Document Type
Syllabus
Publication Date
Fall 9-1-2024
Course Description
Pop-culture permeates our lives, influences our consumer choices, infiltrates our conversations and informs our understanding of people, places and events. We are influenced by it in numerous ways (even when/if we want to avoid it!). In this class, we shall attempt to understand what it means to take pop-culture seriously as the subject of rigorous analysis. Is this a worthy endeavor? What can we learn about world politics and political developments through pop- culture? How can we analyze something so ubiquitous and mundane in an analytically meaningful manner? And, in turn, how does understanding politics and political developments help us assess the significance of pop-cultural artifacts? Drawing from social science, particularly political science and international relations, but also foundational concepts from cultural studies and political economy, we will see what it means to analyze and understand pop-culture seriously and see how it influences contemporary social and political outcomes. We shall use a number of contemporary and historical exemplars of such work. Finally, we will have the opportunity to apply some of the key concepts to analyze and study pop-culture texts of our own choosing.
Recommended Citation
Prakash, Deepa, "HONR 300Cb/POLS 390A Power of Pop: How Pop-Culture matters in Politics Prakash Fall 2024" (2024). All Course Syllabi. 635, Scholarly and Creative Work from DePauw University.
https://scholarship.depauw.edu/records_syllabi/635
Student Outcomes
At the end of the course, students will • Understand the state of the art of pop-culture as an area of study in Political Science and International Relations • draw analytical links between various political themes and cultural manifestations • Be familiar with key concepts in the social science approach to pop-culture • Become familiar with pop-culture phenomena outside mainstream Western confines • Acquire greater facility at analyzing cultural artifacts through political, political-theoretic, and social-theoretic lenses • Gain analytic writing and research skills following conventions of social science and produce an original analysis of the pop-culture manifestations or representation of a political issue.