 So hi, I am K.I. Jarrett and I'm here with Rachel Harrison and we're part of the CCLPS, the Center for Cultural Literary and Post-Colonial Studies and we're here to introduce two of the MA programs we have to offer and I'll be talking first about MA comparative literature and then Professor Harrison will be speaking about MA cultural studies and I think we'll have some time as well probably at the end to answer some questions or to talk about the tasters and the idea I think probably you know the idea of these sessions is to well to give you a taste of what it would be like to be a student here. So there are a little bit like tiny lectures where we introduce some of the things and the ideas we work on in the classroom and in your research and and what you'll be exposed to. So with that in mind I will start and I see um let me just I see there's some chats ah yes hello to everybody I apologize and so for not saying that first off uh so let me start by sharing this little PowerPoint with you that's the very end excuse me and and today our my taster session is going to be called scripted bodies in the second term of comparative literature in our core module we actually spend a lot of time thinking about representations of the body and what that is so I thought I'd I'd do a little bit it's not exactly like um a lecture that I've given this year because um well I thought maybe I didn't want to spoil the content you did decide to come next year and so it's a bit of a mismatch but uh definitely something you'll come across at one point or the other where you to do uh the MA comparative literature so before we start I wanted to say a very brief word about um well where we are as a as a program of comparative literature and just to say that you know we probably all know for those of you who are interested in comparative literature you probably know that comparative literature really started as a European um discipline a European endeavor it was engaged with European literatures and it was uh the idea was really to move across nation uh national languages and nation state boundaries so to compare German and French or English and Spanish was to really radically reorder the world and for various reasons and there's a lot that has written about it has moved also to the US they're also at state predominantly European certainly in the 19th and early 20th centuries uh early 20th century uh towards the mid of the 20th century and the push for inclusion the push to think about literatures from outside Europe was growing greater but actually the main force of comparative literature is uh what is now called a turn inwards a turn towards theory and criticism and that's a legacy we carry on today so where are we then with so as this comparative literature as you know so as the school of Asia Africa the Middle East and of course we study the literatures of Asia African the Middle East so how does MA comparative literature with its European roots really fit in well we take the strains of comparative literature from the 21st century where um from our very starting point it's a global and multilingual um project it's political and and it's invested in examining literatures through critical frames relevant to Asia Africa and the Middle East so we take the legacy of uh transnationalism and we take the legacy of um of theory and criticism but our starting place is a really different one where we start not really in the Eurocentric and the in the world of Europe and but rather in the world of Asia Africa the Middle East so that's that's where we're starting okay and so what is these what are these critical frames that we think about well as you see uh through the second half of the year but also actually in the first half of the year there there these will come up in various different ways some of them are really invested in 20th century thinking like post-colonial studies and some of them have sort of gathered momentum and changed direction in the 21st century so some of the things you might come to do in MA comparative literature are to study eco criticism and queer theory multilingualism subaltern studies potty politics border thinking and race and the the title of this taster session today scripted bodies really comes from um from an idea conceptual framework that emerges in the larger topic of body politics so that's what we're going to turn our attention to now okay and i'm going to take a small quote uh small extract from the novel the god of small things by url of the royal written in 1997 some of you might be familiar with it some of you might find it new and might might be new to it but i just thought we would start with this so he wore a thin white cloth with his lord uh around his points looped between his dark legs he shook the water from his hair she could see his smile in the dark his white sudden smile that had carried him from boyhood into manhood his only luggage they looked at each other they weren't thinking anymore the time for what for that had come and gone smashed miles way ahead of them but that would be later she unbuttoned her shirt she stood there skin to skin her brownness against his blackness her softness against her hardness okay these are the two two characters of the novel amul and the luta and and the question we have to ask ourselves will be when we ever whenever we read literature is well how do we read literature how do we read these passages how do we understand these bodies okay so i argue i do quotes reading and if we were in class together and we'd probably do this work together so it wouldn't just be me lecturing but you know we look at the passage and i've put it again on the on the right hand side here so you can see it the narrator follows abu's hidden gaze so she's somewhere else and she's staring at him she's watching him and you can see she could see him smile in the dark he doesn't know she's there right and it's constructed constructed these his body is constructed in their bodies is these images that are being played here are