Slide One: New Historicism and Cultural Studies

Welcome! I’m Dr. Liza Long. In this presentation for English 211, we will learn more about New Historicism and cultural studies as critical approaches to texts. New Historicism is a term coined by the Shakespeare scholar Stephen Greenblatt. This form of criticism developed in North America in the latter part of the twentieth century and is an interchangeable term with Cultural Materialism that developed at roughly the same time in the United Kingdom. Cultural studies also developed in the later part of the twentieth century, building on the ideas of Roland Barthes and Mikhail Bakhtin among others. In both types of analysis, you’ll notice that the center of our target is now not the text, but the context.

As we learn more about how to take a New Historicism or cultural studies approach in literary analysis, we’re going to consider some questions that may feel familiar to some of you from your previous experiences with literary analysis. In this type of approach, we will start, as we did with historical/biographical criticism, with this question: Who is the author?

Now you may be thinking, I thought the author was dead! Yes, Barthes killed the author, but now we need to resuscitate the author because for both New Historicism and cultural studies, the author, or at least, the author’s cultural context, matters to our understanding the text.

You may remember that when we briefly reviewed historical/biographical criticism, we were mainly concerned with these questions: Who wrote this text, and when was it written? We have already used biographical context and considered how it illuminates the text when we read Phyllis Wheatley’s poem and contemporary biography.

However, with New Historicism and cultural studies, we will bring in the argument that there are in fact no stable facts in history. History, as you may have heard, is written by the winners. So instead of focusing on historical “facts,” we will be considering something instead that French philosopher Michel Foucault called “the discourse.” We can think of this term as a system of thought, knowledge, or communication that constructs our experience of the world. Since the people in power generally control these systems, subsequent literary theories began to move beyond the context to explore the role that power dynamics play in literature’s creation and dissemination.

Stephen Greenblatt and Louis Montrose are two scholars who are credited with developing New Historicism as an approach to literary texts, working from these ideas that Foucault introduced about history. Cultural Materialism is a term coined by Raymond Williams, who viewed this approach as a combination of left-wing culture studies and Marxist criticism. Cultural studies, as I noted above, developed from the ideas of philosophers like Barthes and Bakhtin. We will read scholarship from Stuart Hall, a Jamaican born philosopher and critic largely viewed as one of the founders of British Cultural Studies.

If you’re thinking that New Historicism and cultural studies approaches depend on the ideas we considered when we studied deconstruction, you’re right. The idea that there’s no stable meaning in a text is like the idea that there are no stable facts in history, and with both types of criticism, we consider why certain meanings are privileged or preferred over others. When we take a New Historicism or cultural studies approach, we will also look at the text as just one of many possible cultural artifacts from its context.

I want to briefly mention Marxist criticism, postcolonial criticism, and ethnic studies here because these could also be considered under a New Historicism umbrella, but I think they deserve their own section because of their more explicit focus on power, marginalization, and sociopolitical structures. With these forms of criticism, we will look at the relationship between dominant and dominated cultures, or higher and lower socioeconomic classes. This is an example of the idea of excluded voices and preferred or privileged meanings that we explored with deconstruction.

Slide Two: Historical/Biographical Criticism: A Reminder

To understand more about how New Historicism and cultural studies work, let’s think back to biographical criticism. At some point in your life as a reader and writer, you’ve looked at an author within their context, to illuminate the text that they wrote. But to do this, we have to make some assumptions. First, we must assume that history is something we can actually know. And second, we must assume that literature actually mirrors or reflects some kind of historical reality. This is the idea that maybe history can be objective, fact-based, or “true” in some meaningful sense of the word.

Slide Three: New Historicism and Cultural Studies

But both New Historicism and cultural studies approaches start with the premise that there’s no such thing as a knowable, objective history. Instead, we focus on the text as an artifact within its own cultural framework. We cannot forget that literature often has a political function, and this is a question we can explore with a New Historicism or cultural studies approach. And as we noted earlier, literature can express ideas about power structures, either intentionally or unintentionally, by what is included or excluded from the narrative.

