Framing the Contemporary (Core module for MA in Culture & Thought since 1945) Module Programme Autumn 2020 Module & MA Convenor: Dr JT Welsch (English)

‘Ain’t Gonna Eat My Mind’, (2011) Rory McCartney

Framing the Contemporary Autumn 2020 AT A GLANCE Please check your individual timetables for timings of each week’s session. (N.B. The Week 6 session is an optional exhibition trip, with details to be confirmed shortly.) Module Structure

WEEK TUTOR DEPARTMENT TOPIC 2 JT Welsch English On Culture & the Contemporary

3 JT Welsch

English The Creative Industries

4 Kristyn Gorton English Television, Affect and Emotion

5 Emma Bryning Archaeology Modern Graffiti

6 Ana Bilbao Yarto History of Art Exhibition Trip TBC

7 Ana Bilbao Yarto History of Art

TBC

8 JT Welsch

English Digital Culture

9 Mark Roodhouse

History Stop & Search: Taking the Long View

10 Catherine Laws

Music Performance and Subjectivity

Tutors may email with additional instructions before their class, so look out for them in your inbox. Required Reading All required readings are listed below. Articles and book chapters are available digitally via the VLE Resource List for the module. The indication [VLE] means that to view a copy of this text, you need to go to the VLE, select ‘Framing the Contemporary’ and choose ‘Reading Lists’ in the left-hand menu. Additional reading suggestions are provided to help you explore the topics covered by the module and to begin research for assessed essays. Preparatory Questions Each tutor has provided a number of preparatory questions which will point you towards the issues, complexities, and problems raised by the class and readings. Please think about these as part of your seminar preparation. Assessment One Assessed Essay of 4500 words MAXIMUM (including references and notes, but excluding bibliography). This will be submitted electronically via the VLE by 4pm Monday of Week 2 of the Spring Term. Further details about electronic submission will be provided during term and at the last seminar in week 10 by the module convenor, JT Welsch.

Framing the Contemporary Week 2 Tutor: Dr JT Welsch Tutor’s Department: English and Related Literature Email: jt.welsch@york.ac.uk Seminar Title: On Culture and the Contemporary Seminar Blurb: This first session will introduce the module, its structure, foundational concerns and intellectual trajectory. It will establish a set of key questions that you will be able to refer to and explore as the module proceeds. You are asked to come ready to discuss your views of the contemporary world – its aesthetic, cultural, political and socio-economic dynamics – and how your previous studies/work/experiences have informed your view/s of contemporary culture. The set readings for this seminar stretch from the postwar period, through cultural materialism and postmodernism into the present, and will lead us to examine different ways of theorizing contemporary culture. You are also encouraged to consult items on the preliminary readings list that appeal to you and your academic interests. Key Preparatory Questions: Q. What do we understand culture to be and how do (or can) its key features inform/structure our engagement with the world? Q. Are categories of high and low culture (or art) static/useful/determining/unavoidable? Q. What continuities and differences do we see in writings on culture from the postwar period through to the contemporary moment? Required Reading: (read in this order) Adorno, Theodor. The Culture Industry: Selected Essays on Mass Culture. London: Routledge Classics, 2001 [1944]. Chapter 2 [VLE]. Jameson, Fredric, 'Postmodernism: Or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism', New Left Review I/146, July-August 1984. [VLE] Bourdieu, Pierre. ‘A Reasoned Utopia and Economic Fatalism’, New Left Review I/227, January-February 1998, 125-30. [VLE] Instruction for seminar: Please bring to class one object or photo that is an example of contemporary culture in a way that is important to you. You should select something around which you can craft an anecdote or a story. Additional Suggested Reading: Williams, Raymond. Keywords: A vocabulary of culture and society. London: Fontana (1986) [1976]. Entries on ‘City’, ‘Country’, ‘Culture’ and ‘Materialism’. [VLE] Bourdieu, Pierre, Distinction: a social critique of the judgement of taste, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1984. Elliott and Attridge, eds. Theory After Theory, London: Routledge, 2011. Hutcheon, Linda. A Poetics of Postmodernism, New York: Routledge, 1988.

