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 Spring 2027 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@iu.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 Spring 2027. 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.

Spring 2027 Cultural Studies Courses

CULS-C 601: Intro to Cultural Studies

Cultural Studies: the Public, the Popular, the People

• Registration Information: CULS-C601 (#17482)
• Meeting Information: T/Th 3:55 PM–5:10 PM in LH 112
• Joint Listed with: CMLT-C 601
• Instructor: Carlos Colmenares Gil
• Course Description:

  • As contemporary politics, social media, and AI have reconfigured populist reason and the public sphere, Cultural Studies has faced new challenges in the 21st century. In this introduction to Cultural Studies, we will discuss some founding texts of the discipline (Stuart Hall, Raymond Williams, Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer, among others), in order to build a base that allows us to think about the links and divergences between three concepts in our contemporary times: the public (in its double conception: as opposed to the private, and in the sense of an audience), the popular, and the idea of the people. A diverse set of thinkers will accompany us in our trajectory, from Walter Benjamin to Fred Moten, from Maggie Nelson to Carlos Monsivais; we will reflect on their writings in relation to films, short stories, TV shows, and music. Creative projects are welcome.

CULS-C 701: Special Topics in Cultural Studies

Intro to Performance

• Registration Information: CULS-C701-0001 (#33479)
• Meeting Information: W 1:55-4:25 PM in SB159
• Joint Listed with: ANTH-E 502
• Instructor: Jane Goodman
• Course Description:

  • Introduction to performance-oriented perspectives on communication and culture, focusing on the relationship between performance and other dimensions of communicative practice in social life.

Human Extinction

• Registration Information: CULS-C701-0002 (#33503)
• Meeting Information: M/W 3:55-5:10 PM in SB140
• Joint Listed with: ANTH-E 600
• Instructor: Shane Greene
• Course Description:
  • There is a guaranteed end point to each individual human life, an event we know as death. There’s an equally certain end point to life on earth when the sun dies in a few billion years. When, why, and how the human species comes to an end is much less clear. And yet, barring an escape to other planets, that too is a virtual guarantee given that extinction – the collective death of a species – is as much a part of evolutionary processes as speciation, cooperation, and natural selection. Because humans are complex - cultural and biological, uniquely intelligent but not immortal, able to learn collectively but with a long history of conflict - there are multiple possible scenarios for how homo sapiens faces the end: pandemics, nuclear war, fertility crises, ecological collapse, alien encounters, displacement by another species, asteroids falling out of the sky, and more. Combining scientific and humanities frameworks –everything from evolutionary theories of extinction and recent research on existential threats to science fiction literature and anti-natalist movements - this course explores major questions and possible scenarios surrounding human extinction.

Capitalism and Nature

• Registration Information: CULS-C701-0003 (#33565)
• Meeting Information: W 9:10 PM–11:40 AM in SB 005
• Joint Listed with:  GEOG-G 548
• Instructor: Rebecca Lave
• Course Description:
  • This seminar investigates the inter-relations between capitalism and nature as they have been analyzed by critical political economists, economic geographers, environmental historians and, to a lesser extent, physical scientists. Though the course will have a historical component, we will focus much of our attention on how nature is understood, reworked, commodified, and incorporated into markets under late capitalism. The course is structured cumulatively so that each week builds on the ones before it, and you will be able to trace key ideas and arguments across the semester.
  • I expect you to concentrate your efforts on developing a deep understanding of the course materials and their interconnections through attentive reading, weekly response papers, and class discussions. There are no exams or research papers.

Activism & Critical Ethnography

• Registration Information: CULS-C701-0004 (#33566)
• Meeting Information: T 1:00-3:30 PM in C2 102
• Joint Listed with: FOLK-727
• Instructor: David McDonald
• Course Description:
  • This graduate seminar is an in-depth investigation into the field of critical ethnography. We will explore the theoretical, methodological, and applied aspects of qualitative research, seeking a better understanding of how ethnographic approaches may be mobilized for policy change, the creation of emancipatory knowledge, and the pursuit of social justice.

Space, Place, and Media: Approaches in Media Geography

• Registration Information: CULS-C701-0005 (#33649)
• Meeting Information: Th 12:45–3:00 PM in FF 017
• Joint Listed with: MSCH-C 792
• Instructor: Stephanie DeBoer
• Course Description:

  • The goal of this course is to encourage new critical scholarship on the relationships between cinema and media screens, technologies, and infrastructures, on the one hand, and the production of space, place, and scale, on the other.

