Class schedule

Fall 2007Sept 7 /07

Introduction
Welcome!

Readings
Ben Highmore, “Questioning everyday life” (ELR pp. 1-34)

Sept 14 /07

Lecture
Situating everyday life

Readings & discussion
Betty Friedan, “The problem that has no name” (ELR pp. 58-62)
Erving Goffman, “Front and back regions of everyday life” (ELR pp. 50-57)
Raymond Williams, “Culture is ordinary” (ELR pp. 91-100)

Workshop
DISCUSSION/WORKSHOP GROUP SIGN-UP
What’s in your bag?

Sept 21 /07

Lecture
The poetics & politics of everyday life

Readings & discussion
Ben Highmore, “Simmel: Fragments of everyday life” in Everyday life and cultural theory (RSV pp. 17-32)
Karal Ann Marling, “Nixon in Moscow: the kitchen debate” (ELR pp. 101-107)
Georges Perec, “Approaches to what?” (ELR pp. 176-178)
Carolyn Steedman, “Landscape for a good woman” (ELR pp. 262-270)
Leon Trotsky, “Habit and Custom” (ELR pp. 85-90)

Workshop
Guerrilla postering

Sept 28 /07

Lecture
Mass Observation: recording everyday life

Readings & discussion
Ben Highmore, “Mass-Observation: A Science of Everyday Life” in Everyday life and cultural theory (RSV pp. 75-112)
Mass Observation, “Two letters and ‘They speak for themselves’” (ELR pp. 145-152)

Workshop
Assignments: Research & writing skills. Attendance is mandatory.

Oct 5 /07

NO CLASS - University Day

Oct 12 /07

NO CLASS - Use this time to work on Assignment # 1

Oct 19 /07

ASSIGNMENT # 1 DUE

Lecture
The Situationist International & Lefebvre’s critique of everyday life

Readings & discussion
Guy Debord, “Perspectives for conscious alterations in everyday life” (ELR pp. 237-245) and “Separation perfected” (Society of the Spectacle, Ch. 1)
Ben Highmore, “Henri Lefebvre’s dialectics of everyday life” in Everyday life and cultural theory (RSV pp. 113-144)

Workshop
A campus mis-guide

Oct 26 /07

Lecture
De Certeau’s practice of everyday life & Smith’s sociology for people

Readings & discussion
Michel de Certeau, “General introduction to The Practice of Everyday Life ” (ELR pp. 63-75)
Ben Highmore, “Michel de Certeau’s poetics of everyday life” in Everyday life and cultural theory (RSV pp. 145-173)
Dorothy Smith, “A feminist methodology” (ELR pp. 271-281)

Workshop
My neighbourhood

Nov 2 /07

Lecture
House & home: daily living, cooking and cleaning

Readings & discussion
Jean Baudrillard, “Structures of interior design” (ELR pp. 308-318)
Luce Giard, “Doing cooking” (ELR pp. 319-324)
Daniel Miller, “Making love in supermarkets” (ELR pp. 339-345)
Sarah Pink, “The housewife and her world: cultural categories and everyday lives” in Home truths: gender, domestic objects and everyday life (RSV pp. 81-100)

Workshop
Open-source meal for six

Nov 09 /07

Lecture
Rubbish: it’s a dirty job but somebody’s got to do it

Readings & discussion
Jeff Farrell, “Street knowledge” and “Scrapped together” in Empire of scrounge: inside the urban underground of dumpster diving, trash picking, and street scavenging (RSV pp. 73-96 & 129-160)

Workshop
What’s in my garbage?

Nov 16 /07

Lecture
Mass culture: consumption and creativity

Readings & discussion
Roland Barthes, “Plastic” (ELR pp. 305-307)
Stephen Duncombe, “Zines” in Cultural Studies: from theory to action (RSV pp. 198-208)
Siegfried Kracauer, “Boredom” (ELR pp.301-304)
Johnny Temple, “Noise from underground: punk rock’s anarchic rhythms spur a new generation to political activism” in Cultural Studies: from theory to action (RSV pp. 235-240)
Paul Willis, “Symbolic creativity” (ELR pp. 282-292)

Workshop
Post secret

Nov 23 /07

ASSIGNMENT # 2 DUE

Documentary & discussion
Gates of Heaven (Dir: Errol Morris, 1980) Review & Trivia

Nov 30 /07

Lecture
Citizen-consumers: free to do what?

Readings & discussion
Mark Paterson, “Consumption and identity: manufacturing choice” and “The knowing consumer?” in Consumption and everyday life (RSV pp. 36-57 & pp. 141-168)

Workshop
No logo?

Winter 2008

Jan 11 /08

ASSIGNMENT # 3 DUE

Presentations
Everyday technologies

Jan 18 /08

Lecture
Technoscience and the everyday

Readings & discussion
Mike Michael, “Between technoscience and everyday life” and “Versions of everyday life and technoscience” (TEL pp. 1-40)

Workshop
Group A

Jan 25 /08

Lecture
Bodies & identities: electronic animals

Readings & discussion
Mike Michael, “Technoscientific bodies: making the corporeal in everyday life” (TEL pp. 41-62)
Lesley Sharpe, “Body Commodities: the medical value of the human body and its parts” in Bodies, commodities, and biotechnologies (RSV 47-76)

Workshop
Group B

Feb 1 /08

Lecture
Social life & citizenship: surveillance, control & bare life

Readings & discussion
Mike Michaels, “Technoscientific citizenship: the micropolitics of everyday life” and “Technoscience and the making of society in everyday life” (TEL pp. 63-108)

Workshop
Group A

Feb 8 /08

ASSIGNMENT # 4 DUE

Lecture
Scale & temporality: the order of things

Readings & discussion
Mike Michael, “Technoscience and the enactment of everyday spatiality” and “Technoscience, dis/ordering and temporality in everyday life” (TEL pp. 109-151)

Workshop
Group B

Feb 15 /08

Lecture
Technoscience & its others

Readings & discussion
Mike Michael, “Conclusion : questions of technoscience, everyday life and identity“ (TEL pp. 152-185)

Workshop
Group A

Feb 22 /08

NO CLASS - Reading Week

Feb 29 /08

Documentary & discussion
Manufactured Landscapes (2006) On Edward Burtynsky’s photography

Mar 7 /08

Lecture
When old technologies were new

Readings & discussion
Lynn Spigel, “Installing the television set” (ELR pp. 325-338)
Diane Zimmerman Umble, “Sinful network or divine service: competing meanings of the telephone in Amish country” in New Media 1740-1915 (RSV pp. 139-156)

Workshop
Group B

Mar 14 /08

ASSIGNMENT # 5 DUE

Lecture
High-tech & lo-tech in everyday life

Readings & discussion
Jennifer Adams, “Recovering a trashed communication genre: Letters as memory, art and collectible” in Residual Media (pp.185-199)
John Davis, “Going analog: Vinylphiles and the consumption of the ‘obsolete’ vinyl record” in Residual Media (pp.222-236)

Workshop
Group A

Mar 21 /08

NO CLASS - Good Friday (holiday)

Mar 28 /08

Lecture
Networks of things & electronic waste

Readings & discussion
Lisa Parks, “Falling apart: electronics salvaging and the global media economy” in Residual Media (pp.32-47)
Jonathan Sterne, “Out with the trash: on the future of new media” in Residual Media (pp.16-31)

Workshop
Group B

Apr 4 /08

Movie
To be decided by class

*All outstanding assignments returned