Framing the Contemporary Week 3 Tutor: Dr JT Welsch Tutor’s Department: English and Related Literature Email: jt.welsch@york.ac.uk Seminar Title: The Creative Industries Seminar Blurb: This session will consider the twenty-first-century rise of the ‘creative industries’, both as a sector of economic and cultural activity and as a new area of study. The historical and political circumstances of new ‘creativity’ rhetoric – following New Labour’s establishment of the Department of Culture, Media, and Sport in 1997 and various cultural policy advanced since – mean that much of the discourse around the creative industries focuses on national or global economic benefits. In the context of this module, we’ll consider the effect of ‘the creative economy turn’ on actual cultural production (Brouillette, 2014). This includes important questions about the changing nature of creative labour, as well as the appropriation of ‘creative’ employment models for the wider economy. On this larger scale, we’ll consider how neoliberal fetishization of ‘creativity’ has promoted modes of creative entrepreneurialism across a range of freelance artists, small-business owners, and corporate branding. While much of the research in this emerging field has originated in the social sciences, this session will be a chance to discuss and reflect on ways that the tradition of ‘cultural studies’ in the Arts & Humanities – and the theories of Adorno and Bourdieu introduced in the first session – can adapt to these changes in cultural production. Key Preparatory Questions: Q. Is artistic autonomy possible (or desirable) in the new ‘creative industries’? Q. How has recent economic policy rhetoric affected the practice of artists and writers? Q. How does the rise of creative entrepreneurship affect our understanding of creative work’s purpose – or its status as a set of crafts, trades, or professions? Required Reading: Hewison, Robert. ‘Introduction: “A Golden Age”’, Cultural Capital: The Rise and Fall of Creative Britain. London: Verso, 2015, pp. 1-8. [scan available on VLE Week 3 page] Mould, Oli. ‘Introduction: What is Creativity?’, Against Creativity. London: Verso, 2018, pp. 1-16. [scan available on VLE Week 3 page] McRobbie, Angela. ‘Unpacking the Politics of Creative Labour’, Be Creative: Making a Living in the New Culture Industries. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2016, pp. 33-59. [scan available on VLE Week 3 page] Gerber, Alison. ‘The Work of Art’, The Work of Art: Value in Creative Careers. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2017, pp. 11-30. [library ebook and scan available on VLE Week 3 page]] Suggested Further Reading: Additional Suggested Reading: anks, Mark. Creative Justice: Cultural Industries, Work and Inequality. London: Rowman & Littlefield, 2017.

(eds.) Banks, Mark, Rosalind Gill and Stephan Taylor. Theorizing Cultural Work: Labour, continuity and change in the cultural and creative industries. London: Routledge, 2013. Beech, Dave. Art & Value: Art’s Economic Exceptionalism in Classical, Neoclassical, and Marxist Economics. Boston: Brill, 2015. Bernes, Jasper. The Work of Art in the Age of Deindustrialization. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2017. Brouillette, Sarah. Literature and the Creative Economy. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2014. Brown, Nicholas. ‘The Work of Art in the Age of its Real Subsumption’, Nonsite.org (13 March 2012). Florida, Richard. The Rise of the Creative Class: Revisited. New York: Basic Books, 2012. Saha, Anamik. Race and the Cultural Industries. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2018. Hesmondhalgh, David. The Cultural Industries. London: SAGE, 2018 [4th Edition]. Welsch, JT. The Selling and Self-Regulation of Contemporary Poetry. New York: Anthem, 2020.

Framing the Contemporary Week 4 Tutor: Dr Kristyn Gorton Tutor’s Department: Theatre, Film and Television Email: kristyn.gorton@york.ac.uk Seminar Title: Television, Affect & Emotion Seminar Blurb: Recent sociological literature on the concept of individualism illustrates the demand on the individual to be self-reflexive and to self-monitor and yet to be aware of the risks posed by modern society. This culture of individualism has given way to what Elliott and Lemert refer to as ‘privatised worlds’. Elliott and Lemert chart a shift from a politicized culture to a privatised culture in order to consider the impact of ‘reflexive individualism’ and the way in which it places emphasis on ‘choosing, changing and transforming’ (2006: 97). The shift that they identify has also been the subject of work by Lauren Berlant, who argues that we increasingly live in ‘an intimate public sphere’ (2000). We can see the influence of the rise of individualisation on television, particularly in the popularity of ‘reality’ and lifestyle television. Rachel Moseley identifies the ‘makeover takeover’ that has affected British television and argues that: ‘British makeover shows exploit television’s potential for intimacy, familiarity, ordinariness and the radical destabilization of the division between public and private’ (2000: 313). Beverley Skeggs (2004), Helen Wood and Beverley Skeggs (2004) and Charlotte Brunsdon (2004) have all discussed the way in which lifestyle and reality television ‘lifestyle Britain’. This session will explore the construction of emotion and affect in contemporary television in order to consider the neoliberal concept of transformation in television drama and reality tv formats (specifically for this seminar, HBO’s Enlightened and Showtime’s Nurse Jackie). Key Preparatory Questions: Q. What formal qualities in television (for example, music, camera angle, framing devices) help to construct emotion? Q. Consider the relationship between self-help, care and neoliberalism in American culture. Required Reading: Gorton, Kristyn, ‘Walking the Line Between Saint and Sinner: Care and Nurse Jackie,’ Critical Studies in Television, Vol. 11, Issue 2 (2016) [VLE] Instruction for seminar: Please bring to class a clip or youtube link from a television series that you think expresses/captures emotion from a television drama series or a reality television format. Additional Suggested Reading: Gorton, Kristyn (2009) Media Audiences: Television, Meaning and Emotion, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press [ebook available through library catalogue] Berlant, Lawren (1997), The Queen of America Goes to Washington City: Essays on Sex and Citizenship, Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Moseley, Rachel (2000), ‘Makeover takeover on British television’, Screen, 41(3): 299–314.

