Cultural Studies in Practice: Toward a ‘Thick Description’ of a Methodology Course in Cultural Studies

Abstract

In this chapter, Jaafar Aksikas provides a unique ‘thick description’ of the methodology course in the Bachelor’s program in cultural studies at Columbia College Chicago (that his colleague Andrews talks about in the preceding chapter). He insists that cultural studies is not just a specific radical intellectual-political project but is also a critical pedagogical project and practice and that the work of taking seriously and reflecting critically on, as well as of widely documenting and sharing, our concrete teaching and pedagogical practices at the level of courses and classroom activities will yield some important benefits. He also sees cultural studies pedagogy as an important ‘way of struggle’ at in the current moment and presents his essay primarily as a call for the need to produce more systematic accounts and ‘thick descriptions’ of the courses we teach and only secondarily as an intervention in the growing debates around issues of methodology and epistemology in cultural studies. Aksikas refuses to make any claims about the successes and merits of the course and warns against seeing his ‘thick description’ as an ideal to be followed. Rather, he wants us to approach it as a singular example of what might get covered in a cultural studies methodology course, as one experimental response to the key question: what is cultural studies?