constructed through various juxtapositions right white cloth dark legs brownness blackness hardness softness and and this juxtaposition then gives way to a union right they stood there skin to skin and arguably the the union itself is is more profound is more transcendent because in it overcomes these these juxtapositions okay so this is the images that we're looking at two bodies together but there's more and we could take elizabeth gross's idea of the volatile of volatile bodies and as a starting point to also thinking about what's happening in this scene elizabeth gross says that every body is marked by the history and the specificity of its existence it is possible to construct a biography a history of the body for each individual and social body or she says on to say the body functions almost as a black box in this account it is acted upon inscribed peered into information is extracted from it and disciplinary regimes are imposed on it so the body despite looking here you know and despite us feeling you know the sort of the the romance the the desire the sensuality of these two bodies to come together according to gross are really and are also are also scripted they're part of regimes disciplinary regimes part of history and that construct the specificity of existence but also in literature because of course when we talk about bodies we can talk about bodies that exist in the world or the representation of bodies so in literature we have to think about double scripted the scripting of history or the regime of or disciplinary regimes and that make the characters recognizable to us right that we recognize from the outside world and the script and the scripting of the literary text so the literary text uses the Luther's body uses on this body in particular ways right to make the point of the novel to make to to fulfill its aesthetic interests its political interests it's um yeah it's yeah it's poetic interest even so the literary text may seek to reverse or complicate reject or embrace society script of the body so the Luther for example is um is an undercast or or dull it character and and and and the the novel works with this notion of untouchability of who a veluta is allowed to touch and of course the other side of that of and who is allowed to touch him and it recasts his characters desirous playful beautiful rather than polluted polluted and poor impoverished and worn out so this way of recasting the luther is part of the project of the novel itself but we only understand that project fully by recognizing the the the disciplinary regime that goes with the label and the writing of the luther as a dulled character so both of these are at work in the literary representation but we can go further than that right later on in this scene and roy the narrator talks about the the act of love making as biology designed or she describes it as biology design the dance terror time day time did dictated the rhythm which their bodies answered each other and i just am a very famous um critic um has written about the novel's private pleasures it is a utopic transgression he calls it and one um which is the discourse of which one in which this discourse of pleasure is also profoundly political the brahmin woman with the untouchable man the the dulled carry the dulled man and their union together right is not merely about two bodies together but about the um but about the transgression of history the transgression of those regimes of power so the body is scripted as it enters the text and it's rescripted by the text itself to fill the aesthetic thematic and political ambitions of its literature and these are the kind of things we would work on and in comparative literature as we worked together so that is okay almost exactly 15 minutes of my um of my taster thank you very much um and i don't know if we'll do questions now but i'm happy to answer any questions as they come up shall we do questions now okay to see if anyone has questions on your presentation or absolutely or indeed on comparative literature of course and i guess if there are questions you need to put them into the chat nothing appearing there yet so should i maybe i should take this opportunity then to to move on and do you um a quick presentation as well another taster session on um on cultural studies i'm just going to close my balcony door just a second sorry sorry just gives us a bit better sound okay so um there are three programs that we run from the center for cultural literary and postcolonial studies um one is ma comparative literature that uh that kia has just spoken about um i convene ma um cultural studies and then we have ma postcolonial studies as as well um i'm going to give you a quick taster session on the kinds of things we talk about in cultural studies and it's interesting what connections there are between comparative literature and cultural studies and of course the way that the programs are set up means that you can whatever you take your kind of core course in you can take the the um theory and tech theory course relating to the other other fields as well so you're not constrained to um pin yourself down to to to one particular area okay let's see if i can manage to share my screen effectively okay i'll do it as a slideshow so showing okay all right good so there there's a lot of overlap between um cultural studies and comparative literature and indeed the the the topics that are discussed in um in ma postcolonial studies as well and there are clear connections between the kinds of issues that kia has just been talking about and which i which i'm going to talk about in terms of the question of hybrid cultures so just have a quick look at what's in the chat there in case there's a question there okay that just says okay all right um so um we start off in uh cultural studies by thinking about what cultural studies actually is and it emerged um as as a field in the uk particularly uh strongly connected with this person in this photograph here stewart hall and the birmingham school of