Piper, Helen (2004), ‘Reality TV, Wife Swap and the drama of banality,’ Screen, 45(4): 273–86, Shattuc, Jane (1994), ‘Having a good cry over The Colour Purple: the problem of affect and imperialism in feminist theory’, in J. Bratton, C. Gledhill and J. Cook (eds), Melodrama: Stage Picture Screen, London: British Film Institute, pp. 147–56, Wood, Helen and Beverley Skeggs (2004), ‘Notes on ethical scenarios of self on British reality TV’, Feminist Media Studies, 4(2): 205–7, Robert Solomon’s In Defense of Sentimentality (2004) and The Passions: Emotion and the Meaning of Life (1993), Jack Katz’s How Emotions Work (1999), Martha Nussbaum’s Upheavals of Thought (2001), Jenefer Robinson’s Deeper Than Reason (2005), David Eng and David Kazanjian’s On Loss (2003), Brian Massumi’s Parables for the Virtual: Movement, Affect, Sensation (2002), Rei Terada’s Feeling in Theory: Emotion after the “Death of the Subject” (2001), Anthony Elliott and Charles Lemert’s The New Individualism: The Emotional Costs of Globalisation (2006), Nelson, Robin (1997), TV Drama in Transition: Forms, Values and Cultural Change, Basingstoke: Macmillan, now Palgrave Macmillan.

Framing the Contemporary Week 5 Tutor: Emma Bryning Tutor’s Department: Archeology Email: evb520@york.ac.uk Seminar Title: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Modern Graffiti Seminar Blurb: Graffiti is often understood as a modern practice and is commonly associated with vandalism, anti-social behaviour and criminality. Although usually perceived as a modern phenomenon, graffiti can also be understood as an act of mark-making and a continuation of practices which can be traced back to pre-history and ancient history, and found across the world. Consequently, graffiti can be understood as both a continuation of historic practices and, also, as a subcultural and countercultural practice rooted in modernity. Our understanding of modern graffiti history is commonly defined by the ‘birth’ of the modern graffiti movement in Philadelphia in the 1960s; the graffitied subway cars in New York City of the 1970s; the hip-hop movement of the 1980s and 1990s, and the burgeoning global artistic movement of street art in the early-2000s. However, its subcultural roots can also be traced back to periods such as the freight monikers of the late-nineteenth century and the solider graffiti of the First and Second World Wars. As a result of both its complex history and definition, the study of graffiti intersects with a wide variety of disciplines: it can be viewed as a form of visual communication, an expressive art form, an illegal practice, a global artistic movement, an historic record and a tool to understand the distinction between private, public and social spaces. In this seminar, we will examine the different disciplinary approaches through which modern graffiti is understood and examined (including film analysis, archaeology and heritage studies, art history, gender studies and criminology) in order to gain a more interdisciplinary understanding of graffiti as an act of modern mark-making. Key Preparatory Questions: Q. Before looking at the required readings: how do you, personally, define graffiti and what do you think when you see graffiti around you? Do the aesthetics and placement of graffiti influence your reactions to such marks? Q. Based on a film or television show (of your choice) which features graffiti: how is graffiti presented and what is the film-maker trying to show to the viewer through its use? Q. How do the readings and different disciplinary perspectives of graffiti influence your understanding of the practice and the physical marks themselves, if at all? Required Reading/Viewing: One film or television show/episode of your choice which is either about or features graffiti to discuss. Please feel free to choose a a film from the additional suggested viewing list (below) or to choose a different example, whichever you prefer. Ross, J. I. (2015) ‘Graffiti goes to the movies: American fictional films featuring graffiti artists/writers and themes’, Contemporary Justice Review: Issues in Criminal, Social, and Restorative Justice, 18(3), pp. 366–383. [VLE]

