SOCI 348 - Contested identities: Popular Culture in America

Popular culture is an important site for the expression of cultural identity and social conflict in America. This course views popular culture as an essential site in the cultural politics of America that involves the formation of ideas, identities, pleasures, and even desires. A central element in this cultural politics is the contested nature of American identity as well as the contested nature of social identities based on race, ethnicity, gender, class, sexuality, etc. Students also read theoretical texts that place popular culture and mass media in their social, economic, and political contexts. From conflicts over high art and popular art, to leisure and social class, to race and ethnicity, to film and the spectacle, to gender and the family, to sexuality and deviance, to cultural appropriation, students explore the rich, complex, and fraught history of American popular culture over the last 150 years.

Credits: 1.00
Corequisite: None
Prerequisites: (SOCI 201 or SOAN 204) or (SOCI 250 or SOAN 210) or (FMST 200)
Major/Minor Restrictions: Only Sociology & Anthropology, Sociology, Film & Media Studies Majors and Minors
Class Restriction: No First-year
Area of Inquiry: Social Relations,Inst.& Agents
Liberal Arts CORE: None
Formerly: SOAN 348

Click here for Course Offerings by term