Course summary

The MA Cultural Studies offers an interdisciplinary approach to the study of contemporary culture, politics and society. As a Masters Cultural Studies student, you have the opportunity to develop the theoretical skills and methodological tools to engage with the critical contemporary issues as they are expressed in popular culture. You engage with some of the key theorists and the significant debates in the Cultural Studies tradition, from its inception in Britain dating from the 1970s to its current concerns in the USA and internationally. The programme enables you to apply a Cultural Studies approach to particular examples, case studies, events and consumer technologies and to larger-scale institutions or economic and political systems. Cultural Studies permits close analysis of topics such as race, youth, music, fashion, and creative economies, as well as embracing the history of sexuality, emotions and affect, national identities and popularism and the cultural dynamics of precarity and austerity, art, and cultural expression for the new feminist activism. The analysis the Cultural Studies approach offers is geared towards intervention in current debates. Why study MA Cultural Studies at Goldsmiths

• Explore the impact and influence Cultural Studies has on a wide range of research interests, not only in the English-speaking world, but also internationally. The programme will teach you about a range of Cultural Studies methodologies that you can then apply in your own writing and research. It will also include a Critical Ethnography Afternoon where students explore the place of this kind of research in the cultural studies tradition.

• Examine the effect media technologies have on the cultural practices of production and consumption. As the course has a strong focus on new developments in sonic technology, this might include, for example, emerging local music scenes. This might also involve a focus on changes in fashion consumption, such as platform providers, and the role of influencers.

• You will have the opportunity to submit a five-minute iPhone film as part of your assessment.

• Media, Communications and Cultural Studies is a large and highly interdisciplinary department, and the themes of cultural studies run through the research interests of many academics within it. These span the fields of music, film, digital media, aesthetics, cultural industries, gender and queer studies, post colonialism, journalism, political economy, critical race studies, and critical theory.

• Discover your own path through the fields of Cultural Studies, and apply what you have learned to your own research in the form of your dissertation on which every student receives appropriate guidance and support. Media, Communications and Cultural Studies (MCCS) is an extremely broad and open-minded department – even by Goldsmiths standards – and we are committed to making your interests as welcome as possible.

• Immerse yourself in a postgraduate environment shared by numerous creative practice-based MA programmes, such as MA Filmmaking, MA Radio, MA Journalism, and MA Script Writing. You will also share interests and activities with students from several sister programmes, such as MA Race, Media and Social Justice, MA Post-Colonial Culture & Global Policy, and MA Cultural Industries.

• Access extra-curricular activities with field trips, and Sound System Outernational (SSO) events offering opportunities to meet up with students on other programmes, and become involved in Lewisham’s local music scene. Students interested in the fashion industry will have the chance to visit exhibitions and design studios.

• Study in one of London’s liveliest and most diverse communities. You will study in a stimulating critical and creative research-led environment, which will prepare you for employment in a range of culture-related professions.