Cultural studies of education: filming fluid subjectivities in Indonesian universities

Abstract

This article focuses on the Indonesian film Cin(T)a, which features the interfaith and multiethnic love between two college students. I apply intergroup contact theory, critical pedagogy and grounded cosmopolitanism to the reading of the movie in order to demonstrate two key points. First, higher education is a contact zone, where grounded (i.e. ethnic, religious, and national) and cosmopolitan (i.e. humanist and global) allegiances converge. Second, cultural studies are significant to the field of education, especially when they expand beyond the Anglo-American axis. They complicate ‘given’ notions of culture and demonstrate how cultural artefacts, like films, are pedagogical instruments. My methodology relies on film analysis, campus observations and interviews with the film-maker as well as with 65 college students, faculty and administrators.

Keywords:

• Cosmopolitanism
• ethnicity
• religion
• nation
• higher education
• Indonesia