Dyson, "It's Not What You Know, It's How You Show It: Black Public Intellectuals"
Gerald Graff, "Academic Writing and the Uses of Bad Publicity"

the role of the university

Jan 30 Cary Nelson and Stephen Watt, Academic Keywords (pp. vii-181)
Feb 6 Cary Nelson and Stephen Watt, Academic Keywords (pp. 182-308)
Phyllis Franklin, "The Academy and the Public"
The TABLOID Collective, "Disciplining the University: How Universities Became Prime Battlegrounds in the Reagan Revolution"
James Carey, "Political Correctness and Cultural Studies"
Feb 13 Henry A. Giroux, "Public Intellectuals and Postmodern Youth"
Lawrence Grossberg, "Bringing It All Back Home: Pedagogy and Cultural Studies"
bell hooks, Teaching to Transgress [excerpts]
Lisa Henderson, "Communication Pedagogy and Political Practice"
Elizabeth Ellsworth, "Why Doesn't This Feel Empowering?: Working Through the Repressive Myths of Critical Pedagogy"
Mark Edmundson, "On the Uses of a Liberal Education: As Lite Entertainment for Bored College Students"
Earl Shorris, "On the Uses of a Liberal Education: As a Weapon in the Hands of the Restless Poor"

speaking in (lay) tongues

Feb 20 Howard Zinn, The Future of History
Michael Bérubé, "Pop Goes the Academy: Cult Studs Fight the Power"
Michael Bérubé, "Just the Fax, Ma'am: Or, Postmodernism's Journey to Decenter"
Greg Seigworth, assorted "Fear of a Blank Planet" columns
Feb 27 Rius, Marx for Beginners
Ziauddin Sardar and Borin Van Loon, Introducing Cultural Studies

intellectual work and/as/or politics

Mar 6 Meaghan Morris, "Politics Now (Anxieties of a Petty-Bourgeois Intellectual)"
Andrew Ross, "No Respect: An Introduction"
Cornel West, "The Dilemma of the Black Intellectual"
Cornel West, "The Postmodern Crisis of the Black Intellectuals"
bell hooks, "Dialectally Down With the Critical Program"
Mar 13 SPRING BREAK -- NO CLASS
Mar 20 [tentative guest: Larry Grossberg]
Raymond Williams, "The Future of Cultural Studies"
Stuart Hall, "Cultural Studies and Its Theoretical Legacies"
Lawrence Grossberg, "Cultural Studies: What's in a Name (One More Time)"
Meaghan Morris, "A Question of Cultural Studies"
Herman Gray, "Is Cultural Studies Inflated?: The Cultural Economy of Cultural Studies in the United States"
Gilbert B. Rodman, "Subject to Debate: (Mis)Reading Cultural Studies"

everybody's a critic

Mar 27 Constance Penley, NASA/TREK: Popular Science and Sex in America
Constance Penley, "From NASA to The 700 Club (With a Detour Through Hollywood): Cultural Studies in the Public Sphere"
Apr 3 Lawrence Grossberg, "Teaching the Popular"
Simon Frith, "The Good, the Bad, and the Indifferent: Defending Popular Culture From the Populists"
Michael Bérubé, "Entertaining Cultural Criticism"
Henry A. Giroux, "Talking Heads and Radio Pedagogy: Microphone Politics and the New Public Intellectuals"
Susan McClary, "Living to Tell: Madonna's Resurrection of the Fleshly"
Christopher Anderson, "Reflections on Magnum, P.I."
Marlon T. Riggs, "Unleash the Queen"
Apr 10 assorted essays (specific titles t.b.d.) from:
Lisa Jones
Lewis Lapham
Michael Moore
Katha Pollitt
Joe Wood

talking the talk and walking the walk

Apr 17 essays by workshop group #1
Apr 24 essays by workshop group #2