Thus, instead of looking for objective truth, with New Historicism and cultural studies, we are looking for cultural constructs. How did a culture frame meaning and truth within its time period, for example? We look to literature to see what it can reveal about a culture within a certain time period. With New Historicism, history itself becomes a text to be interrogated. With cultural studies, a literary text becomes one of many types of cultural artifacts. If you’ve ever been interested in film studies or media studies, these are both cultural studies approaches.

I personally think these types of criticism can be pretty fun, and I really enjoyed thinking about the assignment we will use to practice New Historicism and cultural studies. Some questions you might consider include the following:

• How do people think?
• How was society organized?
• What stereotypes or taboos existed when this text was written?
• How is the text an artifact of its culture?
• Are the dominant forces in a culture “totalizing” or is culture’s power incomplete? (Harpham 1991)

As you think about the contemporary literature we have been reading in this class, you can see how thinking about the text as a cultural artifact might shape or inform the way that you perform your analysis.

Slide Four: History as Text and the Discourse

Michel Foucault is one of the most influential thinkers along with Derrida in terms of modern literary criticism. The French critics had quite an influence on our literary analysis today. One of Foucault’s more profound insights, which I mentioned previously, was that written history itself is a text, something that can be analyzed and even deconstructed. Foucault argues that any society’s norms are in fact, social constructs. Societal norms are the things that we agree are correct or incorrect in terms of our behavior within society. New Historicism can throw into confusion the whole idea of what is normal. (I usually tell students that “normal” is a setting on a washing machine, and that’s about all I know about this word). You will be reading an excerpt from Foucault in this section of the book. Here’s a quote from his 1982 essay “The Subject and the Power” that shows how he thinks about the role of the individual in society: “Maybe the target nowadays is not to discover what we are but to refuse what we are. We have to imagine and to build up what we could be to get rid of this kind of political “double bind,” which is the simultaneous individualization and totalization of modern power structures.”

Slide Five: Popular Culture and Texts

With cultural studies, we are more concerned with how literary texts are just one of many cultural artifacts. Barthes, Bakhtin, Hall, and other cultural studies scholars all question the nature of texts within the culture that creates, receives, and is shaped by them. For cultural studies, meaning is constructed through a feedback loop of production and consumption (Bakhtin called this process “dialogism”). The interpretation of a text and its critical reception inevitably changes over time. And as Hall notes, the dominant culture (the people in charge) have an interest in making sure they control the definitions of culture. In the passage you’ll read, Hall notes that “’Cultural change’ is a polite euphemism for the process by which some cultural forms and practices are driven out of the centre of popular life, actively marginalised.”

To better understand this idea, let’s consider a relatively new social media phenomenon that most of us are familiar with: Cancel culture. This term is used to describe the practice of rejecting or boycotting a person, company, or creative work because the entity is somehow found objectionable or offensive. How would cultural studies scholars approach this phenomenon?

First, it’s important to note that cultural studies scholars could employ a wide variety of approaches because the field is so intersectional. But here are a few approaches we might expect to see:

1. Historical Context: Cancel culture could be understood as a continuation of broader historical practices of ostracism and social exclusion. Cultural studies scholars might examine how cancel culture has evolved over time, drawing connections with past movements such as McCarthyism or the Red Scare, or with historical practices of shunning and excommunication.
2. Power Dynamics: Central to cultural studies is the analysis of power dynamics within cultural practices. Scholars might investigate how cancel culture is used as a tool by different groups to enforce or challenge norms, ideologies, and hierarchies. They might consider how power imbalances shape who is targeted by cancel culture and how the consequences of cancellation are distributed.
3. Media and Communication: Cultural studies often explores how media and communication technologies shape culture. Scholars might examine how social media platforms enable and amplify cancel culture, how news media frame and sensationalize cancelation stories, or how public figures navigate the attention economy in the age of cancel culture.
4. Identity and Representation: Cancel culture often intersects with issues of identity, representation, and cultural appropriation. Cultural studies scholars might examine how cancel culture is informed by discourses of race, gender, sexuality, and other dimensions of identity, and how it affects the representation and visibility of marginalized groups.
5. Moral Panics: Cultural studies is interested in moral panics and how they shape public discourse and policy. Scholars might explore how cancel culture is framed in public discourse, how it’s portrayed in media narratives, and how it influences political debates and policy-making.
6. Counter-Culture and Resistance: Cultural studies often examines counter-cultural movements and resistance to dominant cultural norms. Scholars might analyze how individuals and groups push back against cancel culture, the tactics they use, and the strategies they employ to resist social censure.
7. Ethical Considerations: Finally, cultural studies scholars might grapple with the ethical dimensions of cancel culture. They might explore questions about accountability, redemption, forgiveness, and the limits of public shaming and ostracism as means of social change.

