Topical Resource Collections

From Postmodernism explained through hipster beards to Harry Potter fan activism, Karl Marx in Rolling Stone and the Guardian on trolling ... Below you’ll find links to websites, videos, and articles on some of the most important concepts and people in Cultural Studies. 

The links are organized by topic to make it easy for you to navigate to the resources that you need. The topic categories are:

2. FOUNDERS OF CULTURAL STUDIES

Raymond Williams

www.raymondwilliams.co.uk  (The Raymond Williams Society)

www.raymondwilliamsfoundation.org.uk  (The Raymond Williams Foundation – a more specific focus on Williams and adult education but also has more general information)

YouTube has some very good resources including:

Documentary on The Country and the City: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_XCjBTloxcA

An introduction to Brecht’s The Caucasian Chalk Circle: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tDujizxwa1E

A conversation with Derrida:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CeNZWlsDhr4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W_Mtznrz3F0

Richard Hoggart

Richard Hoggart: Cultural Critic and Educationalist, 24 September 1918–10 April 2014 (a detailed obituary):

‪http://www.opendemocracy.net/ourkingdom/michael-bailey/richard-hoggart-cultural-critic-and-educationalist-24-september-1918-10-ap  

Richard Hoggart’s Legacy and the New Uses of Literacy: http://www.rowmaninternational.com/news/richard-hoggarts-legacy-and-the-new-uses-of-literacy

Richard Hoggart’s Desert Island Discs:

www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0093p7j 

E. P. Thompson

www.britannica.com/biography/E-P-Thompson

‪understandingsociety.blogspot.com/2008/02/what-was-e-p-thompson-up-to.html

YouTube: E.P. Thompson’s The Making of the English Working Class – a seminar from Vanderbilt University: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_6UJUcAXdHY

YouTube: E.P. Thompson at 1977 SSRC Seminar on Models of Social Change:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i3Rk-h9Ugd4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cD3Gsk8M94I

YouTube: Great Confrontations at the Oxford Union: Caspar Weinberger vs E.P. Thompson:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wMdTJJa3kVo

 

3. STRUCTURALISM, POSTSTRUCTURALISM AND SEMIOTICS

www.philosophybasics.com/movements_structuralism.html

http://www.buzzfeed.com/chrisr414d8a71a/post-structuralism-explained-with-hipster-beards-xwfz

YouTube: Yale courses – lots of lectures and material, for example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VsMfaIOsT3M

DVD: Gilles Deleuze from A to Z

www.schmoop.com

The Partially Examined Life (A Philosophy Podcast and Philosophy Blog): Episode 51: Semiotics and Structuralism

https://www.partiallyexaminedlife.com/2012/02/24/episode-51-semiotics-and-structuralism-saussure-et-al/

London Review of Books: www.lrb.co.uk/v31/n22/michael-wood/presence-of-mind

YouTube: An Introduction to Roland Barthes’s Mythologies – A Macat Literature Analysis

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6GCzq8we-bI

YouTube: search for Roland Barthes’ Myth Today explained through literature

YouTube: What is semiotics? A short film by Creative Semiotics:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mA_LM-WMC1A

Derrida and meaning

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Zw04hraCVo

Danny Chandler’s semiotics site:

http://visual-memory.co.uk/daniel/Documents/S4B/

 

4. FREUD AND PSYCHOANALYSIS

www.psychoanalysis.org.uk

www.simplypsychology.org/psychoanalysis

www.ipa.org.uk (International Psychoanalytical Association)

www.apsa.org (American Psychoanalytical Association)

www.freudfile.org

There are several excellent Radio 4 In Our Time discussions of different aspects of Psychoanalysis: 

www.bbc.co.uk  

Psychoanalysis and Democracy

www.bbc.co.uk › Factual › History › In Our Time

Psychoanalysis and its Legacy

www.bbc.co.uk › Factual › History › In Our Time

Psychoanalysis and Literature

www.bbc.co.uk › Factual › History › In Our Time

For an engaging deployment of psychoanalysis to analyse cinema and ideology see The Pervert’s Guide to Cinema (dir. Sophie Fiennes, 2006) and The Pervert’s Guide to Ideology (dir. Sophie Fiennes, 2012) both presented by Slavoj Žižek. 

