AMS 2940 - AN INTRODUCTION TO AMERICAN POPULAR CULTURE

credits: 3.0
This course introduces students to the study of American popular culture. We will begin with the emergence of distinct “popular” and “elite” cultural practices in the 19th century and go on to explore several topics in American popular culture: Coney Island and other urban amusements in the late-nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, popular movies of the Depression era, the construction of gender roles in the mass media after World War II, the evolution of the family sitcom (aka “situation comedy”) from the 1950s through the 1990s, and the representation of racial identities in movies, music, and television since the 1970s. Objectives: A) Describe the context in which popular culture is defined and distinguished from other forms of culture; B) Describe the role of race, class and gender in shaping the context in A, above; C) Evaluate and compare individual examples of popular culture; D) Demonstrate effective communication about the above topics. Method of Instruction: Lecture and discussion. Method of Evaluation: Weekly reflection essays, papers on assigned texts. Meets *WEP Distribution Requirement.