cultural studies and so it's connected up quite quite strongly right from the start with ideas of cultural identity and multiculturalism and the and the kind of way in which we work from that in so us because this is an ma in cultural studies of asia africa and the middle east um is to try to extrapolate from the origins of cultural studies what that means for generating um a question of what cultural studies means in relation to africa asia and the middle east and because cultural studies is in some ways very theoretical we also kind of thinking about the questions of what it means to generate theory from asia africa and the middle east so that we're not um disregarding so-called western theory but incorporating it into a wider question of how you might theorize different parts of the of the world through questions of identity and belonging that emerge from those societies themselves nevertheless stewart hall is a very foundational figure and i've taken this photograph of stewart hall from an exhibition that's currently on at tate britain um which i actually took the ma cultural studies students to this year uh life between islands it's an exhibition of caribbean british art from 1950s and um although we don't technically cover the caribbean as part of asia africa and the middle east one of the things that seemed to me really important about this exhibition was the way in which some of the artworks displayed here were able to demonstrate precisely the kinds of ideas we had been discussing about cultural identity cultural belonging um how culture gets connected up with questions of representation and also something that seemed extremely important in terms of thinking about how we theorize culture um beyond beyond the west and in relation to asia africa and the middle east and that's the question of hybridity which is why i put hybridity into the title here of hybrid cultures because one of the things i think that's extremely interesting about cultural studies or about culture in particular is the fact that when you start examining it closely and drilling down into into culture um although it has multiple different definitions one of the ways in which politicians like to define culture in terms of national identity is to make it rather static you know that you know for example to be british means to have the following characteristics and when you unravel that and unpick it the exciting thing about that is that culture is incredibly unstable and fluid and it's made up of multiple different influences and so the question of hybridity wherever we're looking at culture in any part of the world seems to be quite an important one to be able to to look at the way in which culture is in constant change it's never static and it's made up of a number of different influences so this artwork in uh life between islands struck me as an extremely good example of hybridity and cultural hybridity and it's a composite figure that's made up of of those kind of travel bags apparently that they're called garner to go bags although i know that they certainly used in asia and in other parts of the world and they're not confined to garner so the character is dressed in in part of fabric made up of these kind of portable highly portable light bags and everything that that connotes about the question of movement and transport and traveling without wealth but it's also overlaid as well with the fact that some of these patterns look like tartan so they also kind of have an influence from a scottish culture as well there's there are parts of sort of african cloth here in the figure and different kind of attributes that make this a highly composite figure and a very good example of cultural hybridity there are endless examples in this exhibition i really recommend it to you and it's also really i mean one of the great things about doing cultural studies in london and having so many different sites that you can go to in exhibitions and so forth means that you can always kind of support the material that we're coming across in class with actual exhibitions that you can go and visit and and and both permanent collections and and temporary ones and this one reflections contemporary art of the middle eastern north africa that was shown at the british museum a few months ago is another really good example in particular one of the images that i took from this exhibition is this one here on the left again a very hybrid composite character drawn by a young iranian artist with different different script with multiple multiple faces different kind of elements brought together which talk very much to the to the question of not only of hybridity but of multiple cultural identities the the fact that nothing that nothing is stable that it's fluid and that people can represent themselves in a multiple multiple different ways so um there's always a good opportunity to get extra inspiration to back up the kinds of things that we're talking about in the classroom with material that we're seeing um in in the kind of local area in terms of exhibitions and so forth um i didn't i didn't put my timer on but i could keep keeping an eye on the clock so i don't speak for too long because my own personal interest i came to cultural studies having done a degree an undergraduate degree at soas in tai language and art history and my my phd it's also at soas is is on contemporary tai literature and my current job title is working on tai cultural studies so i might go to place for for any kind of illustration or example of cultural studies from asia africa in the middle east is my comfort zone of thailand and just to kind of round off this talk in terms of examples of cultural hybridity i wanted to refer to one of my favorite tai films which is a a cowboy film from the late 1990s in tai it's called fatalejohn and it was marketed in the uk as tears of the black tiger um released in 2000 and was very much a kind of mark of the success of the tai film industry going into as we say in tai um going international making it