The Cultural Studies program uniquely positions graduate students to explore courses related to their fields of interest across a wide range of departments and programs. The minor consists of four courses totaling a minimum of 12 credit hours. These include C601: Intro to Cultural Studies and 3 sections of C701: Special Topics in Cultural Studies or C790: Independent Readings in Cultural Studies. C601 will be offered through a different instructor and department each year. We also offer a range of courses through the C701 rubric. Course descriptions for Fall 2025 are listed below. Please follow enrollment procedures according to your home department’s guidance. Feel free to reach out to us at any time with questions via our email (cstudies@indiana.edu).

Students must officially declare the minor during the early phase of their Ph.D. studies by completing the minor declaration form posted on the website and consult with the director of the Cultural Studies program.

If there is a course being offered that you feel may qualify for the minor that is not listed here, you are welcome to petition the program to have it count towards your minor progress. To do so, please reach out to us via email.

This page lists courses for which you can earn credit towards a graduate minor in Cultural Studies for Fall 2025. Former course listings can be accessed by looking at the course archive.

Minor Course Offerings

C601 Introduction to Cultural Studies (4 credits). Survey of main issues, theories, and methods in cultural studies. Topics may include communications and mass culture; gender, race, and the social construction of identity; historiographic and ethnographic approaches to modern cultures and societies.

C701 Special Topics in Cultural Studies (3-4 credits). Prerequisite: C601 or consent of instructor. Advanced exploration of a specific issue in cultural studies.

C790 Independent Readings in Cultural Studies (3-4 credits). Prerequisite: consent of the instructor. Open only to students minoring in Cultural Studies. Click on the link above for instructions on arranging and registering for C790.

Fall 2025 Cultural Studies Courses

 CULS-C 601: Introduction to Cultural Studies

Readings in Literature and Critical Theory

• Registration Information: CULS-C601-0001 (#34465)
• Meeting Information: MW 11:10AM-12:25PM in PV A203
• Joint Listed with: ENG-657
• Instructor: Rebekah Sheldon
• Course Description: This is a course in the history, present, and future of Cultural Studies. In the first part of the course, we will trace the emergence of Cultural Studies as a field and watch its establishment as a method of study through reading key monographs and through encounters with influential collections and readers. We will consider how the field synthesized ideas from other discipline and what was unique to Cultural Studies. The second part of the course will be concerned with the dissemination of Cultural Studies methods into adjacent scholarly subfields, potentially including queer theory, postcolonial studies, race and ethnicity, science studies, performance studies, media studies, and indigenous studies. In the final part of the course, we will think about how Cultural Studies methods are practiced across disciplines today and how we would like to take up and shift the field in our own future research and writing. In historicizing Cultural Studies, we will also pose questions about disciplinary formations, the relationship between field imaginaries and larger historical forces, and the role of the scholarly writing responding in opposition to the operations of power. Assessment will be based on two short and one long essay written across the semester. 
  
  

CULS-C 701: Special Topics in Cultural Studies

Im/Possible Futures? Comedy after the End of Tragedy

• Registration Information: CULS-C701-0001 (#34125)
• Meeting Information: Th 5:30PM-7:45PM in BH 015
• Joint Listed with: GER-G579
• Instructor: Teresa Kovacs
• Course Description:
• Tragedy has served as a model for the conditions of our societies. From Friedrich Nietzsche to Walter Benjamin, from Hans-Thies Lehmann to Terry Eagleton, scholars have reflected on the (in)ability of modern societies for tragic experience, often suggesting that we find ourselves in post-tragic times. Considering this supposed death of tragedy, Thies-Lehmann asserts: “the future of tragedy is comedy.” Although the turn to the comic has been repeatedly heralded by scholars, the comic is still marginalized as a model for the self-understanding of the individual, society at large, and the planetary.
  
  This class will turn to the comedic mode and test it as a model for reflecting on the conditions of life in an age marked by climate catastrophe, late capitalism, struggling democracies, etc. Understanding comedy and tragedy not merely as genres, but as ways of living and being, we will work through theatrical, literary, and cinematic comic traditions of the 20^thand 21^st century (from Brecht to Beckett, from the avant-garde to Pasolini, from the circus to Spike Lee) and read them with, through, and against theories and philosophies of comedy (e.g. Hegel, Nietzsche, Freud, Benjamin, Agamben, Zupančič); always keeping historical traditions of comedy in mind (e.g. Ancient Greek comedy, commedia dell’arte).
  
