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1000+ Literary Theory MCQs – Part 19: Cultural Studies

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← All 25 PartsPart 19 of 25 · Cultural Studies
Cultural Studies

Literary Theory · Part 19 of 25 · 1950s–1980s

Cultural Studies

Birmingham CCCSEncoding / DecodingSubculturePopular Culture

What is Cultural Studies? Cultural studies treats all culture, popular as well as elite, as worth serious study. It took shape at the Birmingham Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies, founded by Richard Hoggart in 1964 and later led by Stuart Hall, whose “Encoding/Decoding” model explained how audiences read media messages.

This part covers the Birmingham School, Stuart Hall, popular culture and everyday life, and general cultural studies. The questions are drawn from previous UGC NET, SET, PhD entrance and Assistant Professor papers, and every answer comes with a short explanation. Tap an option to check your answer.

The Birmingham SchoolStuart HallPopular Culture & Everyday LifeCultural Studies: General

The Birmingham School

1. Who institutionalised Cultural Studies by founding the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies at Birmingham University?

  1. Stuart Hall
  2. Richard Hoggart
  3. Raymond Williams
  4. Richard Johnson
Richard Hoggart, author of The Uses of Literacy (1957), founded the Birmingham Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies in 1964; Stuart Hall succeeded him as director.

2. The key figures in the development of British cultural studies are

A. Richard Hoggart
B. Raymond Williams
C. Stuart Hall
D. Lawrence Grossberg
The most appropriate option is:
  1. A and B only
  2. B and C only
  3. A, B and C only
  4. B, C and D only
Richard Hoggart, Raymond Williams and Stuart Hall (with E.P. Thompson) founded British cultural studies; Lawrence Grossberg is an American cultural studies scholar.

3. E.P. Thompson wrote:

  1. Marxism and Literature
  2. Culture and Society
  3. The Uses of Literacy
  4. The Making of the English Working Class
E.P. Thompson wrote The Making of the English Working Class (1963); Marxism and Literature and Culture and Society are by Raymond Williams, The Uses of Literacy by Richard Hoggart.

4. The cultural studies perspective on culture differs from the Arnoldian–Leavisite perspective on the following grounds:

i. It does not hierarchize popular and serious culture
ii. It is not elitist
iii. It visualizes culture as part of the power structure
iv. It considers culture merely as an intellectual pursuit
  1. ii, iii and iv are correct
  2. i, iii and iv are correct
  3. iv is correct
  4. i, ii and iii are correct
Cultural studies rejects the Arnold–Leavis hierarchy of high over popular culture, is anti-elitist and treats culture as a site of power and struggle, not a merely intellectual pursuit.

5. A cultural group within a larger culture, often having beliefs or interests at variance with those of the larger culture, is termed:

  1. Low culture
  2. Metaculture
  3. Subculture
  4. Popular culture
A subculture is a group within a larger culture whose values or styles diverge from it, a concept developed by Birmingham School critics such as Dick Hebdige.

6. Which book is often said to inaugurate the subject of cultural studies?

  1. Richard Hoggart: The Uses of Literacy
  2. Raymond Williams: The Politics of Modernism
  3. E.P. Thompson: The Poverty of Theory
  4. Stuart Hall: Introduction
Richard Hoggart’s The Uses of Literacy (1957) is regarded as a founding text of cultural studies; Hoggart went on to found the Birmingham CCCS in 1964.

7. What was the centre set up for studying culture at the University of Birmingham called?

  1. Centre for New Cultural Studies
  2. Centre for Contemporary Studies
  3. Centre for Culture Studies
  4. Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies
Richard Hoggart founded the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS) at Birmingham in 1964; Stuart Hall later directed it.

Stuart Hall

8. The idea of “new ethnicities” in post-war Britain was advanced by

  1. Donald Hall
  2. Paul Gilroy
  3. Stuart Hall
  4. Hanif Kureishi
Stuart Hall’s essay ‘New Ethnicities’ (1988) described a shift in Black British cultural politics towards recognising diverse, non-essentialist identities.

9. “In serious, critical intellectual work, there are no ‘absolute beginnings’ and few unbroken continuities.” Who made this statement?

  1. Antonio Gramsci
  2. Stuart Hall
  3. Raymond Williams
  4. Michel Foucault
The sentence opens Stuart Hall’s “Cultural Studies: Two Paradigms” (1980), which traces the culturalist and structuralist strands of British cultural studies.

10. Which theorist uses encoding and decoding in the analysis of cultural texts?

  1. Stephen Greenblatt
  2. Stuart Hall
  3. Homi Bhabha
  4. Louis Montrose
Stuart Hall’s “Encoding/Decoding” (1973) argues that media messages are encoded by producers and decoded by audiences in dominant, negotiated or oppositional ways.

