Currently undergoing a renaissance in communication and cultural studies, psychoanalysis has played an outsized role in shaping contemporary theories of language, race, sex, gender, and ideology. This course is designed to acquaint graduate students with important concepts in psychoanalytic thought with a particular emphasis on the work of Jacques Lacan as applied to media, rhetoric, and culture. Course readings attempt to balance Lacan’s primary works with important background texts and psychoanalytically inspired scholarship in an effort to encourage students to make their own judgments and conclusions. Major themes include: media and paranoia, figure and trope, sex and gender, power and desire, capital and ideology, culture and subjectivity.
Number of Credits
3
Calum Matheson