USWP18: Cultures' Critical Conditions

Topical Introduction | Rhetorical Introduction

TOPICAL INTRODUCTION

What is "culture"?

Nobody can agree, so there are no accepted, model answers to inhibit you in this course! Therefore your task is a challenging, but hopefully liberating one. You will be asked to offer a series of assessments of three different cultural phenomena in the three Units listed below:

• the case of the Disney empire (Unit 1)
• the flashpoint sparked by the private publication of D. H. Lawrence's notorious novel, Lady Chatterley's Lover (Unit 2)
• contemporary Singapore (Unit 3)

Cultural critics are often territorial about their subject and assume-and/or generate-a sense of crisis about the phenomena upon which they comment. Thus Ang Peng Hwa's essay, "Tension and Creativity-Singapore's Media in Transition"(Unit 3), highlights anxiety as a defining characteristic of cultural debate about Singapore. Ang's essay-together with the controversies surrounding such issues as Singaporean heritage, multi-culturalism, and the country's development as a "Renaissance" city-show that the area of "culture" is central to concerns about the nature of Singaporean national identity. But such a sense of anxiety about what culture is-or should be-is by no means unique to this country, as Units 1 and 2 demonstrate.

RHETORICAL INTRODUCTION

Because critical reading is the foundation of high quality academic writing most of the set readings in this course serve a dual function.
To:

• be the subjects of your spoken and written analysis and criticism.
• act as templates that show you different ways of writing essays.

To achieve these twin objectives, particular emphasis is placed on developing your:

• understanding of how critical essays are designed to produce rhetorical effects.
• awareness of he social contexts, functions and effects of criticism. EG When, where, and for what kind(s) of readership, was each essay written?
• ability to compare often radically different approaches to a common topic.
• understanding of possible reasons why critics may have expressed extreme views and/or written in ways that seem alien or unacceptable now.

The principle objective of the course is to teach you how to write increasingly complex and sustained papers that are persuasively argued and challenging to the reader, whilst being rigorous, balanced and fair. This fairness is achieved by taking a dialectical approach to argumentation. A dialectical approach involves the consideration of counterarguments and counterevidence, materials that help you to reconsider your original position in order to produce a stronger case. So when reading extremist critics you should consider what counterevidence and counterarguments their argument may suppress or fail to take into account.

Each paper will go through a draft stage. Your draft will be discussed in a private conference with me, and sometimes by your colleagues in peer review meetings.

PAPER 1: 2-3 pages
PAPER 2: 3-4 pages
PAPER 3: 6-8 pages

[TOP]