The specific approaches and themes that scholars take will likely be influenced by their disciplinary backgrounds, theoretical frameworks, and personal values and beliefs. When you choose to take a cultural studies approach, you would likely focus on just one or two aspects of a list like this.

Slide Six: How to Do New Historicism/Cultural Studies Criticism

The previous slide probably gave you some ideas about how to take a cultural studies approach to a text. So how do we do New Historicism? As we look at this list of possible techniques, remember that you don’t need to do all these things in your analysis. As with our cultural studies list, any one of the approaches on this list would work, and you could also combine approaches. For example, you could look at both social and cultural constructs and identify power dynamics. Or you could consider the historical context and look at historical change and continuity as it relates to your text. I like to pay attention to what interests me most about a text as I read. What elements of the text make me curious about the context? Remember that with this type of criticism, you will need to cite outside sources. I often use Wikipedia as a starting point, especially to learn more about authors and their historical periods. However, try to move beyond Wikipedia for the sources you cite in your paper. JSTOR is an excellent database that you can use for your research.

Slide Seven: Applying New Historicism/Cultural Studies Criticism

Let’s look at our example text, “Lament for Dark Peoples” by Langston Hughes. Listen as I read the poem.

“I was a red man one time,
But the white men came.
I was a black man, too,
But the white men came.

They drove me out of the forest.
They took me away from the jungles.
I lost my trees.
I lost my silver moons.

Now they’ve caged me
In the circus of civilization.
Now I herd with the many—
Caged in the circus of civilization.”

As you listened, what questions did you have about the context? We know this poem was written in 1926. A quick search reveals that Langston Hughes was an influential African American poet during the period known as the Harlem Renaissance. Knowing this basic context can help us to understand the speaker and his relationship to “white civilization” better. In our textbook, I have walked you through how to do some basic research in JSTOR to provide additional context. I have also shown you how to use this text as a cultural artifact, positioning it in the context of the Harlem Renaissance, then reconsidering the text in light of its current reception. Considering how your reception of a text might differ from a reader who was contemporary with the poet is an example of how New Historicism can overlap with reader response criticism. Once you’ve researched the context, you’ll make an argument about the text using some aspect of culture, power dynamics, social constructs, or some other contextual approach.

Slide Eight: New Historicism Terms to Use (Lots!)

We have a lot of terms to master in this unit. Let’s start with the author. Remember that with New Historicism, we are not doing biographical criticism. The author is part of Foucault’s idea of the discourse, where both history and text are a form of conversation, and there’s not an objective “knowable” truth about the author. The author is just part of the system of discourse that existed during the time when the text was written. As with Reader Response, we will think more about the implied author rather than the actual author. Who is the implied author in terms of the text’s context?

We’ve covered intention already, both here and in our sections on biographical criticism and New Criticism. As with New Criticism, New Historicism does not consider an author’s intent to be meaningful, even if it could be “known,” (such as through the author’s own writings) because the author’s supposed intent would be shaped and determined by the cultural constructs of the period when the text was written and because readers will use their own cultural context to “create” author intent as they read the text in its new context. We can think about the implied author though: what would the author be expected to write? And how does that expectation play out in the text?

Cultural Materialism, as we learned, is the British version of New Historicism. If you encounter the term Cultural Materialism, it basically means New Historicism.

