A Lecture on Cultural Studies at the College of Arts, University of Basrah, by Dr. Mohamed Bouazza

Under the patronage of Prof. Dr. Majid Abdel Hameed Al Kaabi, Dean of the College of Arts, and within the college’s cultural unit program, Dr. Mohamed Bouazza, Professor of Higher Education at the University of Moulay Ismail Meknes/Morocco, delivered a lecture on the college’s platform entitled: “Cultural Studies: Essence and Transformations”.

Dr. Bouazza pointed out that cultural studies is a multidisciplinary field that relies on multiple theories and approaches, from which it selects what serves its goals, which revolve around interrogating the relationship of culture to power. Culture in cultural studies is a subject of hegemony and criticism of hegemony at the same time. It is a site for conflict and negotiation of social forces, and a tool for social conflict.

Dr. Mohamed Bouazza reviewed the stages of cultural studies.  The most important of these are the beginnings, the structural turn, and the post-structural turn that witnessed a radical transformation in the curricula and topics.  The focus became on the issues of representation, identity, language, gender, and race, with a move away from the topics of class and social conflict that characterized the beginnings, and as it began to move away from the economy and its impact on society and culture to the discourse.  As for the most important problems of our cultural studies, Dr. Muhammad Bouazza limits it to the fact that most of its foreign origins have not been translated, and that they are linked to literature.