Mass Media & American Popular Culture

This course examines modern American popular culture as a diverse association and grouping of texts, images, genres, and representations across a spectrum of different media. Students explore definitions of popular culture and their theoretical contexts from a humanities perspective and are introduced to the interpretations, constructions, and uses of popular culture by various groups within discursive social spaces. We discuss issues of power and knowledge, violence, race, gender, taste and style, consumption and production, and audience.