big in a can film festival it's an interesting film for me because it's again a great example of hybridity it's it takes up the kind of question of tai cowboy culture yes there is such a thing and the film is incredibly visually resplendent it dresses its cowboys in multicolored clothes the whole film has an aesthetic that is looks like a kind of hand colored photograph and the cowboys in this film although they are kind of really tai bandits very much kind of adopt cowboy motifs the film is made up of multiple references both to old tai cinema and to famous cowboy films including um once upon a time in the west and so on so picking up the different kind of references that you find in contemporary cinema for example is a great way of exploring the multiple kind of influences on cultural products that come from different parts of the world breaking down the kind of borderlines and narrow definitions of what national culture actually is and in that sense it can have a very kind of subversive element so one of one of the things that we're often coming back to in cultural studies is thinking about the way in which in at one end of the spectrum culture is very much caught up in part of national belonging and national identity in which case it's rather sort of static and conservative in nature and at the other at the other end of the spectrum culture is always or is often used as a way of articulating modes of resistance to dominant narratives so that play between what's what's sort of culturally acceptable through the so-called ministry of culture and so on on the one hand and the the kind of work that artists and writers are doing that are often part of counterculture is a really interesting one. I've got a picture here of the former king of Thailand here in a much many younger years visiting America visiting Walt Disney his children are admiring a picture of Mickey Mouse showing again that kind of connection that you get between one culture and another and the dominance of Hollywood and one of the things that interests me very much in terms of looking at Thai cultural studies is the constant interconnection and involvement of so-called foreign influences on the construction of Thai national identity so we've got here a photograph of an early Thai king from the turn of the 20th the beginning of the 20th century Rama VI who went to went to school in the UK went to Eaton and and Oxford he became very fond of reading Sherlock Holmes stories which were popular at the time being published at the time and began to sort of write his own Sherlock Holmes stories and model himself on this detective as he collected ancient Thai artifacts and identified them as sort of foundation stones of the nation so this kind of dialogue that exists between external influences and the construction of local national identities I think is also a really interesting one. Other influences in terms of counterculture in Thailand come from say for example taking inspiration from George Orwell's 1984 a book that was banned in Thailand in 2014 because too many people started reading it when General Prayut who was leading the military launched a military coup and so and therefore banned reading 1984 which people commonly saw as kind of being quite close kind of parallel to what was happening in Thailand from 2014 onwards so here's a kind of an artwork where someone is walking across the face of the military general and that also kind of says something very very specific in terms of the cultural specificity of the value of heads and feet in Thai culture and I think this is the case in other cultures of Asia and the Middle East as well it's extremely rude it's the rudest thing that you can do in Thailand to connect your foot with somebody's head because the head is the highest part of the body and the foot is the lowest part of the body so in this artwork where someone is actually placing their foot on the military general's head that's an indication that this is intended to be extremely offensive and derogatory so a lot of what we're also doing in terms of cultural studies is reading works in terms of their own the cultural context of their own development as well as through a kind of a wider theoretical lens my last slides talking about these connections about protest and international influences comes from the way in which the Hunger Games film gave birth to the symbol that Thais use in their ongoing and continued demonstrations against military rule in Thailand where the three finger salute has become up until now the common way of expressing resistance to the military and is taken directly from from a Hollywood movie so there's all kinds of connections in terms of the languages of of counterculture that are developed through and around external influences and in very recent Thai street demonstrations actually one of them was was was organized where everyone dressed up as characters from the Harry Potter novels which you wouldn't normally think of being particularly sort of a particularly kind of revolutionary but people adopt different modes for expressing their kind of cultures of resistance which is a big part of the kinds of issues that we're looking at so I think that was my last slide and on a note of unrest and again yeah open up the floor to questions and check the chat okay you can see something from Hang Lu that says good to know that we have the flexibility I think that's a good point to pick up on actually because the way in which degree programs are structured at SOAS does give us a lot of flexibility I mean we have for both comparative literature and cultural studies we have core modules that people have to take but aside from that there's an incredible amount of flexibility in terms of how you then make up the rest of your degree and you're able to do that through a focus on particular regional interests as well so if you come to SOAS as many people do with a particular interest in one part of the world you should be able to reflect that through most of your degree maybe we just