FMCS2200Popular Culture and Society

Course handbook

Description

This course introduces students to various scholarly frameworks, theories and perspectives on popular culture. Students are encouraged to analyse the complexities of popular culture and its social and cultural function. Popular culture offers a way of examining societal attitudes, values and ideologies across time and geography. It also plays a powerful role in shaping societal attitudes, values and ideologies. Popular Culture and Society explores how gender, sexuality, race, ethnicity, class and other socially codified markers of identity are represented in popular culture and how popular culture potentially impacts audiences. In this course students will explore the many competing theories, methods, concepts and frameworks that surround, explain and situate popular culture, examine popular culture examples and case studies, and discuss critical issues such as ethics, politics and histories.

Availability2021 Course Timetables

Learning outcomes

On successful completion of the course students will be able to:

1. Describe the relationship between popular culture and society.

2. Illustrate the significance of concepts such as class, race, ideology and spectatorship to popular culture.

3. Construct a critical argument regarding the issues surrounding popular culture at an intermediate level.

4. Combine scholarship with original analysis in a popular culture case study.

Content

This course focuses on the relationship between popular culture and society. Topics may include:

• Postfeminist and post-racial culture
• Fans, fandoms and audiences
• Affective capitalism and consumerism
• Reality TV
• Celebrity, politics and power dynamics
• Intersections between race, gender and class
• Representing queerness

Assumed knowledge

80 units at 1000 level

Assessment items

Written Assignment: Essay (40%)

Project: Podcast (30%)

Quiz: Online quiz (30%)

Contact hours