Merrill, S. (2015) ‘Keeping it real? Subcultural graffiti, street art, heritage and authenticity’, International Journal of Heritage Studies. [VLE] TEDxTalks. 2012. “Feminism on the wall: Jessica Pabón at TEDxWomen 2012.” YouTube. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z_4JOexUj0M) Ralph, J. (2014) ‘Graffiti Archaeology’, in Encyclopedia of Global Archaeology. doi: 10.1007/978-1-4419-0465-2_551. [VLE] Wells, Maia Morgan , "Graffiti, street art, and the evolution of the art market" , in Routledge Handbook of Graffiti and Street Art, ed. Jeffrey Ian Ross (Abingdon: Routledge, 08 Mar 2016 ). [VLE] Additional Suggested Viewing: Please feel free to choose one of the following documentaries as the required film or television show/episode of your choice to discuss. However, you can also choose your own example if you prefer. Style Wars., (1983). Directed by Tony Silver [Film]. New York, Public Art Films. Bomb It., (2007). Directed by Jon Reiss [Film]. USA, Antidote Films. Faces Places., (2017). Directed by Agnès Varda and JR [Film]. Le Pacte. A Brief History of Graffiti., (2015). Written by Richard Clay [60-minute documentary for BBC4]. UK, BBC 4. Exit Through the Gift Shop., (2010). Directed by Banksy [Film]. UK, Revolver Entertainment. Dirty Hands - The Art and Crimes of David Choe., (2008). Directed by Harry Kim [Film]. USA, Asian Crush and Digital Rights Media. Infamy: A Graffiti Film., (2005). Directed by Doug Pray [Film]. USA, Image Entertainment. Piece by Piece: San Francisco Graffiti Documented., (2005). Directed by Nic Hill [Film]. IndieFlix. This is Berlin Not New York., (2008). Directed by Ethan H. Minsker [Film]. Jean-Michel Basquiat: The Radiant Child., (2010). Directed by Tamra Davis [Film]. USA, Arthouse Films. Martha: A Picture Story., (2019). Directed by Selina Miles [Film]. Australia, Umbrella Entertainment. Girl Power., (2016). Directed by Sany and Jan Zajiícek [Film]. Czech Republic, A Company Czech. Additional Suggested Reading: Bengtsen, P. (2017) ‘The myth of the “street artist”: A brief note on terminology’, Street Art and Urban Creativity. Graves-Brown, P. and Schofield, J. 2011. The filth and the fury: 6 Denmark Street (London) and the Sex Pistols. Antiquity 85 (330), 1385-1401. http://antiquity.ac.uk/ant/085/ant0851385.htm Macdonald, N. (2016) ‘Something for the boys? Exploring the gender dynamics of the graffiti subculture’, Routledge handbook of graffiti and street art. Mitman, T. (2018) ‘Chapter 1: Introduction and History’, The Art of Defiance: Graffiti, Politics and the Reimagined City of Philadelphia. Neef, S. (2007) ‘Killing kool: The graffiti museum’, Art History.

Pough, G. D. (2004) ‘Hip-Hop is More Than Just Music to Me: The Potential For a Movement in the Culture’, in Check It While I Wreck It : Black Womanhood, Hip-Hop Culture, and the Public Sphere, (Lebanon: University Press of New England) Radwan, A. H. (2013) ‘Urban street art’, pp. 1–33. Schofield, J 2010, Theo loves Doris: wild-signs in landscape and heritage context. in J Oliver & T Neal (eds), Wild signs: inscribing society . Archaeopress, Oxford, pp. 71-79. White, A. (2018) ‘From Primitive to Integral: The Evolution of Graffiti Art’, Journal of Conscious Evolution, 11(11) Young, A. (2012) ‘Criminal images: The affective judgment of graffiti and street art’, Crime, Media, Culture.

