Module Information

Module Identifier
TPM1720
Module Title
Politics, Media, Performance: Transdisciplinary Critical Frameworks
Academic Year
2017/2018
Co-ordinator
Semester
Semester 1
Other Staff

Course Delivery

Delivery Type Delivery length / details
Lecture 10 x 3 Hour Lectures
Seminar 10 x 1 Hour Seminars
 

Assessment

Assessment Type Assessment length / details Proportion
Semester Assessment Assessment 1: Written essay (3,000 words)  50%
Semester Exam 7 Hours   Assessment 2: Performed Essay (15 minutes)  50%
Supplementary Assessment Resit Assessment 1: Essay (3000 words)  Resit as written essay with alternative title   50%
Supplementary Assessment Resit Assessment 2: Performed Essay (15 mins)  Resit as performed essay with alternative title (to be taken at next opportunity)  50%

Learning Outcomes

On successful completion of this module students should be able to:

1. To demonstrate an advanced critical awareness of the relationship between politics and aesthetics and performance, media and the political.

2. To demonstrate understanding at an advanced level of critical frameworks requisite to the conceptualization of apparatus, subjectivity and agency.

3. To evaluate complex conceptual and practical relationships between different forms and modes of performance, media and politics.

4. To demonstrate a mastery of a range of theoretical and methodological approaches to the analysis of relationships between performance, media and politics.

5. To appreciate the potential of various creative media as both modes of enquiry and as platforms for the delivery of further research into political themes and subject matters.

Aims

This module introduces a range of contemporary theories, conceptual frameworks and practical methodologies in the exploration of inter- and trans- disciplinary approaches to politics, media and performance.

The module aims:

• To introduce and explore convergences – both extant and potential – between politics, media and performance.
• To facilitate the development of an informed understanding of appropriate critical vocabularies, theoretical frameworks, analytical methods and creative approaches to the analysis of the relationship between politics, media and performance
• To provide a secure grounding in key theories, critical approaches, methodologies, vocabularies and frameworks in the transdisciplinary field of politics, media and performance.
• To facilitate the development of an advanced understanding of performative effects generated within the political sphere and the significance of the political within modes of aesthetic and cultural production and expression.
• To enable students to contribute constructively to current debates on the role of media and performance within the contemporary world
• To open a dialogical and interrogative space for advanced critical thinking about the relationships between performance, media and politics.

Brief description

The module provides:

• an advanced introduction to a variety of critical and analytical approaches to understanding the relationship between politics, media and performance

• an advanced exploration of the conceptual frameworks and methodological procedures involved in analysing the relationship politics and ‘the political’, performance and ‘the performative’, media and ‘the mediated’

• an advanced introduction to the theoretical concepts of apparatus, subjectivity and agency in politics, media and performance

• a sustained investigation of the relationship between politics and aesthetics, and of the critical frameworks enabling its theorisation

• a mutually-informing examination of the role and potential of the creative within the political and the political within the creative.

Content

Course delivery:

10 x 3 hour lecture/seminars
10 x 1 hour seminars

The week by week structure of the module allows for the introduction and exposition of key critical theoretical frameworks and approaches. These are balanced with the investigation of empirical materials, so that developmentally the module allows for the inter-penetration of critical and empirical readings of politics, media and performance. Topics covered may include, for example:

1. Introductory terms: politics and ‘the political’; media and ‘the mediatised’; performance and ‘the performative’

2. The personal in the political, the political in the personal: subjectivity, story-telling and autobiography

3. The subject of politics: decentring the subject in critical, cultural and political theory

4. The subject of aesthetics: critiquing the politics of spectatorship and regimes of visibility

5. Changing social formations: hegemony, ideology and interpellation

6. Power, discourse and bio-politics: agency, apparatus and subjectivation

7. Relations of power and relations of violence: deconstruction, decision and the mystical foundations of authority

8. The social and symbolic order: interrogating the real and ‘what we call social reality’

9. Politics and the police: practices of consensus and dissensus

10. Disrupting the fabric of the visible: the performative in the political

Module Skills

Skills Type Skills details
Application of Number This element is not assessed.
Communication The ability to communicate ideas effectively is developed and assessed.
Improving own Learning and Performance Self-regulation, motivation and time-management skills are developed through the module and are demanded for the successful completion of its assignments.
Information Technology The ability to utilize information technology both in the research for and delivery of assignments is assessed directly.
Personal Development and Career planning Transferable skills (managing personal workloads and meeting deadlines, designing and realizing assessment projects) are developed and assessed directly
Problem solving Analytical problem solving, outcome recognition and the identification of appropriate strategies and procedures are encouraged and assessed.
Research skills Independent research and the development of effective personal research practices are encouraged and assessed.
Subject Specific Skills The ability to employ mediated means in the exposition of intellectual material within an academic context. The ability to employ a range of theoretical and methodological approaches to the analysis of relationships between media and the political
Team work Seminar discussions demand the application of skills necessary to conduct collaborative activity, such as negotiating ideas and opinions. Students work in collaboration with others on the formulation and implementation of practical research.

Notes

This module is at CQFW Level 7