1) Sometimes students see the words “Pop Culture” in a course title and assume the course consists entirely of watching TV and talking about how great it is. That is not what this class is about.

 

You should be prepared to learn to critically think about, write about, and discuss popular culture. I’ve split the readings between canonical theoretical cultural studies texts, more recent scholarly applications of those theories, and current mainstream pop culture writing.  This way, you will be able to see not only what the theory looked like in its “original” form, but also how it has been applied. These readings will deal with issues of power, politics, gender, race, class, and economics.

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2) This class takes Cultural Studies as its general theoretical approach. This includes discussion of Marxism, Feminism, Capitalism and other “isms.”  Cultural Studies, by its nature, questions and challenges many commonsense assumptions about society and deals with questions of power and knowledge. The course addresses numerous questions about how our lives are controlled and regulated, and how we (as individuals or groups) manage our lives, through various media and technologies of popular culture.  This means that you may be asked to critique things you love and challenge beliefs you hold.

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3) Because popular culture is a major part of our identity and lived experience, there is a tendency to want to generalize our experiences as universal. Therefore, throughout the semester, whenever you find yourself wanting to use your own experience as proof or evidence, make sure that you’re only making an argument about your experience, allowing that others may have different experiences, and grounding your argument in theory from the course material. 

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