YouTube: some good introductions and a creative series of talks from Emory University – Emory Looks at Hollywood that does psychoanalyses of e.g. Bruce Wayne and Clark Kent:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL9F42317B29475C05

 

5. MICHEL FOUCAULT AND DISCOURSE

www.michel-foucault.com

www.theory.org.uk

www.foucault.info

BBC Radio 4 Thinking Allowed on Michel Foucault:

www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b038hg73

The Partially Examined Life (A Philosophy Podcast and Philosophy Blog): Episode 49 Foucault on Power and Punishment

https://www.partiallyexaminedlife.com/2012/01/11/episode-49-foucault-on-power-and-punishment/

YouTube: any useful lectures on Foucault and Discourse:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BBJTeNTZtGU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uNcQA3MSdIE

 

6. BIRMINGHAM CENTRE FOR CONTEMPORARY CULTURAL STUDIES (CCCS) AND SOME KEY ‘GRADUATES’

http://www.birmingham.ac.uk/cccs

This is a project website with much useful material about CCCS including links to papers, interviews and so on.

Stuart Hall

http://spartacus-educational.com/HIShallS.htm for a summary of Stuart Hall

www.radicalphilosophy.com/obituary/stuart-hall-1932-2014 where a number of writers discuss different aspects of Hall’s work

The Stuart Hall Project DVD from the BFI. (A documentary by John Akomfrah).

YouTube: there are many useful clips and films featuring Hall.

www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0094b6r for Stuart Hall’s Desert Island Discs

 

Angela McRobbie

www.gold.ac.uk/media-communications/staff/mcrobbie/    

https://www.twitter.com/angelamcrobbie

YouTube: many resources including recent lectures and so on.

Professor Angela McRobbie, Unpacking the Politics of the Creative Economy: Hipsters as the Flaneurs of Neoliberal Times, www.a-r-c.ca

Paul Gilroy

www.theguardian.com/profile/paul-gilroy  on Twelve Years a Slave

Stories of Black Britain in Pictures, an interview. http://socialistreview.org.uk/318/stories-black-britain-pictures

YouTube: many useful clips.

 

7. MARX AND MARXISM

Karl Marx

www.britannica.com/biography/Karl-Marx

www.nybooks.com/articles/2013/05/09/real-karl-marx

‪http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/marx-was-right-five-surprising-ways-karl-marx-predicted-2014-20140130

YouTube: political theory – Karl Marx

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fSQgCy_iIcc

YouTube: What is Marxism? (Karl Marx and Super Mario Bros)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vz3eOb6Yl1s

 

Antonio Gramsci, Hegemony, Ideology

www.theory.org.uk/ on Gramsci

www.powercube.net/other-forms-of-power/gramsci-and-hegemony

www.internationalgramscisociety.org The International Gramsci Society site with lots of resources.

YouTube: Gramsci: Everything that Concerns People

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=51DhvS9abyI

YouTube: Hegemony 10 Minute Philosophy

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=js8E6C3ZnJ0

YouTube: Cultural Hegemony: The Undoing Project

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6cHThwyA8RE

 

The Pervert’s Guide to Ideology (dir. Sophie Fiennes, 2012) presented by Slavoj Žižek. 

