Repeat, Remake, Refresh: Authenticity and Authorship in the 21st Century

Undergraduate / Graduate

What makes an artwork "original" today? How do we decide if a food dish is "authentic"? Who is the author of a digital meme? Is there a common metric which can rate the originality and authenticity of a film or a piece of music (Tomato-meter and IMDB ratings notwithstanding)? This course will investigate these and other questions to understand why and how authenticity and originality continue to matter in today's world of global information and capital flows. Taking three case studies - cultural performance genres like traditional music/dance, cross-cultural film remakes, and digital publics - we will unpack how an ostensibly "foreign" cultural object becomes domiciled in a new cultural location. We will also discuss which practices and objects resist such adaptation. We will read scholars and writers from a range of disciplines - anthropology, cinema and media studies, history - dealing with the construction of cultural authenticity and circulation. Our readings will be supplemented each week by a class screening where we will encounter materials which will serve as examples to analyze authenticity and authorship in today's world. For instance, through the screening materials, students will be encouraged to examine if a film remake can ever be original, if the musical traditions of an itinerant community can be claimed as national, and how a globally circulating digital meme can come to acquire different meanings and significances in different places.