Framing the Contemporary Week 6 Tutor: Dr Ana Bilbao Yarto Tutors’ Department: History of Art Email: ana.bilbao@york.ac.uk For our Week 6 (Reading Week) session, we are hoping to offer an optional trip to visit a museum exhibition, which will link with themes from the module. Given the changing situation due to Covid-19 restrictions, we’ll be confirming details of this trip shortly. The Centre for Modern Studies will cover all travel costs and entrance fees.

Framing the Contemporary Week 7 Tutor: Dr Ana Bilbao Yarto Tutors’ Department: History of Art Email: ana.bilbao@york.ac.uk Seminar Title: TBC Details for this session will be confirmed shortly, in relation to the exhibition visit.

Framing the Contemporary Week 8 Tutor: Dr JT Welsch Tutor’s Department: English and Related Literature Email: jt.welsch@york.ac.uk Seminar Title: Digital Culture Seminar Blurb: It goes without saying that cultural production and consumption has been utterly transformed by the spread of the internet. The broad aim of this session is to historicise these developments and the new critical approaches they require. In the 30 years since the invention of the World Wide Web and the past decade’s rise of mobile internet use via smartphones, perceptions of online culture have swung from the utopian rhetoric of 90s Silicon Valley start-ups evoking Marshall McLuhan’s ‘global village’ (1962) to the dystopian realities of social media’s election meddling, privacy and mental health concerns, and the accommodation of abusive, extremist views. For humanities scholars, the encroachment of networked technology into every aspect of life and work – through participatory media, fandoms, meme culture, online political movements, and other overlapping forms – poses practical challenges for studying these dynamic and materially complex phenomena, not least because any academic study of digital culture must contend with the web’s own self-critical discourses. In this seminar, we’ll consider the issues involved in working with ‘texts’ that might change or become inaccessible at any moment, and whose authorship is often communal. To that end, we’ll also consider historical continuities with the community networks and commercial structures that have always supported cultural production. Key Preparatory Questions Key Preparatory Questions: Q. What is the cultural status of the internet as a site for creative work or commentary? Q. Is the internet primarily a new medium for the transmission of more or less analogous artefacts, or has it engendered a fundamental shift in culture? Q. What are the practical challenges for critics working with digital artefacts? Required Reading: Marwick, Alice Emily. ‘A cultural history of Web 2.0’, Status Update: Celebrity, Publicity, and Branding in the Social Media Age. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2013, pp. 21-72. [VLE] Gronlund, Melissa. ‘Introduction: Beyond the visible image’, Contemporary Art and Digital Culture. London: Routledge, 2016. [VLE] Jenkins, Henry, Sam Ford, and Joshua Green, "What Constitutes Meaningful Participation?" Chapter 4 of Spreadable Media: Creating Value and Meaning in a Networked Culture. New York: New York University Press, 2013, pp. 153-194. [VLE] Additional Suggested Reading: Allen-Robertson, James. Digital Culture Industry: A History of Digital Distribution. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013.

De Kosnik, Abigail. Rogue Archives: Digital Cultural Memory and Media Fandom (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2016). Delwiche, Aaron. The Participatory Cultures Handbook. London: Routledge, 2012. Duffet, Mark. Understanding Fandom: An Introduction to the Study of Media Fan Cultures. London: Bloomsbury, 2013. Felgenhauer, Tilo and Karsten Gäbler (eds.) Geographies of Digital Culture. London: Routledge, 2018. Gerrard, Ysabel. ‘“It’s a secret thing”: Digital disembedding through online teen drama fandom’, First Monday, 22:8 (7 August 2017). Gilliland, Elizabeth. ‘Racebending Fandoms and Digital Futurism’, Transformative Works and Cultures, no. 20 (2016). Jenkins, Henry, Mizuko Ito, and danah boyd (eds.) Participatory Culture in a Networked Era. London: Polity, 2014. Lister, Martin. The Photographic Image in Digital Culture. London: Routledge, 2013. O’Sullivan, James. Towards a Digital Poetics. Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2019. Thumim, Nancy. Self-Representation and Digital Culture. Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2015.