 

8. THE FRANKFURT SCHOOL AND WALTER BENJAMIN

bbc.co.uk: In Our Time Discussion of the Frankfurt School

www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00pr54s

The Frankfurt School of Critical Theory: Open Yale Courses

oyc.yale.edu/English/engl-300/lecture-12

The Naysayers

www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/09/15/naysayers     

 

9. EDWARD SAID AND ORIENTALISM

Edward Said explains Orientalism in five minutes:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=KkEbi_rojII

Miles Ogborn (author of Introducing Cultural Studies Chapter 6) takes a little longer:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=wiDTpr6fSOg

 

10. FEMINISM (SUBORDINATION OF WOMEN AND PATRIARCHY)

YouTube: many resources on patriarchy

Judith Butler on gender and performativity

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=fndkPPJBi1U

This BBC article examines why sexism persists in the video games industry: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-27824701

A really useful resource here is the Feminist Frequency website and YouTube channel, which features a number of videos on the representation of women in the media, and in particular video games: https://www.youtube.com/user/feministfrequency

Another useful video from the Feminist Frequency series focuses on the ‘Bechdel Test’: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bLF6sAAMb4s

http://jezebel.com/

The Vagenda Magazine

http://vagendamagazine.com/about/

Everything you wanted to know about feminism but were too afraid to ask at

https://bitchmedia.org/article/everything-about-feminism-you-wanted-to-know-but-were-afraid-to-ask   

Bitch Media is a nonprofit, independent, feminist media organization dedicated to providing and encouraging an engaged, thoughtful feminist response to mainstream media and popular culture, more articles can be accessed at https://bitchmedia.org/

The Everyday Sexism Project, catalogues instances of sexism experienced on a day to day basis.

http://everydaysexism.com/

Are we witnessing a shift from third-to fourth-wave feminism, Ealasaid Munro examines the history of feminism and looks at what contemporary developments might mean for feminist politics. https://www.psa.ac.uk/insight-plus/feminism-fourth-wave

 

11. MAX WEBER (BUREAUCRACY AND PROTESTANT ETHIC)

BBC In Our Time radio discussion of Max Weber’s The Protestant Ethic

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03yqj31

The School of Life on Max Weber’s The Protestant Ethic https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ICppFQ6Tabw

thephilosophersmail.com/.../the-great-philosophers-9-max-weber/

SocioSite: Max Weber (1864–1920), for many resources on Weber: www.sociosite.net/topics/weber.php

Stephen Fry narrates a brief animated introduction to Max Weber’s The Protestant Ethic https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j-0sIHDzsU4

 

12. NEW AND DIGITAL MEDIA

Henry Jenkins

Material on YouTube includes:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ibJaqXVaOaI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1gPm-c1wRsQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1nrWcFPjnCc

HenryJenkins.org is his website.

Power and control within the media: http://www.channel4learning.com/sites/lifestuff/content/whorules/media/whorules_m_oac.html

How the news distorts our worldview

In this TED talk Alisa Miller looks at the proliferation of American news stories in American newspapers (largely ignoring international stories): https://www.ted.com/talks/alisa_miller_shares_the_news_about_the_news?language=en#t-185299

Can we trust the media?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5RwhEHzuulA&list=PLghL9V9QTN0gCZia2u-YnLxhetxnC_ONF&index=33

Media effects and violence

The American Sociological Association has a useful media violence project here: http://www.asanet.org/introtosociology/StudentResources/Exploring%20Data%20Resources/DataMediaViolence106.html

http://sociologytwynham.com/2013/10/03/media-effects-on-audiences/

Performative society and selfies:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QMxm-aXAwc4&index=15&list=PLghL9V9QTN0gCZia2u-YnLxhetxnC_ONF

The impact of ‘new media’:

http://www.podology.org.uk/#/the-impact-of-new-media/4563962604

http://www.everydaysociologyblog.com/2009/08/new-media-revolution.html

Jesse Schell and his address to the 2010 DICE:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nG_PbHVW5cQ

Convergence of media ownership:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ona0jYWa6s

Vlogging

Perhaps the most famous young vlogger (‘video blogger’) who includes some haul videos in her YouTube channel is Zoella. Zoella (aka Zoe Suggs) has over 8 million subscribers to her YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/zoella280390?gl=GB&hl=en-GB. Here is an example of one of her haul videos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zPdEzRb8Gzs.