  Although the class will introduce selected theories and materials, students are invited to bring their own materials and suggest texts that they would like to read through the suggested lens. This need not be limited to contemporary theatre, film and literature, but we can discuss a wide range of texts from different cultural contexts, historical moments, and different media and artforms.

Democracy, Populism, Movements

• Registration Information: CULS-C701-0002 (#34229)
• Meeting Information: W 11:10-2:10 in BH338
• Joint Listed with: ENG-R770
• Instructor: Freya Thimsen
• Course Description:
  • This course will address the question of which theoretical, conceptual, and methodological approaches are appropriate for studying movement rhetorics. Theories and methods for research are often selected based on their currency, rigor, and explanatory force.  Social and political movements, however, often have ways of analyzing and explaining their own activities according to humanistic theoretical influences. The space between scholarly explanation and political inspiration has required research on movement politics to be increasingly self-reflexive about its methodology and the political and social locations of academics writing about movements. This course will introduce examples of research on contemporary North American movements that attempt —and do not attempt—to substantially integrate the theoretical perspectives of the movement actors themselves. How do these choices about theoretical frameworks shape the methodological decisions of researchers studying movements? To what extent do performance-based approaches to movement rhetoric facilitate the inclusion of theoretical influences that motivate and structure movement politics? We will compare how the concepts such as publics, democracy, hegemony, and decoloniality shape the study of movements. 

Genre in East Asian Film and Media

• Registration Information: CULS-C701-0003 (#34466)
• Meeting Information: W10:25am-1:25PM in BH123
• Joint Listed with: EALC-E600
• Instructor: Hannah Airriess
• Course Description:
  • This course examines popular genre in East Asian cinema. Assigning generic categories to films we watch is a common way to make sense of the narrative structure, visual style, and expectations of the text. How do we define genre? How do generic typologies emerge and develop over time? Are genres dictated by industrial standards, audience responses, retrospective theorizing, or by other means?
    
    We will discuss different methodological approaches to the study of genre, from 1970s genre studies to contemporary reexaminations of genre theory. We will examine how genre develops specific to the film industrial circumstances of the national cinemas of East Asia. This entails asking how categories such as comedy or the musical take on characteristics specific to historical and cultural contexts of different regions and eras, as well as the formation of shorter-lived generic cycles, such as Japan's shoshimin (petit bourgeoisie) genre. We will also analyze the transnational circulation of genres such as wuxia, melodrama, and horror.
    

The Politics of Digital Media Technologies

• Registration Information: CULS-C701-0004 (#34467)
• Meeting Information: Th 12:45PM-3:15PM in FF017
• Joint Listed with: MSCH-C792
• Instructor: Rachel Plotnik
• Course Description:
  • Digital media technologies are inevitably freighted with politics, as Internet platforms and applications function as crystallizations of society and culture. This course thinks about those politics related to pressing questions of the contemporary moment around algorithms, data ethics, content moderation, labor practices, social movements, etc., with a particular emphasis on critical/cultural studies and attention to race, gender, sexuality, and class. Moving through different thematic units, the class will offer students theoretical and methodological frameworks for interrogating digital media technologies. Rather than focusing solely on media content and messages, it especially considers the material infrastructures, bodies, and practices that make such media possible. The course will be of interest to students who want to 1) make better sense of the digital landscape as a topic of study through humanistic inquiry; and 2) develop scholarly interventions into these timely debates.
    

Introduction to African Film Studies

• Registration Information: CULS-C701-0005 (#34468)
• Meeting Information: W 4:00PM-6:30PM in BH315
• Joint Listed with: FRIT-F825
• Instructor: Vincent Bouchard
• Course Description:
  • This seminar offers students the unique opportunity to explore African cinemas, the cultures they originated from, and a series of research techniques developed in the humanities: Film, Cultural, Postcolonial Studies, and beyond. Starting with a series of lectures as an introduction on African history, cultures, and cinemas, we will then study the precise terminology which will allow us to further question the relational complexities between African cultures, social or geopolitical issues, and technical configurations. We will also experiment with various techniques related to the field of archival research. Finally, we will envision the best practices for teaching the multifaceted & nuanced subjects linked to African Cinemas, such as gender or race representation, subaltern studies, and foreign cultures. No prior background in African or Film studies required.
    
    Texts in French or English, taught in English, with discussions in French and/or English.
    
    
    
    

Teaching something you'd like to see listed? Contact us at cstudies@iu.edu!