Culture is a particular society. Think about the texts that we’ve been reading in this course. What is the culture in which they were produced? How does the text reflect that culture? For example, do you see evidence of power dynamics? Do the characters follow norms or conventions that seem arbitrary? Understanding the culture that produced the work is important to this type of criticism. We’ll see some overlap in this critical method with other fields, most notably history, but also anthropology.

As we have already learned, Foucault’s idea of the discourse is a system of thought, knowledge, or communication that constructs our experience of the world. When we consider a text’s context, we can also consider how our understanding of the discourse has changed. Think of the popular holiday song “Baby, It’s Cold Outside.” What cultural constructs and norms dictated relationships between men and women during that period? And how is that same text perceived today? Think about that difference, and I think that can help you to clarify, the challenge of New Historicism. Is it “fair” to judge a text on modern terms?

Another idea from Foucault is episteme, a term which comes from the Greek word for knowledge. This is how Foucault discussed the rules about “legitimate” knowledge that dominate a particular culture in a particular period. It’s a general system of thought within a culture. We are seeing some dissonance in our own culture’s episteme right now. Think about how political parties in the United States might define what constitutes “legitimate” knowledge differently, for example.

Paradigm also comes from Greek, meaning pattern or example. In ancient Greek, it was simply an illustration of something. This term was introduced in its modern sense by Thomas Kuhn, an American philosopher of science.  A paradigm tells us what problems are legitimate (what we can investigate) and what solutions to those problems are acceptable. Paradigm and episteme are sometimes used as synonyms, but they have differences, with paradigm being more narrowly focused on a specific field of inquiry, and episteme representing the more nebulous connections among paradigms.

Literary History is another branch of this type of criticism. For example, we might look at 19th century Russian literature, the so-called “Golden Age,” and how texts produced during this period seem to be in conversation with each other. Chekhov was very heavily influenced by Tolstoy, we have Dostoevsky writing at the same time, with Gogol and Turgenev just slightly predating them. Russia produced an amazing flowering of literature in the 19th century that influenced world literature. With literary history, we are looking at these kinds of connections: what connections can we see in 17th century British literature, or the Enlightenment, or the Renaissance? We would call these “periods” of literature in New Historicism. Similarly, a tradition is a genre that has a lengthy history. For example, think of the epic tradition in the Western canon, which stretches from Homer to modern works.

Finally, influence is important in New Historicism because texts are not created in a vacuum. We might consider influence in a few different ways. It’s been said, for example, that there are only two plots in the world: The Hero’s journey, and a stranger comes to town. How much does one text borrow from another, and when does borrowing cross a line? One example familiar to some of you would be Wicked, a deconstruction of the acclaimed Wizard of Oz. Even the movie Star Wars is basically Joseph Campbell’s “Hero with a Thousand Faces” set in space.

Slide Nine: Cultural Studies Terms and Questions

Cultural studies approaches use many of the same terms that New Historicism does. Here are a few additional terms you should know. If you’ve taken an anthropology or sociology class, these terms may be familiar to you.

An artifact is any object or item that has significance within a particular culture. Artifacts can range from everyday objects like clothing or tools, to more culturally specific items like religious symbols or artworks. In cultural studies, artifacts are often analyzed as symbolic representations of cultural values, beliefs, and practices.

Representation refers to the ways in which individuals, groups, or ideas are depicted in various forms of media or cultural texts. Cultural studies scholars examine how representations can be shaped by power dynamics, ideology, and social norms, and how they can influence perceptions and behaviors. Representation can encompass a wide range of media, including literature, film, television, advertising, and digital media.

Cultural appropriation refers to the adoption or use of elements from one culture by members of another culture, often without regard for the cultural significance or context of those elements. Cultural studies scholars analyze cultural appropriation as a form of power imbalance, where dominant groups exploit and profit from the cultural practices of marginalized groups. They may also examine the ways in which cultural appropriation can reinforce stereotypes, perpetuate inequality, and contribute to the erasure of cultural identities.