  • From the last two decades of the 20th century, we have witnessed a “spatial turn” in media studies – what has been variously called “spatial media studies” or “media geography.” We have seen a proliferation of books, articles, multi-media sites, online venues, and commentaries that consider the efficacy and implications of space/place/media as a complex topic and set of research and interrogative tools for the humanities and critical social sciences. This is also reflected in developments within the fields of cinema and media studies – for example, the graduate student-formed Media Fields Journal, and the special interest group inclusive of “media geographies” introduced to the Society for Cinema and Media Studies, an extension of the previously established conference group on urban studies.

  • This course thus seeks to explore and contribute to this expanding field. As befits the conjunctive “media and geography,” readings will be interdisciplinary – both as a bibliographic assemblage and within individual works. The subject areas will also be globally dispersed. Readings will attend to the interdisciplinary scope of this inquiry across prominent theories of space and place, cinema and media studies, screen studies, technology studies, critical geography, architecture and urban studies, environmental media studies, feminist critique, critical race studies, postcolonial studies, theories of transnational production, studies of media infrastructures, and new media studies.

  • While grounded in scholarship by both established and emerging writers and practitioners, this course is also designed to be in some sense speculative and encouraging of innovative work by individuals and the seminar group as a whole. In particular, much attention will be placed upon the location of the work of scholarship and of theorization – particularly important as a corrective to some approaches that have been uncritical of the dynamics (of power, location, identity, experience, and so on) through which theories and critical tools are produced and reproduced.

Introduction to Theatre and Performance Studies

• Registration Information: CULS-C701-0006 (#33650)
• Meeting Information: T 3:55-6:10 PM in BH 219
• Joint Listed with: GER-G627
• Instructor: Teresa Kovacs
• Course Description:
  • What is theatre? What is performance? And how do they relate to each other? This course approaches theatre and performance study not as two separate, rivalry fields, but as deeply linked disciplines that build on and complement one another. Approaching theatre and performance as an interdisciplinary research field, the class will give students the basic tools to enter this field of study. Students will be introduced to a range of theories, methods, and approaches in their unique historical and disciplinary perspective, as much as they will learn to develop and sharpen the research questions that most interest them. As such, the class will address key concepts of theatre and performance in their historicity, meaning that we will trace how the concept of theatre has changed in different languages, cultural contexts, and historical moments. Related, we will reflect upon the history of the discipline and discuss the becoming of the field of Theater Studies, the performative turn at the turn to the 20th century, and the development of Performance Studies as a discipline in the U.S. during the 1960s and 1970s. In addition, based on select theatre works, the students will learn about core fields of Theater and Performance Studies—theatre/performance analysis, theatre/performance historiography, and approaches to theory—and their related methodologies.
  • On February 23rd, 2027, we will have Devin Fore (Princeton University) as a guest who will give a talk about Bertolt Brecht’s Lehrstück-idea (‘learning plays’). Moreover, the class will have a practical element for those who are interested in putting the theory to the test: in the week of April 12, German director Jürgen Kuttner will stay with us to work on a performative piece engaging with free speech and the question ‘what to do in dark times?’ through the lens of Brecht’s U.S.-American exile.

Modern/Contemporary Art and Science - Hormones and Perception

• Registration Information: CULS-C701-0007 (#33779)
• Meeting Information: T/Th 11:10-12:25 PM in SY 003
• Joint Listed with: ARTH-A 584
• Instructor: Faye Gleisser
• Course Description:
  • Examines how and in what circumstances the scientific study of human experience has influenced artistic practice (and vice versa) from the twentieth century through to the present day. Explores how intersections between these "two cultures" have led to creative and critical breakthroughs in both fields of study.

Curating Museum Exhibitions

• Registration Information: CULS-C701-0008 (#33780)
• Meeting Information: T 1:30-4:30 PM in GY 1042
• Joint Listed with: ARTH-A 691
• Instructor: Faye Gleisser
• Course Description:
  • Using a campus collection, students will explore the qualities and histories of its objects, considering their historiography, authenticity, and the collecting culture that shape existing narratives surrounding the material. Students will also study the history of display of similar material and propose future modes of display in a museum setting.

