MASTER OF ARTS IN LITERARY, CULTURAL AND PERFORMANCE STUDIES

Master of Arts in Literary, Cultural and Performance Studies (MALCPS)

Program Background

The Master of Arts in Literary, Cultural, and Performance Studies program is an innovative interdisciplinary program. Graduates of this program are equipped with the critical tools, perspectives, and methodologies necessary to study literature, cultural phenomena, and performance in their proper historical, aesthetic, and geopolitical contexts. As graduate students advance in the program, they will receive increasingly focused supervision from mentors who are active researchers.

The literary studies track prepares students to embark on a relevant program of research focused on the literary production of the Philippines and the Asia-Pacific by equipping them with a strong foundation in literary theory, historiographical inquiry, comparative methods, and interdisciplinary approaches.

The cultural studies track draws from contemporary critical and cultural theories to examine the local and global in various cultural texts and practices and to demonstrate how their production, dissemination, reception, and consumption are informed by power and are inviolably linked with critical notions of aesthetics, representation, ideology, politics, ethics, and other key concepts.

The performance studies track examines various types of performances from the stage to the streets, from private to public spectacles, and explores not only what they mean but also how they signify, towards what ends, and for whose interests.

Overall, the program aims to upgrade the skills of scholars so that they may contribute to the growth of scholarship in the humanities in the country and foster a critical understanding and appreciation of various literary texts, cultural practices, and performance traditions, especially those from the Philippines.

Master of Arts in Literary, Cultural and Performance Studies (MALCPS)

Course Requirements
Core Courses				9 units
Cognates				6 units
Specialization				9 units
Thesis				6 units
Total				30 units

MALCPS Core Courses

Course Code	Course Title	Brief Description
LCP221M	Research in Literary, Cultural and Performance Studies	An introduction to research methods useful in the study of literature, culture, and performance.
LCP260M	Theory: Literature, Culture, Performance	A study of critical theories necessary to the study of literature, culture, and performance.
LCP271M	Directed Readings in Literary, Cultural and Performance Studies	An intensive study of the techniques in writing poetry, including discussion and critical evaluation of the works of contemporary poets in conjunction with a workshop concentrating on the students’ own output.

MALCPS Cognate Courses

Course Code	Course Title	Brief Description
LCP272M	Literature, Culture and Performance in the Philippines	A reading course in the history of Philippine literature and the various forms and sites of cultural studies and performance studies in the Philippines, with emphasis on major authors, themes, movements, and periods.
LCP280M	Translations: Sites, Texts, Media	A course on translation, its theories, its praxis in various forms, contexts, and media.

MALCPS Specialization Courses

Course Code	Course Title	Brief Description
LIT711M	Literary Masterpieces	A reading course on literary masterpieces, with emphasis on works that have significantly changed the course of literary history in Asia, Africa, Europe, South America, and the States; a brief survey of major literary movements and themes will be given at the start of the course.
LIT730M	Literary History of the Philippines	A reading course in the history of Philippine literature in the various vernacular and foreign languages, with emphasis on major authors, theme, movements periods.
LIT660M	Literary Theory	A study of theories, principles, and techniques of literary criticism, from antiquity to the later twentieth century emphasis on major schools criticism Such as Romanticism New Criticism, Formalism, Structuralism, Marxism, Feminist Criticism, and Post-structuralism.
LIT781M	The Culture Concept	Culture is one of the most contested concepts across the disciplines and foundational to Cultural Studies. This course acquaints the students with classical, anthropological, sociological, and literary definitions of culture.
LIT217M	Visual and Screen Cultures	This course explores the field of visual and screen cultures through the critical examination of the various modes and media of the visual field, from celluloid to digital, from photography to film and the Internet.
LIT336M	Archipelagic Identities	This is a reading course exploring how the islands and seas, ports and ships, deep waters, and coastal zones in the Philippine archipelago have been imagined in Philippine literature and how they help shape how we imagine the Filipino nation.
LCP222M	Issues and Methods in Performance Research	A reading course on the history of performance in its varied forms in the Philippines: indigenous, colonial, and contemporary, paying attention to the emergence and endurance of performance traditions and the genres of performance in the traditions of theater, dance, and music.
LCP273M	Performance Analysis	The course takes up approaches and methods in the close analysis of performance in its varied forms.

