120039 AR Advanced Cultural Studies Course (426) = Cultural/Media Studies 1/2 (Cultural/Media Studies) (2009W)

The focus of this course is on concepts of identity formation as discussed in British literature and film since 1945. In the first part, attention will be drawn to concepts of Englishness/Britishness as constructed during WW2 and in the immediate post war years. In more concrete terms, our first project will focus on how identities are constructed in the film In Which We Serve (directors: Noel Coward & David Lean). This film will then be related to Kazuo Ishiguro's novel The Remains of the Day (1989) and the eponymous film based on this novel (director: James Ivory) to discuss how certain notions of Englishness/Britishness were deconstructed and also reactivated in later years.
The second part is linked to concepts of permissiveness as discussed in the 1960s and 1970s, and their implications for identity construction. Here, the focus is on popular culture. Hanif Kureishi's The Buddha of Suburbia (1991) will be discussed as a critical comment on cultural permissiveness in the 1970s.
Finally the focus is on different immigrant perspectives in British fiction and film. While one of the texts to be dealt with - Sam Selvon's The Lonely Londoners (1956) - is set in the mid 1950s, the other texts - Andrea Levi's Never Far From Nowhere (1996) and the film Ae Fond Kiss (2005) - take us up to the very present. Selvon's text is concerned with immigrants finding their feet in the London of the 1950s; the other texts shift attention to second generation immigrants and their identities.