Introduction to Cultural Studies:
- Types of culture definitions according to A. Kroeber and C. Cluckhohn.
- Culture and nature - unity, opposition or contradiction?
- Science and its basic concepts. Scientific theories and hypotheses, their characteristics, functions, and the role in culture.
- Science and its basic concepts. Determinism - indeterminism - teleologism. Empiricism and rationalism.
- Science and religion - conflicts and the forms of dialogue.
- Science vs. mythology, and magical thinking.
- Rationalism and irrationalism in culture.
- Parasciences and their role in social life.
- Cyberculture, its characteristics and the prospects of development.
- Culture of the global society.
- Symbolic concept of culture and man - Ernst Cassirer’s concept.
- Marxian vision of culture.
- Psychoanalytic theory of man and culture (Freudian concept of man, Freud’s and Jung’s concepts of the unconscious, Jung's theory of archetypes).
- Structuralist concept of culture (culture as language, cultural langue and parole, synchronic and diachronic studies of culture, e.g. on the example of myth).
- Post-structuralism of Foucault and Barthes (the notion of power knowledge, power and language, functioning and influence of contemporary myths).
- Postmodern reality - diagnoses of postmodernists and postmodern theoreticians (Bauman, Baudrillard, Featherstone).
History of culture and civilisation:
- The history of European culture and civilisation: chronological divisions and their justification.
- The nineteenth century in the history of culture and civilisation: the chronological framework and characteristics.
- The modern epoch in the history of culture and civilisation.
- The Middle Ages in the history of culture and civilization.
- The image of the world in European science: transformations and cultural context.
- The technological innovations of the 19th century and their impact on cultural transformations.
- The place of art in European culture: historical aspects.
- The technologies of image and text reproduction in a historical perspective.
- Renaissance art.
- The art of the Middle Ages.
- Art of the Baroque period.
- Art collecting and museology in the context of culture history.
- The avant-garde art in a cultural context.
- The history of Christianity in the context of transformations in European culture.
- History of Islam and Judaism in a cultural context.
- Hinduism and Buddhism: history and cultural context.
Theories of culture:
- Typological problems with defining culture - the variety of criteria. The problem of cultural sources.
- Adaptation as a basic mechanism of culture creation. Sociobiology and its basic assumptions.
- Adaptation as a basic mechanism of culture creation. Analogies between cultural and biological development - A Wierciński.
- Adaptation as a basic mechanism of creating culture. Evolutionary psychology.
- Unconsciousness as a source of culture. S. Freud - culture as a result of repression and sublimation. Culture as a source of suffering.
- Culture as a symbolic system. The origin and types of symbols.
- Language and communication systems as a source of culture. Anthropolinguistics, E. Sapir and B. L. Whorf. Language and the image of the world.
- Language and communication systems as a source of culture. Cognitive linguistics. The role of metaphor and metonymy in creating culture.
- Non-linguistic communication systems and their role in culture.
- Values as a source of culture. The problem of values existence, and the types of values.
- Values as a source of culture. The problem of universalism of values – a philosophy and cultural anthropology perspective.
- Intercultural dialogue and the forms of acculturation.
- Confrontation of traditional value systems with globalisation processes, the prospects for the solution.
- Characteristics of popular culture.
- Cyberculture and globalisation.
- The culture of the Internet.
Methodology of cultural studies:
- Compare the advantages and disadvantages of quantitative and qualitative research in social sciences.
- "Oral history" as a method of studying the culture past.
- The method of interview in humanities.
- Focus group interview.
- Survey methods in the study of culture.
- The rules of survey design.
- Evoked and existing sources.
- Semiotic analysis of cultural texts.
- Stages of the research process. Discourse analysis.
- Quantitative content analysis.
- Observation as a research method.
- The use of the ethnographic approach in the organisation and market research.
- Rules for sample selection in quantitative research.
- Principles of sample selection in qualitative research.
- Ethical problems of qualitative research.
- Research into the Internet and new media.