Something I found particularly interesting about the Hutcheon article was it's emphasis upon culture as a primary driving mechanism behind how a work is adapted. Cultural studies are, in my personal opinion, one of the most undervalued forms of academic discourse. I am a firm believer in the fact that true understanding of a literary work requires a basic, if not deep understanding of the cultural context in which it was created. When we read this article, I believe we were talking about Shakespeare. So if we went into our Shakespearean unit with no knowledge about the social structure, significance of plays as an entertainment media, or underlying cultural context of the subject, I feel that our understanding would have been severely limited. One of the first things that my highschool teachers (and assumedly many across the country) did when starting our units on Shakespeare was give us a brief lesson on the cultural climate of the time. They told us why plays were made, what parts of society they were tailored to, and how important/influential they could be. I found this incredibly useful as it continued to feed into my knowledge from freshman year of highschool to my freshman year here at Mizzou as I opened my first English course with reading Macbeth.
1. Why is culture so downplayed in modern society?
2. Why would I struggle to find a job if I majored in cultural studies given it's significance to understanding a whole slew of other academic subjects?
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