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.