invite some any classes on Thai literature that's a good question we in the past when we had more staff working on Thailand we did have specific Thai literature courses now we have more general courses on Southeast Asian literature so we run one MA module called War Revolution and Independence that includes Thailand as well as Vietnam, Burma, Indonesia and Malaysia but a lot of my references in the cultural studies program are also to Thailand as well so we're bringing in references to Thai literature but no specific modules any longer sadly on Thai literature I wish I'm not sure if that's directed to comparative literature but just to say that yet we we welcome people with backgrounds in other degrees and other disciplines so and and some of some of the most sort of creative and interesting approaches to literature actually in in contemporary comparative literature come from and from interdisciplinary work so there's that yeah we we strongly encourage that that kind of mixing of academic fields and backgrounds so if you don't know if you want to do comparative literature but you're coming from a different area or training definitely you're welcome to I mean give it a go it'll yeah I'm sure you can add something to the field should we just respond to your question and I'm sure Rachel could come in and if I've missed something but just to say that you can take modules that are not in your MA program there's actually a list on the website of any degree actually it's called the postgraduate open options and there will be a list of school-wide modules you can take that from any from any program that you're enrolled in for comparative literature and I think for cultural studies as well you have 30 credits that you can take from the open options list so that's two 15 credits class or one year long class although I think generally we don't have any more 30 credit classes but and so that's like that's two options also just to say that in CCLPS we have a really big list of of guided options and that's sometimes called list A depending on how the degree is it's just written up and those also often come from different from different areas in the school so we do offer for example in the guided options we can offer things like diaspora studies sometimes history modules and religion modules and and anthropology modules and so there are options in the guided options as I'm sorry and the open options as well as in the um the list A guided options to take from outside the right department I don't think I have anything to add to that care that's extremely sorrow see the next question oh that's a good so I can answer Holden's question we're doing a lot to change methods of assessment so written coursework I mean that includes it's a rubric that sort of covers things like group presentations so I can tell you that for the cultural studies core course well there are two modules two 15 credit modules in this in the in the module that we teach in term two the first part of the assessment which is worth 30 percent of the module is a is a written essay but the second two so that's another 70 percent of the assessment 50 percent is a group presentation and 20 percent is a reflection on that group presentation so yes group presentations definitely um part of the way that we go about things for another module I teach which would be an open option I think on on on our degrees we do some of the some of the assessment in terms of podcasts so we're definitely widening out the way in which we're doing we're asking for coursework to be presented um not just as written essays it I think the the distinction really is between written coursework an exam an examination a written examination which is very rare now for for anything other than language classes so we don't tend to have many written examinations at all but always take it as ongoing coursework do you want to add to that Kaya um no just to well just to agree that yeah we're we're we're we're broadening out and opening up and assessment so um for example um in um comparative literature I've just added a component in some of the um in some of the modules for instead of doing an essay doing an annotated bibliography so the idea when you get all your research together we don't actually have to write up the essay so um but you know tell us why you're using the sources and things like that so we're trying to be I mean the idea here is to make sure that no one is unfairly sort of penalized by using of the same type of assessment over and over again so and if there are if you have strengths if every I mean everybody has strengths and weaknesses in terms of the way to present information so as as we're trying to get as much of an array of things as um as possible so hopefully you will find that there is um there is well there is diversity in assessment not just within each module but also within the program of all your modules overall and so that's the goal and we strive to do our best um I see there are a couple of MA comparative literature questions so when we come to them if you're doing a part time um um it's a sosa and if you're if you're doing a part time degree it really depends on I guess and the way in which you um it break down your your your degree so there there's a lot of flexibility in part time so you don't have to do half of your coursework one year and half of it the next year you could actually do all of your coursework one year and your dissertation in your second year or you could do um you know maybe in term one you do two modules and in term two you do three or four although I wouldn't necessarily recommend that particular combination but there's a there's a lot of flexibility to work with the other commitments you have on your time in terms of part time so um I would say that most modules running in our department and in the school are two hours a week unless they are a language class and a language class will probably be four sometimes five hours a week and so if you if you want to do a language and we always encourage