11. Who wrote The Practice of Everyday Life?

  1. Michel Pêcheux
  2. Michel Foucault
  3. Michel de Certeau
  4. Henry Giroux
Michel de Certeau’s The Practice of Everyday Life (1980) analyses how ordinary people use ‘tactics’ such as walking and reading to resist the ‘strategies’ of institutions.

12. Which cultural analyst has combined the study of different dimensions of youth culture with commentary on developments in cultural theory and politics?

  1. Julia Kristeva
  2. Donna Haraway
  3. Linda Hutcheon
  4. Angela McRobbie
Angela McRobbie, trained at the Birmingham CCCS, studied girls’ magazines and youth subcultures while commenting on cultural theory, feminism and politics.

13. Given below are two statements:

Statement I: Consumption is an outcome of self-interest and a maximisation of personal pleasure.
Statement II: There are strong correlations between social status and such things as housing styles, musical tastes and food preferences.
In light of the above statements, choose the correct answer from the options given below:
  1. Both Statement I and Statement II are true
  2. Both Statement I and Statement II are false
  3. Statement I is true but Statement II is false
  4. Statement I is false but Statement II is true
Statement I gives the economic, utility-maximising view of consumption; Statement II reflects Bourdieu’s Distinction, which links status to taste in housing, music and food.

14. ‘The Medium is the Message’ is a concept given by

  1. Marshall McLuhan
  2. Sylvia Plath
  3. Seymour Hersh
  4. Ernest Hemingway
Marshall McLuhan coined ‘the medium is the message’ in Understanding Media (1964), arguing that a medium’s form shapes society more than its content.

15. Which two concepts developed by the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu have become increasingly influential in cultural studies?

A. Dissemination
B. Gynesis
C. Cultural capital
D. Habitus
Choose the correct option:
  1. A and C only
  2. B and C only
  3. C and D only
  4. B and D only
Bourdieu’s cultural capital and habitus are central to cultural studies; dissemination is Derrida’s term and gynesis Alice Jardine’s.

16. Who among the following coined the dictum “the medium is the message”?

  1. Raymond Williams
  2. Marshall McLuhan
  3. Erving Goffman
  4. John Fiske
The Canadian media theorist Marshall McLuhan coined the phrase in Understanding Media (1964).

17. Which two terms from among the following are specifically linked to the work of Pierre Bourdieu?

A. habitus
B. consciousness
C. desire
D. distinction
Choose the correct answer from the options given below:
  1. A and C only
  2. A and D only
  3. B and D only
  4. C and D only
Habitus and distinction are Bourdieu’s terms; his Distinction (1979) shows how taste, shaped by habitus, marks social class.

18. What theory analyzes the relationship between mass culture and popular culture?

  1. French socialist theory
  2. Russian Leninist theory
  3. European Marxist theory
  4. American English
Cultural studies drew on European Marxist theory, from the Frankfurt School to Gramsci, to analyse how imposed mass culture relates to the popular culture of the people.

19. Match List I with List II:

List I (Author)
A. Michel de Certeau
B. John Fiske
C. Pierre Bourdieu
D. Janice Radway
List II (Text)
I. Distinction
II. Reading the Romance
III. Understanding Popular Culture
IV. The Practice of Everyday Life
  1. A-IV, B-I, C-II, D-III
  2. B-III, C-IV, D-I, A-II
  3. A-IV, B-III, C-I, D-II
  4. B-III, C-I, D-IV, A-II
Michel de Certeau: The Practice of Everyday Life; John Fiske: Understanding Popular Culture; Pierre Bourdieu: Distinction; Janice Radway: Reading the Romance.

20. In 1982, who came out with Cultural Industries: A Challenge for the Future of Culture?

  1. Theodor Adorno
  2. Max Horkheimer
  3. Raymond Williams
  4. UNESCO
UNESCO published Cultural Industries: A Challenge for the Future of Culture in 1982, shifting from the singular “culture industry” to plural cultural industries.

21. Which of these is not a contemporary theory of popular culture?

  1. String Theory
  2. Thing Theory
  3. Rubbish Theory
  4. Actor-Network Theory
String theory is a framework in theoretical physics; Thing Theory, Rubbish Theory and Actor-Network Theory are used in cultural analysis.

