This seminar module introduces a range of critical approaches to ideas of culture and encourages their assessment and application, paying particular attention to the role of literature and visual culture (art, film, advertising). Organised broadly historically and focussing on the twentieth century, it considers different appraoches to 'culture', including key debates around the concept of 'high' and 'low' culture and power, the impact of mass culture, culture industries, gender and culture, modernism and postmodernism. Theorists to be studied include Matthew Arnold, Raymond Williams, Theodor Adorno, Walter Benjamin, Roland Barthes, Pierre Bourdieu, Michel Foucault, Dick Hebdige, Simone de Beauvoir, Judith Butler and Fredric Jameson. Assessment is by means of joint or individual seminar presentation which is then written up and a longer essay.