people to do languages you want to that will be a bigger time commitment than just doing let's say um two or three or four literature classes per term which will be two hours a week standard um I don't know if that answers your question I'm sorry I can't I'm really happy and especially if you and well I'm really happy to talk with you um before the start of the academic year if you're coming in next year to the M.A. Comparative Literature and talk about what would work best for your schedule but I think being able to sort of um yeah I'm being able to um think about when high demand times are so things that are going to require your attention in work or if you have um caring responsibilities or you're traveling or whatever it is and in your part time might be mean might mean that you you know you have less or more contact hours as required um and then there's a question on the average size of M.A. Complet this year it's about 20 last year it was a little bit higher it was about 24 25 and it depends a little bit on the year um but we are not and we are not huge so we're not going to have 100 students we're also um not tiny which I think is a good thing and so we're we're probably having classes you know and around the 20 let's say and I don't know 15 to 25 is a pretty average range the last few years and then there's a question about um career for comparative literature it's a really good question um it really depends so a few of uh students who have done the M.A. Comparative Literature there I think there are probably one two three most popular sort of areas one is education becoming a teacher I think a lot of students have done that in not just literature but other sort of any discipline and that might be something that if you're thinking about um if you're coming from a background that is a literature might be something that you could add on to that and um having a postgraduate degree in literature um then there's also um academics so a lot of our students want to go on to do a PhD and and that's something that I would say that um a good chunk of students do but not everybody and so if you but it is a place where um your cohort and I can help you if that's the sort of next step you were thinking of I mean talk about it and work out what's best and and then the third would be um translation and publication and publishing excuse me so and I'll I mean depends on um I have to say it depends a bit on the market depends a bit on um on the country and the language but there are definitely opportunities coming out of M.A. Comparative Literature for that and in non-covid years there's also things like that we have access to like the London Book Fair and which often has like a um a market country that that you know that sort of resonates with Soha's area and um and so that is an introduction a potentially an introduction to um comparative literature I'm sorry to publishing and a publishing world there um okay thanks so just to follow up um as our reading list um it's it probably similar to next year but there are some small staffing changes that are going to be coming up so um which means there might be some small syllabus changes um but if you do have questions about um about reading um I recommend for M.A. Comparative Literature uh Susan Bassanett's comparative literature a critical introduction it's um you probably find it in used bookstore definitely find it on Amazon and if you have access to a university library you'll definitely find it there and and it's Susan Bassanett um and and it's a really really good overview of the history of comparative literature it's something we don't focus on as much anymore in in the module because we move more quickly into the contemporary but if you wanted to know where some of these discussions come from um this is the one I would recommend and it's very the language wise it's very accessible it's not too um it's what I'm looking for jargony so it's quite good and and and also you can always contact me but probably I'll know more about what's happening in September August or August September end of August I should say uh early September about what books are coming up and so on so if you wanted to get in touch with me then um I would definitely be happy to update you on a more sort of set schedule and I mean sorry set solo best and set reading best maybe I can pick up Jamie's question as well um Jamie you wanted to know if uh the title gets changed if you add extra elements into the into the program and and it doesn't so you would register for example if you're registered for an MA in music that's the degree you would get and it wouldn't say with cultural studies and vice versa if you did MA cultural studies and you did some music modules it wouldn't appear in the degree title but your transcript would reflect it unlike k.o I'd say also you know you're really welcome to contact me if you have further questions about um about any elements of the cultural studies program um I'll just write my email into the chat um please feel free to contact me we can always set up one-to-one zoom meetings if you have particular questions and do you want to discuss things further so um you know yeah just get in touch you'd like to see the yes I don't know how easy it is to get that cowboy film anymore tears of the black tiger it was released by Miramax it's absolutely brilliant do see it yeah if there aren't any more questions then we can wrap up there I don't know if there are um a few more but um if not do get in touch with us we'd love to hear from you if you have more general questions that are outside the sort of academic content and we'll be having a really informal live chat on April 13th so keep an eye out for that on the website just for general applications around applying what's life at SOAS like what's the community like all of those sorts of things then we'll be more than happy to help but thank you so much for joining thank you to our academics and we hope to see you at SOAS um sometime soon take care everybody thank you bye