Culture & Power

How can we possibly make sense of categories as large as ‘culture’ and ‘power’? This course works to register and theorise the impossibility of disaggregating these two domains (h/t Foucault). Starting with the premise that power works through culture and culture works through power, students on Culture & Power explore the copresence of these phenomena across institutional and intimate spaces. Through micro-ethnographic work and close readings, students query how intimate articulations of power simultaneously reflect and challenge the institutional, and vice versa.

Culture & Power has both undergraduate and postgraduate versions, both of which Jess taught and convened during the 2023-2024 academic year.