Handbook : Unit informationEdith Cowan University

School: Arts and Humanities

This unit information may be updated and amended immediately prior to semester. To ensure you have the correct outline, please check it again at the beginning of semester.

• Unit Title

  Beyond Modernity

• Unit Code

  CCA2100

• Year

  2016

• Enrolment Period

  1

• Version

  1

• Credit Points

  15

• Full Year Unit

  N

• Mode of Delivery

  On Campus
  

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Description

This unit examines the conditions that face the creative practitioner in a globalised cultural economy. Students will be introduced to debates surrounding modernity, commodity culture, spectacle, postmodernity and digital/virtual culture to examine how these relate to a contemporary cosmopolitan culture in which the local and global relationships of the twenty-first century are being altered. Students will be introduced to creative strategies and methodologies such as reflexivity in relating to these debates.

Learning Outcomes

On completion of this unit students should be able to:

1. Define key terms associated with modernity, post-modernity, spectacle, globalisation, cosmopolitanism and digital/virtual culture.
2. Analyse contemporary debates, which are dynamic in shaping cultural, social and political identity and personal creativity.
3. Discuss aesthetics, praxis and communicative actions as meaning-making tools to understand one's lifeworld through creative practice.
4. Discuss contemporary theories that explain the impact of globalisation and cosmopolitanism on the creative individual.

Unit Content

1. Definitions of aesthetics, communicative action and praxis.
2. Tradition, modernity, commodity culture, spectacle, postmodernity, globalisation, cosmopolitanism and digital/virtual culture.
3. Institutional and cultural conditions and the production and consumption of contemporary culture.
4. Research strategies.

Additional Learning Experience Information

Lectures, tutorials

Assessment

GS1 GRADING SCHEMA 1 Used for standard coursework units

Students please note: The marks and grades received by students on assessments may be subject to further moderation. All marks and grades are to be considered provisional until endorsed by the relevant Board of Examiners.

Text References

• Adorno, T. (2001). The culture industry: Selected essays on mass culture. (J.M. Bernstein, Trans.). (3rd ed.). London, United Kingdom: Routledge.
• Bauman, Z. (1998). Globalization: The human consequences. New York, NY: Columbia University Press.
• Benjamin, W. (2008). The work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction. London, United Kingdom: Penguin.
• Bourdieu, P. (1990). In other words: Essays towards a reflexive sociology. (M. Adamson, Trans.). Cambridge: Polity Press.
• Crouch, C. (1991). Modernism in art, design and architecture. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan.
• Debord, G. (1983). Society of the spectacle. Detroit, MI: Black & Red.
• Foster, H. (Ed.). (1985). Postmodern culture. London, United Kingdom: Pluto Press.
• Habermas, J. (1984). The theory of communicative action, volume 1: Reason and the rationalization of society. Boston, MA: Beacon Press.
• Huyssen, A. (1986). After the great divide: Modernism, mass culture, postmodernism (theories of representation and difference). Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.
• Klein, N. (1999). No logo. London, United Kingdom: Picador.
• Manovich, L. (2001). The language of new media. MIT Press: Massachusetts & London.
• Plant, S. (1992). The most radical gesture: The situationist international in a postmodern age. London, United Kingdom: Routledge.
• Ritzer, G. (2006). McDonaldisation: The reader. CA: Pine Forge Press.

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