This course explores the relationship between economic processes (especially capitalism), social formations such as gender, race, ethnicity, nation and sexuality, and the production and consumption of culture, in the various senses of that complex term. We will read fundamental texts of liberal and marxist theory, various attempts to integrate marxist, feminist and anti-racist analyses, and theories that situate culture in relation to industrialization, globalization, and international divisions of labor. We will also take up numerous case studies, analyzing the discourses of class, gender, race and sexuality as they are deployed in and promoted by cultural texts that engage diverse issues of contemporary concern.