Politics and Popular Culture

Catalog description

This course uses film to demonstrate how popular culture reflects and attempts to shape political debates and understandings. It defines popular culture as “a form of entertainment that is mass produced or is made available to large numbers of people” and provides an opportunity to be enjoyed by many people with no social barriers or special knowledge required (Street 1997). The instructor will utilize different types of popular culture, based upon their expertise, to illustrate how political messages are sent, received, and interpreted. The course uses a seminar format to facilitate discussions about the effects of popular culture and multiple, competing understandings of current problems and phenomena in politics broadly. As a part of the seminar format, students will regularly engage in discussions about interpretations and the effectiveness of popular culture examples. This course will have different subtitles depending on which faculty member is teaching the course, their methods, and interests. Thus the subtitle of the course might be, for example, “World Politics and Film,” “American Political Thought through Popular Novels,” or “American Politics and Hip Hop Music.”