MALCPS Other Courses

Course Code	Course Title	Brief Description
LCP701M	Seminar in Literary, Cultural, & Performance Studies	Special topics in the fields of literary studies, cultural studies, and performance studies.
LIT771M	Postcolonial Studies	This course is a critical examination of the major works and trends in postcolonial studies.
LIT888M	Philippine Critical Tradition	An advanced course on the history and development of the Philippine critical tradition since its inception in the writings of Jose Rizal, and as it burgeoned and resulted in the institution of “Kritika” as an academic field of inquiry in the texts and contexts of, among others, Bienvenido L. Lumbera, Epifanio San Juan, Jr., Virgilio S. Almario, Isagani R. Cruz, and Soledad S. Reyes.
LIT762M	Popular Literature	A study of the history of popular literature and the theoretical approaches to its study; reading of representative works in English and Filipino.
LIT210M	Contemporary Philippine and Southeast Asian Novel	A critical study of representative Philippine and Southeast Asian novels from 1946 to the present.
LIT707M	Literature and Film	A study of the relationship between literature and cinema, and the major theoretical and aesthetic problems this relationship has provoked; verbal and visual language; literary discourses and film discourses; film and fiction.
LIT611M	Teaching Literature	This course explores a range of approaches and techniques in the teaching of literature.
LIT664M	Psychoanalytic Theory	This course aims to critically engage with the important works of psychoanalytic theory. Close readings of Freud, Lacan and Zizek in particular will aid students in the exploration of the relationship of psychoanalytic thought with the study of cultural productions such as literature and film.
LIT331M	Women’s Literature	Close reading of the fiction, poetry, and plays of selected women writers; examines their resolution to the question of the narrative voice, the image of women and women writing reflected in the works and the manner in which the self is presented.
Course code to be determined and approved by OUR	Philippine Gay Culture	An interdisciplinary study of Philippine gay culture from various theoretical and critical perspectives. It is an examination of (male) gender and sexual identities in the Philippines from the pre-colonial era to the 20th century to the present.
Course code to be determined and approved by OUR	Popular Culture	This course is a critical study of the forms and platforms of “the popular” in culture, from mass art, culture industry, celebrity studies, and television studies to blockbuster films, popular music, popular dance, public performances, and Asian pop.
Course code to be determined and approved by OUR	Body	This course takes the “body” as critical locus for intersectional and interdisciplinary inquiries of identity and subjectivity from the optic lens of gender, sexuality, race, and ethnicity.
Course code to be determined and approved by OUR	Consumptions	This course critically engages with cultures of local and global consumptions by closely studying the cultural meanings, practices, performances, and spectacles of consumption from food, commodity, art, media to natural resources.
Course code to be determined and approved by OUR	Philippine Theater	A survey of theatrical traditions and key dramatic texts in the Philippines from pre-colonial to the contemporary times.
Course code to be determined and approved by OUR	Religion and Performance	A critical examination of the complex relationship between religion and performance in various parts of Asia and the Pacific.
Course code to be determined and approved by OUR	Politics and Performance	An examination of the relationship between performance and politics in a transnational context. The course views politics from various signs of power like race, class, ethnicity, sexuality, and gender and shows how performance challenges structures of power and reconfigures the private and public spheres of identity formation.
Course code to be determined and approved by OUR	Performance and the Post-Human	A course that critically engages with performance involving the non-human subjects like natural resources, commodities, animals, and artificial intelligence. Consequently the course engages with ethical questions of identity, subjectivity, and agency.
Course code to be determined and approved by OUR	Disability and Performance	A course exploring disability in various types and sites of performance and interrogates the intersections between disability studies and performance studies.

Thesis (6 units)

Course Code	Course Title	Brief Description
LCP851M onwards	Thesis Writing	The application of the skills and knowledge gained in the program to a problem in the field of literary, cultural, or performance studies.