The Popular Arts in America: Mass Media Arts

Catalog description

An introduction to the arts of the mass media with emphasis on how film, radio, television, and the print media influence and reflect society. INART 010 The Popular Arts in America: Mass Media Arts (3) (GA)(BA) This course meets the Bachelor of Arts degree requirements. INART 10 examines the historical and technological development of media in relationship to popular culture from the invention of the printing press up to present 21st century America. The primary goal of the course is to help students develop a critical and analytical approach to dealing with contemporary mass media. The course presupposes some familiarity with modern popular media and takes as its content both historical and contemporary examples as sources for analysis. While the class offers facts and data, the central focus of the course is the theory, stylistic elements, and structural workings of media content. The pedagogical goal of this approach is to examine not just what the mass media arts are but also where they come from, how they function, and what effects they have on our culture and society. The key to this goal is understanding the naturalized ideologies imbedded in the structural form of popular culture: how the early expressions of popular culture both shaped cultural attitudes and reflected societal notions of race, gender, and socioeconomic norms. Class meetings consist of lectures and in-class discussions that illustrate modern critical approaches to popular culture and the terminology used in presenting critical arguments and ideological viewpoints on these art forms. Reading assignments will support classroom work by presenting students with a diversity of opinion on popular culture and significant examples of that culture in media. Further, examples of historically significant popular mass media arts will be shown in class or online and then discussed in relation to the concepts and critical viewpoints covered in lectures.