A Zoella article in Vogue: http://www.vogue.co.uk/news/2014/11/06/zoella-full-interview-vogue-november-2014-issue provides some further reading on Zoe Suggs.

The London Symphony Orchestra and Social Media Disconnection

Free/open access article on this study:

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/1369118X.2013.877953

Trolling

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/aug/29/anita-sarkeesian-gamergate-interview-jessica-valenti

Is technology bad?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l_JOM-sVbKI&list=PLghL9V9QTN0gCZia2u-YnLxhetxnC_ONF&index=32

 

13. PIERRE BOURDIEU (DISTINCTION, CULTURAL CAPITAL, HABITUS)

For a very short animated introduction to Bourdieu see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=87BPL62wyyU

YouTube: Pierre Bourdieu material includes:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=flz6shD3g2s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7FXPnkwSCyE

Sarah-Thornton.com, website of the writer and sociologist.

For an obituary of Bourdieu from the Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/news/2002/jan/28/guardianobituaries.books

 

14. GEORG SIMMEL AND THE CITY

An extensive resource for Simmel’s work: http://socio.ch/sim/work.htm

An extensive resource for Simmel’s life: http://socio.ch/sim/bio.htm

 

15. POWER, RESISTANCE, TRANGRESSION

Do we need governments?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ttu8va9_x1g

Aleks Krotoski asks if the internet fuels the breakdown of social and moral boundaries.

Available as a podcast at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01n7094/episodes/downloads?page=2

YouTube: Jeffrey Alexander discusses Obama as a performer:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=61x7VZMtlu4

 

16. GLOBALISATION, COLONIALISM, POSTCOLONIALISM, SPACE, PLACE, LANDSCAPE, HYBRIDITY

John Berger (1973) Ways of Seeing, Episode 3: Representation and property. The discussion of landscape painting begins at 18.55, but it is worth watching the whole thing (you should also think how TV has changed since the 1970s!):

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Z7wi8jd7aC4

Cultural hybridity: the example of graphic novels:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=MYSEJOyGKok

‪

‪http://yaleglobal.yale.edu/‪ is an online magazine which draws on the intellectual resources of Yale University, US, and other experts from around the world to analyse and promote debate on all aspects of globalization. See, for example http://yaleglobal.yale.edu/sites/default/files/flash/Movie2.html for a media presentation which shows how the globalisation of the supply chain has dramatically lowered the price of television worldwide.

‪The Centre for Global Research at RMIT examines the current direction of global change, emphasising the implications of political, social and cultural transformation for communities and organisations: http://www.rmit.edu.au/research/research-institutes-centres-and-groups/research-centres/centre-for-global-research/

‪The BBC World Service provides a good introduction to many of the issues raised by globalisation, from the power of multinational companies to the global spread of Western pop music http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/programmes/globalisation/

 

18. MODERNITY AND POSTMODERNITY

Discusses a number of issues: faculty.georgetown.edu/irvinem/theory/pomo.html

infed.org/mobi/post-modernism-and-post-modernity/

 

19. SUBCULTURES AND FANS

Fred Perry and subcultures:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tSPloCOMExg

British youth subcultures:

Guardian article written by Wayne Hemingway, founder of Red or Dead: http://www.theguardian.com/culture/gallery/2011/jul/10/10-best-british-youth-cultures

subcultureslist.com

Neo-tribes:

http://www.businessinsider.com/afp-urban-tribes-thriving-in-modern-society-2014-10?IR=T

Rites of passage:

https://www.globalcitizen.org/en/content/13-amazing-coming-of-age-traditions-from-around-th/

http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2014/jan/03/adolescents-need-rites-passage-into-adulthood

Ethnomethodology:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h_ny2GSDcIY

Girls and bedroom culture:

http://www.media-ucn.co.uk/Seminar%20Readings/Soc%203016/Sian's%20article%20on%20bedrooms+teens.pdf

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-28677674

http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/672/1/Chapter8_Children&ChangingMediaEnvironment.pdf.

