Neoliberal Capitalism, Emotion, and the Self in US Popular Culture

Catalog description

The course asks how the self and society are co-created through emotions we often consider private or personal but in fact carry great political and economic meanings we may not always consider. We will explore how popular culture discusses, produces, manages, and mandates certain emotions—feelings like anger, love, fatigue, envy, nostalgia, fear, and compassion—to justify and sustain capitalism in the United States. Analyzing popular magazines, books, fundraising appeals, television shows, film, social media posts, and political rhetoric, amongst others, we will discuss topics such as emotional labor, self-care, rest, the self-help industry, charity work, and consumer culture in general. The course will ask how gender, race, and technology make and remake our feelings and what those feelings say about American culture—and ourselves—both in the past and today.