Identity, within cultural studies, refers to the ways in which individuals and groups define themselves and are defined by others within a particular cultural context. Identity is shaped by a complex interplay of factors, including race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, religion, nationality, and social class. Cultural studies scholars examine how identity is constructed, negotiated, and contested through cultural practices, representations, and power dynamics.

Lifestyle, in a cultural studies context, refers to the patterns of behavior, values, and preferences that characterize a particular individual, group, or society. Cultural studies scholars analyze lifestyle as a reflection of cultural norms, ideologies, and social structures. They may examine how lifestyle choices are influenced by factors such as class, race, gender, and media.

Media is an important concept in cultural studies. The term refers to the various channels and technologies used to communicate and disseminate information, ideas, and culture. This includes traditional forms of media such as newspapers, television, radio, and film, as well as digital media such as social media, websites, and streaming platforms. Cultural studies scholars analyze media as a powerful cultural force that shapes our perceptions, values, and behaviors. They may examine how media texts are produced, circulated, and consumed, and how they influence public discourse, political debates, and social movements.

Popular culture refers to the cultural products and practices that are widely consumed and enjoyed by a large audience. This includes forms of entertainment such as music, film, television, literature, fashion, and sports, as well as everyday activities like cooking, gaming, and social media. Cultural studies scholars analyze popular culture as a site of meaning-making, where dominant cultural values and ideologies are both reflected and contested. They may examine how popular culture is produced, consumed, and interpreted, and how it shapes our sense of identity, belonging, and social norms.

Kitsch refers to art, objects, or cultural products that are considered to be in poor taste or of low artistic value, often due to their sentimental or overly decorative nature. Cultural studies scholars may analyze kitsch as a form of cultural production that reflects and reinforces particular values and ideologies. They may also examine how kitsch can be used as a tool for social critique or subversion, and how it can challenge dominant cultural norms and conventions. Think back to Stuart Hall’s essay, for example.

Slide Ten: Limitations of New Historicism and Cultural Studies

What about the limits of New Historicism and cultural studies? These include the risks of relativism—instead of looking for universal truths in a text, as we did with New Criticism, we are considering the text as it exists in its historical context. Some critics also contend that New Historicism and cultural studies approaches overemphasize power dynamics. We will continue to explore power relationships when we look at Marxist, postcolonial, and ethnic studies lenses in the next section.

Determinism takes away author intent entirely. It says that the historical context makes the text’s contents inevitable; that the author could not have written any other text. Some scholars may selectively apply historical evidence—don’t do this. When you consider the context, don’t “pick sides” in your approach. Like determinism, New Historicism and cultural studies can treat literary texts “merely” as cultural artifacts rather than considering them as works of art.

Finally, there’s the tendency for imposing our contemporary values onto historical texts—though considering how an author’s reception has changed, as we did with Langston Hughes, is an interesting question because we are looking at how culture changes over time. This exploration of how culture changes is common in cultural studies criticism.

Slide Eleven: The Great Gatsby

For our New Historicism and cultural studies theoretical response, we will take a slightly different approach compared with previous chapters. Everyone will read an excerpt from The Great Gatsby (1925) by F. Scott Fitzgerald and review four film trailers and reviews below. You’ll then choose between two options—New Historicism or cultural studies—to complete your theoretical response. Note that in both cases, your theoretical response will be slightly longer (750-1000 words) this week because you’ll need to integrate multiple sources.

For both options, you’ll need to do a little research about F. Scott Fitzgerald to learn more about his time period but remember that this type of criticism is not biographical criticism. We want to know how the text reflects the time in which the author lived. Think about things like culture, the discourse, ideology, power structure, norms, and how the text is one artifact of these elements. You’ll also likely need to do some research about what was going on in the mid-1920s in America.

As part of your research, consider the voices that are missing from the artifacts. What does this tell us about the culture that produced these artifacts? Finally, how do we view these cultural artifacts today?

I hope you have fun with these critical approaches. Looking at a text within its context, while also applying Foucault’s approach to history, will set the stage for Marxist, postcolonial, ethnic studies, and feminist criticism, which we will study later in the course. Have a great week, and let me know if you have any questions!