Globalization, Media, and Social Change 

• Registration Information: CULS-C701-0009 (#33780)
• Meeting Information: T 9:00-11:30AM in FF 017
• Joint Listed with: MSCH-J614
• Instructor: Radhika Parameswaran
• Course Description:
  • Armed conflict is stressing the bones of the global economy (Vox, August 19, 2024)
  • As globalization unwinds, the world is still growing more unequal (Washington Post, April 19, 2024)
  • AI in the Global South: Opportunities and Challenges towards More Inclusive Governance (Brookings Institution, November 1, 2023)
  • Bone-headed anti-immigration politicians are throttling globalisation (The Economist, December 14, 2023)
  • Globalization will look very different after the Coronavirus pandemic (Foreign Policy, April 17, 2020)
  • Globalization—often the subject of news and policy discourse—remains an imperfect, but ubiquitous term that is widely used in academia and in other such arenas as business, international relations, NGOs, and philanthropy to define, explain, contest, or justify the economic, political, and technological forces that shape the lives of citizens across the world. This course—based in cultural studies perspectives—seeks to critically examine the phenomena that comprise globalization and explore the role that different media forms and genres (news, episodic entertainment, social media texts and productions, and fictional and documentary cinema) play in constituting our identities as global audiences, citizens, workers, consumers, and activists.
  • Conceived as a broad introduction to the topic of globalization and media, this seminar course is organized in three units that aim to expose students to a broad swath of ideas, theories, and empirical research. The first unit of the course is designed to give you an expansive understanding of globalization and its different dimensions. Hence course materials in this unit flesh out definitions of and perspectives on globalization writ large, economic, and political globalization, and a few important topics such as migration, religion, and the environment. A brief second unit takes up a key hot/current topic in global political formations, namely, the rise of political autocracies and authoritarianism in many parts of the world and the challenges these regimes pose for global democratic governance. The last and major unit of the course concentrates on media culture in relation to globalization, while addressing a range of topics: global media theory, cultural imperialism, issues of hybridity and national identity, new media and social movements, globalization and film industries of the Global South, and gender, media, and global sports. Aiming to be as inclusive as possible in coverage of geographic terrain, the course materials touch on media in multiple locations, including China, India, Japan, United Kingdom, Turkey, South Korea, Nigeria, and other nations.

Lyrical, Personal, (Re)Collective: Writing Personal Experience in Critical Ethnic Studies

• Registration Information: CULS-C701-0010 (#34151)
• Meeting Information: Th 12:45 PM–2:45 PM in SY 212
• Joint Listed with: AMST-G620
• Instructor: Micol Seigel
• Course Description:
  • Discussing her 2024 monograph How We Write Now, Jennifer Nash recalls teaching Christina Sharpe’s In the Wake; an astonished student asked, “is this how we can write now?” This class will pursue the personal, lyrical, even vulnerable writing being developed and championed most signally in Black feminist theory but also in other arenas of Critical Ethnic Studies. It will explore some progressions of memoir and the personal in Black and brown feminist theory and criticism and consider the forms of writing CES scholars have developed and produced then and now. It will ask, what is unique, noteworthy, valuable, beautiful and important about these forms of writing and the kinds of thinking they allow?

Afrofuturism: After the End of the World

• Registration Information: CULS-C701-0011 (#34412)
• Meeting Information: Th 5:30 PM–8:30 PM in BH 106
• Joint Listed with: ENG-L769/ENG-L646
• Instructor: De Witt Douglas Kilgore
• Course Description:
  • This seminar focuses on Afrofuturism, a cultural mode practiced primarily by African American writers, filmmakers, and musicians. Through it they create stories, images, and music invoking futures directed by the experiences, designs, and investments of the African Diaspora. Often operating within the conventions of mainstream futurism, Afrofuturism also serves as a counter to the persistence of tomorrows in which whiteness is the historical and social dominant. We shall pay particular attention to the difference that American history and Black experience makes to this culture form. We will also trace the transracial traffic of ideas, words, and images that has made Afrofuturism an important concept in recent science fiction, American musical culture, and contemporary scholarship.
  • The seminar will include consideration of fiction by George Schuyler, Octavia E. Butler, and Nnedi Okorafor; the conceptual music of Sun Ra and Janelle Monáe; and Ryan Coogler’s cinematic vision in his Black Panther films. The seminar includes an extensive engagement with current scholarship in the field, including relevant theoretical contexts provided by scholars such as Bould, Yaszek, carrington, Lavender, Hassler-Forest, Nyong'o, and Kilgore.

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