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Course Directors:	Imre Szeman, University of Alberta, Department of English and Film Studies, Canada
Faculty:	Nicholas Brown, University of Illinois at Chicago, English and African American Studies, Chicago, USA Alexandra Kowalski, Central European University, Sociology and Social Anthropology, Budapest, Hungary Lisa Parks, University of California, Santa Barbara, Film Studies, Santa Barbara, USA Will Straw, McGill University, Art History and Communications Studies, Montreal, Canada

This summer school course has two main aims. First, it will investigate the significant transformations taking place in the sphere of cultural consumption and production in the context of globalization. In doing so, the course will go beyond an assessment of the consequences and repercussions of intensified cultural transfers that have occurred as a result of globalization and consider a more serious and as yet under-explored transformations of the very character of the cultural sphere. Second, it will consider the links between various cultural practices and democracy, and consider the implications of the contemporary transformations of the cultural sphere for democratic futures on both the local and global levels. The course will consider these issues in both their contemporary manifestations and in historical perspective.

We are interested in participants who are pursuing comparative, interdisciplinary research on topics and themes in contemporary culture, globalization, social and cultural theory, and the arts and media. Students in a wide-range of courses in the humanities and social sciences will find this course to be productive, including those studying in Anthropology, Archive and Museum Studies, Communications Studies, Comparative Literature, Cultural Studies, Gender Studies, History, History of Art, Media Studies, Philosophy, Political Science and Sociology.