22. Rebecca Walker’s “Before Hip-Hop Was Hip-Hop” is a:

  1. Satirical essay
  2. Paradoxical essay
  3. Conversational essay
  4. Reflective essay
Rebecca Walker’s piece is a reflective, autobiographical essay recalling her youth and the early culture out of which hip-hop emerged.
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23. How do Ashis Nandy and Vinay Lal interpret the film Lagaan?

i. As catering to two Indian madnesses
ii. The cricket team is symbolic of the nation
iii. Colonialism gets mixed up with emotional nationalism
iv. It is historically authentic
  1. i, ii and iii are correct
  2. iii and iv are correct
  3. ii and iv are correct
  4. i and iv are correct
Nandy and Lal read Lagaan as playing on two Indian passions, cricket and cinema, with the team as the nation and colonialism folded into emotional nationalism, not as historically authentic.

24. According to Pierre Bourdieu, cultural capital is:

  1. Cultural traditions of a society
  2. The great artifacts of a particular culture
  3. Cultural knowledge and competence which empowers an individual
  4. The economy of a culture
Pierre Bourdieu defined cultural capital as the knowledge, skills, tastes and credentials that confer social advantage and help reproduce class distinction.

25. Which Indian critic has made a cultural analysis of the film ‘Roja’?

  1. Tejaswini Niranjana
  2. Susie Tharu
  3. Vandana Shiva
  4. C.T. Indira
Tejaswini Niranjana analysed Mani Ratnam’s Roja in “Integrating Whose Nation? Tourists and Terrorists in Roja” (Economic and Political Weekly, 1994).

26. “The medium is the message” is a phrase coined by:

  1. Raymond Williams
  2. Marshall McLuhan
  3. Stanley Kubrick
  4. Stuart Hall
Marshall McLuhan coined the phrase in Understanding Media (1964), arguing that the form of a medium shapes society more than the content it carries.

27. Which of the following statements is/are correct with regard to ‘popular culture’?

i. Popular culture refers to a set of practices, beliefs and objects that are prevalent in a society.
ii. Popular culture influences an individual’s attitude towards certain topics.
iii. Popular culture upholds the noble and dignified values of a given society.
iv. Popular culture distinguishes between high culture and low culture.
  1. i and ii are correct
  2. i and iv are correct
  3. iii and iv are correct
  4. i and iii are correct
Popular culture denotes the widely shared practices, beliefs and objects of a society and shapes individual attitudes; it is not defined by upholding noble values or by policing the high/low divide.

28. In film studies, Christian Metz is associated with:

  1. Screen Theory
  2. Auteur Theory
  3. Gaze Theory
  4. Genre Theory
Christian Metz’s film semiotics and psychoanalytic work (The Imaginary Signifier) were central to Screen theory, the 1970s approach developed around the journal Screen.

29. Whose study states that romances satisfy women’s needs that are not met by patriarchy, all the while paradoxically reinforcing it?

  1. Nancy Chodorow
  2. Marie Léger
  3. Chandrima Chakraborty
  4. Janice Radway
Janice Radway’s Reading the Romance (1984) found that romance reading offers women compensatory nurturance and escape while ultimately reaffirming patriarchal marriage.

30. Which of the following qualify for the label “cultural intermediary” in the context of a commercial film?

(A) The film magazine columnist
(B) The director
(C) Fan clubs
(D) The producer
  1. A and C only
  2. A and B only
  3. B and C only
  4. B and D only
Bourdieu’s cultural intermediaries mediate between production and consumption, shaping taste and reception, such as columnists and fan clubs; the director and producer are the film’s makers.

31. Which of these may be said to be true of the journal published from Bowling Green University from 1969, which carried essays on Spider-Man comics, rock music and detective films?

(A) It sought to highlight the importance of popular culture.
(B) It sought to highlight the importance of elite culture.
(C) It sought to buttress the canon by making it more elitist.
(D) It sought to break down the dominance of ‘high’ culture.
Choose the correct answer from the options given below:
  1. Only (A) and (B)
  2. Only (A) and (D)
  3. Only (B) and (C)
  4. Only (B) and (D)
The Journal of Popular Culture, edited by Ray Browne at Bowling Green, promoted serious study of popular forms and challenged the dominance of ‘high’ culture.

32. Which of the following is true of mass media?

  1. It usually has multiple sources.
  2. It can affect a localized population only.
  3. It usually has a central, single source.
  4. Its audience is in close proximity to its source.
Mass media typically transmit messages from a single, centralised institutional source to a large, dispersed and anonymous audience.

33. Which of these is identified by Ariel Dorfman and Armand Mattelart as having been deployed in Walt Disney comic books to propagate imperialist ideology?

