Cultural Marxism is called “critical theory” in many universities today. At Occidental College in California, where a young Barack Obama went after being tutored in Marxism by communist Frank Marshall Davis, “Critical Theory and Social Justice” is now an interdisciplinary department, “drawing on ideas from across traditional academic disciplines.” The official department website describes Critical Theory as referring to “various bodies of theory and method—Marxism, psychoanalysis, the Frankfurt School, deconstruction, critical race studies, queer theory, feminist theory, postcolonial theory, and intersectionality—that interrogate the essentialist assumptions that underlie social identities.”
Courses include:
- Mother Goose to Mash-Ups: Children’s Literature and Popular Texts
- Psychic Life of Violence
- Queer Los Angeles: Cruising the Archive
- Bodies for Exchange
- Whiteness
If you are as curious as I was, you’re wondering about the content of the course “Mother Goose to Mash-Ups: Children’s Literature and Popular Texts.” Here’s the official description:
“Why did the London Bridge fall down? Is Rub-a-dub-dub really about bath time? Why didn’t an old man live in a shoe? Who is more imperialist, Babar or Peter Pan? Is Tinky Winky gay? Is South Park a children’s show? Is Harry Potter a Hero? How tired was Rosa Parks? Using different critical approaches, this course will examine children’s poetry, picture books, novels, cartoons, feature films, and music videos. Analysis will include topics related to gender, race, culture, and nation, as they play out in the aesthetics, images, and poetics of children’s texts.”
The course “Whiteness” is described this way:
“This course seeks to engage the emergent body of scholarship designated to deconstruct whiteness. It will examine the construction of whiteness in the historic, legal, and economic contexts which have allowed it to function as an enabling condition for privilege and race-based prejudice. Particular attention will be paid to the role of religion and psychology in the construction of whiteness.”
Cliff Kincaid is the Director of the AIM Center for Investigative Journalism, and can be contacted at cliff.kincaid@aim.org This blog is excerpted from an article he wrote for Accuracy in Media.
Photo by Ted Van Pelt 
Photo by Ted Van Pelt