Riot grrrls: http://www.bl.uk/learning/histcitizen/21cc/counterculture/doityourself/riotgrrrl/riotgrrrl.html

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a9G45K6FgaI

Moral panics:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rFL54R9g5Io

http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/sociology/crime-and-deviance/moral-panic/

Sarah Thornton and club culture:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=65OP7w1NlHo.

Paul Willis, ‘Learning to Labour’:

http://sociologytwynham.com/2008/12/27/willis-anti-school-subculture/

The impact of hip hop:

http://content.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,55624,00.html

The Harry Potter Alliance:

http://www.thehpalliance.org/  

Nerdfighteria:

http://www.nerdfighteria.com/

Stanley Cohen and moral panic:

YouTube: much material here including:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r61ks18Bd7I

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=daZOE8Ra1NA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vMvG8sYWD0I

Author Camille Bacon-Smith’s website:

CamilleBaconSmith.Com

 

20. CONSUMPTION, FASHION AND SHOPPING

Fight Club, men and shopping:

The film Fight Club provides one illustration of how shopping and consumption are often seen as a ‘woman’s’ activity, and to engage in shopping and consumption is often seen as emasculating men.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vBot8SOLWBQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YqI6jgTUGmc&list=PLghL9V9QTN0hRWpPpyh6T7_V2Nmah6rHj&index=11

The Devil Wears Prada and the lumpy blue sweater:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yj8mHwvFxMc

Children and advertising:

https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/digital-online-advertising-children-privacy

Fred Perry and the importance of ‘Branding’

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YUxTAnI33uY

 

21. BODIES AND CULTURE

Mauss’s essay available online at:

http://www.scribd.com/doc/29890878/Marcel-Mauss-Techniques-of-the-Body#scribd

Presentation on Mauss’s essay:

https://prezi.com/veacp4084wbj/techniques-of-the-body-by-marcel-mauss/

More on Mauss:

https://bodyperformanceandarchitecturalspace.wordpress.com/2015/02/03/more-about-mauss/

http://www.anthrobase.com/Dic/eng/pers/mauss_marcel.htm

Young, throwing like a girl:

http://ndpr.nd.edu/news/24880-on-female-body-experience-throwing-like-a-girl-and-other-essays/

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/08/24/what-does-it-mean-to-throw-like-a-girl/?_r=0

Embodied actions in everyday life:

http://www.ericlaurier.co.uk/Texts/

Norbert Elias:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z63V3XfFKes (The first of series of eight short videos covering many aspects of Elias’s work.)

http://www.faculty.rsu.edu/users/f/felwell/www/Theorists/Elias/Presentation/Elias.pdf

Dieting and obesity:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S1X5FhoZFFs#t=63.670541

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qhEwXEMlSXU (interview with Professor Abigail Saguy)

The Next Black is a documentary film that explores the future of clothing:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XCsGLWrfE4Y

Gail Dines, anti-pornography activist, TedX talk:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_YpHNImNsx8

Porn Studies (an academic journal):

http://www.tandfonline.com/toc/rprn20/current

Fitness regimes:

http://www.bodybuilding.com/fun/workout.htm

‘Fit Bodies’ (Sassatelli):

http://users2.unimi.it/rsassatelli/wp-content/uploads/Sassatelli-Fitbodies.-Fitness-culture-and-the-gym.pdf

Body shapes of sports people compared:

http://www.boredpanda.com/athlete-body-types-comparison-howard-schatz/

 

22. ETHNOGRAPHY AND QUALITATIVE METHODS

Forum: Qualitative Social Research (an online journal):

http://www.qualitative-research.net/index.php/fqs

Ethnography (a Sage journal):

http://eth.sagepub.com/

Cultural Studies <=> Critical Methodologies (a Sage journal):

http://csc.sagepub.com/

Howard S. Becker’s homepage:

http://howardsbecker.com/