New Cross Listed Course for Winter Quarter

Sociology 495: Roland Barthes and Social Semiotics
English 381: Undergraduate level
English 500: Graduate Level

Sociology 495: Roland Barthes and Social Semiotics will be offered this Winter Quarter as a cross listed course with the English Department. Undergraduates may enroll in the English 381 and graduate students may take this course as an Independent Study, using the Eng 500 "Independent Study" designation. Graduate students who choose this option should follow the directions for enrolling in an Independent Study, which can be found on the MAE website and the MAWP website.

This course is designed for upper-division undergraduates and graduate students with a strong interest in the topic who intend to pursue advanced study in the humanities/social sciences. It explores the work of Roland Barthes both in its internal thematic and conceptual economy and in its relation to key strands of classical and contemporary social theory. The agenda is to get a solid understanding of Barthes core concepts and methodological approaches: Texts, Semiotic Methodology and application, Structuralist Theory and applications, Signification (Codes, Myths, Connotation, Denotation, Myths, Signs, Signifiers), Ideology, Power and Resistance, Intertextuality, and the notions of Authors and Readers (Reading practices and Reading strategies). In the process we will learn to think about the central dichotomies of social/cultural/literary theory (structure and agency, mind and body, reason and emotion, material and symbolic, self and other, etc...), as well as seek to find new meanings in Barthes work, respond to his ideas, extend, rework, and rethink his concepts in relation to the Continental Intellectual tradition and our own empirical analysis. A practical emphasis will be placed on the merging and mediation of a) the production, circulation, and consumption of texts, and 2) the practices and ways of reading, de-mythologizing, engaging and utilizing texts in everyday life.

The selection of readings is at once chronological, thematic, and conceptual. Tentative reading list: The Rustle of Language, The Semiotic Challenge, Writing Degree Zero, The Pleasure of the Text, Elements in Semiology, Empire of Signs, The Fashion System, Mythologies, A Lover's Discourse, Camera Lucida, S/Z, and The Neutral.