Framing the Contemporary Week 9 Tutor: Dr Mark Roodhouse Tutor’s Department: History Email: mark.roodhouse@york.ac.uk Seminar Title: Stop and Search: Taking the Long View Seminar Blurb: The use and abuse of ‘Stop and Search’ powers by police is central to contemporary discussion of the UK criminal justice system as institutionally racist. The Home Office, UK College of Policing and the Association of Chief Police Officers consider it a vital tool in their fight against crime. Their critics believe the discretionary use of this police power at street level has racist effects and stokes tension between black and minority ethnic groups and the police. It reinforces a belief that these groups are over-policed and under-protected. In response, the law-and-order bureaucracy says the powers are vital in the fight against violent crime that afflicts these communities disproportionately. This debate harks back to the mass non-white immigration after 1945. The history of these powers and their use is, however, longer and more complex. This seminar explores this history to illustrate how modern and contemporary history can inform and improve contemporary debate. Keywords racial profiling; racism; police discretion; pre-emptive policing; reasonable suspicion; minorities Key Preparatory Questions Q. Why is ‘Stop and Search’ central to the contemporary politics of policing? Consider the official publications below. Q. Is 'pre-emptive' policing an essential tool for law enforcement? Consider the genealogy of Stop and Search. Q. What makes police officers suspicious of people? Consider the history of the policing of minorities, and look for historical continuities and discontinuities. Q. Does (and should) taking ‘the long view’ inform the debate around police reform? Consider the effect of placing black Britons' experiences in the longer history of policing minorities. Required Reading: Before you start the reading, watch this short film - an exercise in activist history from Nuwave Pictures - Fighting SUS! 2018: https://vimeo.com/299801770 (Duration: 00:44:18). For the project and research underpinning the film, see: https://fightingsus.on-the-record.org.uk/read/. For a satirical take on Sus from 1980, watch the ‘Constable Savage’ sketch from Not the Nine O’Clock News featuring Rowan Atkinson and Griff Rhys Jones: https://youtu.be/y5dy9URkLFI (Duration: 00:03:38). The punchline rests on knowing what the SPG (Metropolitan Police Special Patrol Group) was. It was an elite unit used for public order policing with a reputation for use of excessive force and racism. It played a lead role in the run up to the Brixton Disorders of 1981 and the Miners’ Strike of 1984/5. Required:

Ministry of Justice. Stop and Search. London: Ministry of Justice, 19 Mar 2020. https://www.ethnicity-facts-figures.service.gov.uk/crime-justice-and-the-law/policing/stop-and-search/latest [latest statistics]

UK College of Policing. “Stop and Search.” https://www.app.college.police.uk/app-content/stop-and-search/ [non-statutory police guidance]

UK Government. “Police Powers to Stop and Search: Your Rights.” https://www.gov.uk/police-powers-to-stop-and-search-your-rights [government advice to citizens]

Brown, Jennifer. “Police Powers: Stop and Search.” Commons Research Briefing Paper SN3878. London: House of Commons Library, 2020. https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/sn03878/ [House of Commons Briefing Paper]

De Koster, Margo, and Herbert Reinke. “Policing Minorities.” In: The Oxford Handbook of Crime and Criminal Justice, ed. Paul Knepper and Anja Johansen, 268-284. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015. [VLE]

Lawrence, Paul. “The Vagrancy Act (1824) and the Persistence of Pre-emptive Policing in England since 1750.” British Journal of Criminology 57 no. 3 (2017): 513-531. [VLE]

Miller, Joel. “Stop and Search in England: A Reformed Tactic or Business as Usual?” British Journal of Criminology 50 no. 5 (2010): 954-974. [VLE]

Additional Suggested Reading:

Brain, Timothy. Policing in England and Wales since 1974: A Turbulent Journey. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010.

Hall, Stuart. Policing the Crisis: Mugging, the State, and Law and Order. London: Macmillan, 1978.

Kandiah, Michael. “Contemporary History.” Making History: The Changing Face of the Profession in Britain. London: Institute for Historical Research, 2008. https://archives.history.ac.uk/makinghistory/resources/articles/contemporary_history.html

Kurowska, Rosa, ed. Fighting SUS! The History They Want Us to Forget. London: On The Record, 2018.

