Race and Gender in Popular Culture

Catalog description

This course explores how notions of race and gender have been constructed, reflected and contested through American popular culture from the nineteenth century to the present. A special focus will be given to the reciprocal relationship between culture, politics and the economy, and the ways in which class, gendered, and racial identities reflected and shaped them. We will examine how different forms of popular culture, broadly defined as both cultural artifacts and as cultural practices provide us with new types of historical sources and how historians are using them to rethink historical questions such as labor struggles, empire, immigration, and democracy. Readings includes both primary and secondary documents and topics are organized chronology. In considering the multifaceted aspects of popular culture, we will examine how it became a useful prism to shape, express and influence notions of gender, sexuality, and race. Offered as HSTY 273 and WGST 273 . Counts as a CAS Global & Cultural Diversity course.