91109 - Cultural and Creative Industries

Academic Year 2021/2022

  • Teaching Mode: Traditional lectures
  • Campus: Rimini
  • Corso: Second cycle degree programme (LM) in Fashion Studies (cod. 9067)

Learning outcomes

At the end of the course students are expected to acquire: -knowledge of the main definitions and debates on cultural and creative industries, with an interdisciplinary perspective (sociology, cultural studies and cultural policy studies); -the ability to analyse contemporary cases applying the concepts and methods learned.

Course contents

The expression ‘Culture industry’ began its career as an oxymoron; yet today the cultural and creative industries are often invoked as one of the distinguishing traits of our times . Approaches that focus on them as a growing sector of the economy as well as critiques of the pervasive expansion of the commodity-form and standardization have continued to grow in parallel. Becoming ‘creative’ and ‘global’ these industries have increasingly moved at the centre of public debate around broad economic, cultural and political trends and in more intimate and everyday shifts in identities and lifestyles. This course will introduce the key terms of this interdisciplinary debate, developing in particular a sociological approach highlighting the connections with issues of cultural politics and policy. For the year 2020-2021 a specific focus will be on festivals and their significance for the culture of cities.

Readings/Bibliography

Course preparation is based on material available online at the course page on virtuale.unibo.it, where specifications for ATTENDING and for NON ATTENDING students (for whom additional texts and activities are included) are given.


SUGGESTED READING

I list here some books that might be useful to get into the course topic, according to students' specific interests:

M. Banks, Creative Justice: Cultural Industries, Work and Inequality, Rowman & Littlefield, 2017

C. Bishop, Artificial Hells. Participatory Art and the Politics of Spectatorship, London, Verso, 2012

R. Hewison, Cultural Capital: The Rise and Fall of Creative Britain, Verso, 2014

S. Lash and C. Lury, Global Culture Industry: The Mediation of Things, Polity Press, 2006

J. McGuigan, Neoliberal Culture, Basingstoke, Palgrave, 2016.

A. McRobbie, Be Creative: Making a Living in the New Culture Industries, Polity Press, 2016

M. Miles, Limits to Culture: Urban regeneration vs dissident art, Pluto Press, 2015

G. Yudice, The Expediency of Culture, Duke, 2004.

S. Zukin, Loft Living: Culture and Capital in Urban Change, Rutgers University Press, 2014 [1989]

Teaching methods

Lectures and seminars; workshop activities.

Assessment methods

Oral examination, based also on the assessment of active contribution during the course (presentations, individual research and short essays) for attending students. Non attending students must agree with the lecturer how to integrate the study of the course key texts.

Teaching tools

In class we will critically discuss the texts included as key bibliography. We will also use additional material to facilitate active participation in class, with individual study and small group activity.

Office hours

See the website of Monica Sassatelli

SDGs

Gender equality

This teaching activity contributes to the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals of the UN 2030 Agenda.