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Starting with founding figures like Fanon, Said, Bhabha and Spivak, you encounter philosophers like Arendt, Negri, Agamben, Derrida and Deleuze, and non-Western thinkers like Mbembe, Enwezor, Chakrabarty and others. You will gain a substantial grasp of concepts like race, diaspora, hybridity, NGOs and grassroots development, human rights and the critique of neo-liberalism on a world scale. These concepts are used to analyse practical, policy and activist issues arising from the current phase of globalisation: global civil society, role of international organisations (the IMF, WTO, UN and World Bank and the global NGOs), intellectual property rights, social capital, financialisation, global governance and democracy. You deal with issues like terrorism, microfinance and environmental justice.
Supervised and assessed practical placement is integral to the programme. This may be with NGOs in India or Africa, arts organizations in China, or with London-based global NGOs or diasporic community, arts or publishing organizations. You will be taught by leading theorists and visiting lecturers drawn from a wide circle of activists, artists, film-makers, lawyers, journalists and policy-makers. It is ideal for those pursuing careers in policy research, NGOs, advocacy, charities, international organisations, cultural activism, global media, art and curating, as well as for further academic work leading to a PhD.
Careers:
The academic sphere; government and non-government sectors; arts and art administration; publishing; journalism; media; culture industry in general.
The main taught components of the course take place in the autumn term (October-December) and spring term (January-March). During the third summer term (April/May-June) students are expected to undertake a placement with a policy-related organisation and submit a report on the placement, as well as consulting supervisors on their final dissertation. The policy lab runs across all three terms. In the summer period (mid-June-September) students prepare and submit their final dissertation, submitted late August/early September. Full-time students normally find they need to attend College on at least three days of the week during term.
Structure
The MA consists of:
Three compulsory core courses:
> Postcolonial Theory
> Globalisation: Politics, Policy and Critique
> Policy Lab and Placement
One standard-length option course or equivalent (two half-length courses may be taken in place of a standard course where available)
Dissertation of 10,000-12,000 words.
You must successfully complete all the above components to complete the MA.
Full-time students normally take the core course Postcolonial Theory in the autumn term, and the core course Globalisation: Politics, Policy and Critique in the spring term. Option courses can be taken in either autumn or spring term, depending on when they are offered and on your individual workload. The placement with a policy-related organisation is completed following the end of the spring term (usually some time between April and May). A report on the placement, in the form of a dossier (see below) is submitted at the end of May. The final dissertation (10,000-12,000 words) is submitted at the end of August/beginning of September.
Part-time students have some flexibility. They should normally however take the core courses in Postcolonial Theory and The Politics of Culture in their first year, as well as either the equivalent of a standard-length option course or the Policy Lab and Placement. The course convenor is able to advise on possible variations to the standard route. Progression into the second year usually depends upon successful completion of three standard-length courses. The Dissertation is submitted at the end of the second year.
Core courses
Postcolonial Theory
This course is designed to rethink many of the assumptions and discursive manoeuvres of postcolonialism. Close critical reading of relevant texts will be used to examine the critical apparatus and central lines of enquiry of postcolonial studies. We will address the following questions:
* What is the relevance of postcolonial theory for discussion of representation, studies of imperial and colonial history, diasporas and transnationalism, processes of creolization, cosmopolitanism, alterity and hybridity?
* Is postcolonialism merely a temporal marker?
* How does it relate to other 'posts' such as postmodernism and post-feminism?
Throughout the course, we will:
* Look for a theoretical basis to what is called postcoloniality
* Explore the genealogies of postcoloniality
* Understand the period of empire and colonialism as a field of interactions rather than simple subjection
* Question the Western paradigm of knowledge and the stability of binaries
* Propose that postcolonial criticism is an ethical enterprise. Postcoloniality refers to processes and practices in a world in which imaginary and material maps of power and resistance have been inherited from the empire, yet cannot be reduced to its borders.
Globalisation: Politics, Policy and Critique
This course is intended to familiarise you with the following notions: globalisation, cosmopolitanism, global governance, global civil society, citizenship, human rights, democracy, property rights and the global south. The goal is to retrace the genealogy of these notions and their policy implications.
You read texts by theorists of globalisation, policy-makers of global organisations and grassroots activists, looking at the ways these texts relate to contemporary capitalism. Close critical reading of these texts will be used to convey historical and theoretical ideas about culture and politics as a site of tensions, encounters, conflicts and power relations. The course seeks to depart from a tradition that understands politics as a simple reflection of economic interests and culture as the natural expression of groups. Rather, we want to acknowledge the importance of various mediations, subjectivities, aspirations, grassroots mobilizations, the importance of media and ideologies.
You will acquire knowledge about the new geopolitical mapping of the world, about the politics of culture in the epoch of enhanced interactions and conflicts. You will be encouraged to develop a complex approach to situations of conflict and tensions, to question economistic understanding of conflict, and to look at forces, connections and imaginations in a postmodern, globalised world. You will also be encouraged to pay attention to the multiplicity of forms of resistance and to question hegemonic narratives.
Policy Lab and Placement
Policy Lab
The Policy Lab is understood to be a discussion and research forum for global policy issues, with a view to identifying a set of aims and objectives, as well as concerns, issues and practical organisational needs, relevant to the placements (discussed below). Lab work will provide the essential preparation and context for the placements and dossier projects which evaluate the placements. A concern with policy and practice within organisations, seen in postcolonial light, will be a core part of the course throughout the year. The Policy Lab will entail a three hour session one day each week in Autumn term and four hours each week in Spring term, led by a dedicated Policy Lab tutor.
This tutor will be available for instruction and support in relation to organisational matters for placements, and for group discussion of conceptual, bureaucratic and political issues arising there from. Alongside having teaching experience, the person filling this appointment will have significant skills in the planning and delivery of placements with relevant organisations or institutions.
Placements
UK-based or overseas placements would usually be undertaken at the end of Spring term and would be with an organisation relevant to the concerns of the program as a whole, and would prepare students for dissertation work. Students will be encouraged to bring postcolonial theory and a critical perspective on culture to bear upon their experience working with such organisations and in varied contexts.
All placements would take advantage of the Centre for Cultural Studies significant contacts in the field and will be supervised by the course convener or an appropriate tutor from within the Centre. Placements would result in an appropriately sized report, or documentation dossier with analysis, which may include visual or multimedia material such as a short video, audio or photographic record. The placement is not focused on the delivery of training per se, but on placing the student in a context within the areas covered by work within NGOs, advocacy groups, charities, policy making and international organisations, cultural activism or anti-racist/anti-imperialist concerns.
The placement should be conceived in such a way that these kinds of work may be experienced and evaluated in however minimal a form and the student will be able to make a short study of specific practices or even problems with working in such institutions or organisations. Students already engaged in relevant institutional, organisational or activist based work in some way would be able to use the opportunity of a placement to critically reflect upon and analyse their projects, organization and working context. The written components provide a space for the students to explore the connections between the practical issues concerning their placement and the theoretical issues addressed in the other parts of the degree.
Dissertation
The dissertation is an opportunity to write an extended piece of work (10,000-12,000 words) on a topic of particular interest under the guidance of an allocated supervisor within the Centre for Cultural Studies.
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