Studies in Popular Culture

Catalog description

This writing-intensive course provides an in-depth study of literature’s relationship to culture. Students will examine consumption and influences of popular culture, or the ways social structures (such as power, race, ability, or gender and sexuality) influence the construction of texts and our response to them. Specific topic will vary by instructor and may include: film noir, global hip hop, and pulp fiction. Course work will include discussion and research of relevant cultural and historical matters, frequent written analyses of course texts and contexts, sustained analytic essays, and student-led discussion and/or class presentations.