Miller, Jonah. “The Touch of the State: Stop and Search in England, c.1660–1750.” History Workshop Journal 87 (2019): 52-71. [Also, his accompanying blog post that links his work to contemporary concerns here: https://www.historyworkshop.org.uk/stop-and-search-and-the-politics-of-policing/]

Tosh, John. “Why History Matters.” Policy Papers. London: History & Policy, 2008. http://www.historyandpolicy.org/policy-papers/papers/why-history-matters

Whitfield, James. Unhappy Dialogue: The Metropolitan Police and Black Londoners in Post-War Britain. London: Willan Publishing, 2004. [Also, his History & Policy Opinion Piece here http://www.historyandpolicy.org/opinion-articles/articles/scrapping-the-police-stop-form and a piece for BBC History Magazine here https://www.historyextra.com/period/stop-and-search-what-can-we-learn-from-history/]

Framing the Contemporary Week 10 Tutor: Dr Catherine Laws Tutor’s Department: Music Email: catherine.laws@york.ac.uk Seminar Title: Performance and Subjectivity Seminar Blurb The arts of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries have pushed us relentlessly to interrogate inherited notions of the self, expression and communication: to ask ourselves, again and again, who we think we are and how we can speak meaningfully to one another. Increasing globalisation and the development of recording and photographic technologies, running alongside psychoanalytical understandings of selfhood and the impact of scientific principles of uncertainty, are often theorized as having prompted a crisis of identity, representation and authenticity. At the same time, the throwaway playfulness of pop culture and digital manipulation offer endless possibilities for self-reinvention. It is perhaps harder than ever to know who 'I' am, but 'I' am ever more self-aware. The fluid, dynamic, embodied and contingent qualities of subjectivity are experienced on an everyday basis. Within the performing arts, a ‘performance turn’ has recently allowed for a stronger focus on the production and experiencing of subjectivity in the context of live events: as ephemeral, dynamic, contingent and embodied, resisting conceptualisation into a stabilised notion of an artwork. Music offers a useful context for this topic, particularly due to its striking ability to carry subjectivity - a sense of what it is to be and feel in the world - without the specifics of character. Musical performers do not explicitly 'play' a role, except in opera and music theatre, and a performer may be concerned with emotional expression but rarely pretends to be experiencing those feelings personally. Moreover, Western classical music offers a model of distributed subjectivity, with composerly and performative agencies entwined. Nevertheless, many performers express musical intentions primarily in terms of individual self-expression and pure presence – the individual performative ‘voice’ expressing an apparently authentic ‘sonic self’, as Naomi Cumming puts it -- and similar ideas are often found in media discourse around performers. Likewise, the broader discipline of Performance Studies often pivots on questions of performance as presence and notions of authenticity. However, music is inherently collaborative, and every musician develops a sound, style or performance persona through a process of identification with and differentiation from the playing of others: peers, teachers, and idolised performers of the past and present. These positions will be explored in the seminar. We will take as a case study a recent composition, Ceci n’est pas un piano, by Annea Lockwood in a realisation by the presenter, Catherine Laws: a piece that is in part 'about' an individual performer-subject and the production of musical identity. Key Preparatory Questions Q. How is the production of subjectivity represented, mediated and interrogated in recent arts practices? Q. How is subjectivity instantiated and embodied in live performance? Q. What is the relationship between individual felt experience and networks of production in the context of performance? Or, more specifically, in musical performance how do the dynamic relationships between performer, musical materials, and the context of

performance affect the production of subjectivity? Required reading: Philip Auslander, ‘Musical Personae,’ The Drama Review 50/1 (2006), pp. 100-119. [VLE] Judith Butler, ‘Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory,’ in Sue-Ellen Case (ed.), Performing Feminisms: Feminist Critical Theory and Theatre (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1990), pp. 270-282. [VLE] Naomi Cumming, The Sonic Self (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2000). Please read sections 1 (‘Musical Initiations’) and 2 (‘Subjects and Subjectivity’) of the Introduction: pp.1-13 [VLE] Additional Suggested Reading Nicholas Cook, ‘Between Process and Product: Music and/as Performance,’ Music Theory Online 7:2 (2001). Erving Goffman, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (New York: Doubleday, 1956). Annahid Kassabian, Ubiquitous Listening: Affect, Attention and Distributed Listening. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2013). Especially the Introduction Peggy Phelan, Unmarked: The Politics of Performance London: Routeldge, 1993. Especially ch. 7. Christopher Small, Musicking: The Meanings of Performing and Listening (Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press, 1998). Richard Taruskin, Text and Act (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996). Pages 1-66.

BEFORE FINISHING THE MODULE, DISCUSS YOUR ASSSESSED ESSAY IN AN OFFICE HOUR WITH THE TUTOR

WHOSE CLASS WAS CLOSEST TO YOUR INTERESTS.

JT WELSCH will brief all students on essay requirements over the term and be on hand to answer any questions about

assessment.

GOOD LUCK!