  1. Deification
  2. Infantilization
  3. Impoverishment
  4. Personification
In How to Read Donald Duck (1971) Dorfman and Mattelart argue that Disney comics infantilize readers and colonised peoples, naturalising imperialist and capitalist values.

Cultural Studies: General

34. What process does Ziauddin Sardar’s statement describe? “Cultural studies started as a dissenting intellectual tradition outside academia, dedicated to exposing power in all its cultural forms. But it has now become a discipline and a part of the academic establishment and its power structure.”

  1. Devolution
  2. Institutionalisation
  3. Displacement
  4. Dissension
Sardar, in Introducing Cultural Studies, notes how a dissenting, extra-academic project became an academic discipline, that is, it was institutionalised.

35. Given below are two statements:

Assertion (A): Cultural Studies is simply the study of culture as a discrete entity divorced from its social and political context.
Reason (R): Cultural Studies aims to understand culture in all its complex forms and to analyse the social and political context within which it manifests itself.
In the light of the above two statements, choose the correct option:
  1. Both (A) and (R) are true and (R) is the correct explanation of (A)
  2. Both (A) and (R) are true but (R) is not the correct explanation of (A)
  3. Assertion (A) is true but Reason (R) is false
  4. Assertion (A) is false but Reason (R) is true
Cultural studies refuses to treat culture as a discrete entity; it studies culture within its social and political context, so (A) is false and (R) is true.

36. Cultural studies aims to demonstrate how people are affected by ___________.

  1. Artistic merit
  2. The lack of education
  3. The lack of money
  4. Cultural forces
Cultural studies examines how cultural forces and practices shape identities, beliefs and behaviour, while also asking how people use and resist them.

37. For what types of literature has cultural studies gained new attention?

  1. Poetry
  2. Short form literature
  3. Literature with cultural issues
  4. Literature with animal themes
Cultural studies brought fresh attention to texts that engage cultural issues such as identity, class, race and popular practice, beyond the traditional canon.

38. What is no longer demanded of cultural scholars?

  1. Close reading
  2. Back reading
  3. Tight reading
  4. Slow reading
Treating literature as one cultural practice among others, cultural studies no longer requires the New Critical close reading of canonical texts.

39. What is the goal of cultural studies?

  1. To make a difference
  2. To expand young minds
  3. To learn about old writers
  4. To elevate literary understanding
Cultural studies has a political aim: by analysing how culture works, it hopes to make a difference in society rather than merely appreciate texts.

40. Bruno Latour and Steve Woolgar inaugurated a new wave of cultural studies of science with the publication of:

  1. Higher Superstition
  2. Social Construction of Scientific Facts
  3. Against Method
  4. Laboratory Life
Latour and Woolgar’s Laboratory Life (1979), an ethnography of the Salk Institute, studied how scientific facts are socially constructed; Against Method is Feyerabend’s, Higher Superstition is Gross and Levitt’s.

41. Which cultural theorist is of the opinion that cultural studies is a tendency across disciplines?

  1. Paul du Gay
  2. Toby Miller
  3. Janice Radway
  4. Stuart Hall
Toby Miller, introducing A Companion to Cultural Studies (2001), describes cultural studies as a tendency across disciplines rather than a discipline itself.

42. Match the terms with the concepts:

List I
I. Multiculturalism
II. Diaspora
III. Cultural diversity
IV. Ethnicity
List II
a. Existence of a variety of cultural groups
b. State of belonging to a common social group
c. Dispersal and spread of people
d. Inclusive citizenship
  1. I-a, II-b, III-d, IV-c
  2. I-c, II-b, III-d, IV-a
  3. I-a, II-c, III-d, IV-b
  4. I-d, II-c, III-a, IV-b
Multiculturalism: inclusive citizenship; Diaspora: dispersal and spread of people; Cultural diversity: existence of a variety of cultural groups; Ethnicity: belonging to a common social group.

43. A significant concept of cultural studies is that people are part of a hierarchical structure of:

  1. Modernity
  2. Mediated communication
  3. Power
  4. Identity
Cultural studies sees culture as a site where meanings are contested within hierarchical relations of power shaped by class, gender, race and other structures.

44. Which of these are generally taken to be true of cultural studies?

(A) It is politically engaged.
(B) It privileges text over context.
(C) It has a symbiotic relationship with formalism.
(D) It studies the means of production of a text.
  1. A and C only
  2. A and D only
  3. A and B only
  4. B and D only
Cultural studies is politically committed and examines the conditions of production and consumption of texts, favouring context over formalist text-centred analysis.

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Cultural Studies: UGC NET PYQsAll 1000+ Literary Theory MCQs500+ Literary Criticism MCQs
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