What is popular Culture?  How do people of your generation encounter, express and make sense of popular culture?  How can we see popular culture in new light informed by theory and approaches? How can we become more informed consumers of popular culture? What role does popular culture play in Culture? What does the analysis of popular culture reveal to us about our society? These are some of the “big” questions that frame the learning process in this course.  I want you to leave this course with a basic understanding of the questions scholars ask about society and popular culture, particularly in the United States, and the answers, explanations, and patterns revealed through research in the process of their inquiring about popular culture.  I also want you to have gained knowledge applicable to your own consumption, identity and life process as citizens in a world in which popular culture plays an important role. 

Through the course materials and discussion, you should have developed your capacity to think broadly, critically, and reflexively about popular culture as a socio-cultural force and as a powerful influence on personal lives.  You should have developed a perspective that can apply theory and approaches to understand the myriad of ways popular culture is constructed and consumed and its influence in the cultural realm. 

The study of popular culture encourages us to understand its forms in their historical and cultural context and in terms both of their impact on individual lives and experience and on the society and culture in which they are part.  The latter, society and culture, in turn shape our individual and collective consumption and experience of popular culture. 

We began the course with a broad sweep of various ways we can analyze popular culture, we tested this out on the Super Bowl, and then we covered in more depth a variety of theoretical perspectives, examples and approaches throughout the course. 

In this challenge, I want you to demonstrate your understanding of the analysis of popular culture, discuss how your understanding of popular culture has developed over the last few months of this course, and explain how the knowledge gained in this course can be applied to understanding your encounter with popular culture, your culture and the world in which you are a citizen..  In the development of your understanding of popular culture, I am not necessarily referring to your own personal consumption practices, although that is part.  At least part of the development of your understanding should include an increased understanding of the variety of scholarly perspectives on popular culture and the nature of popular culture in the contemporary United States, but it might also involve a more nuanced and informed understanding of your personal consumption and engagement with popular culture.    

Of the number of topics we have engaged, some have undoubtedly interested and informed you more than others and spawned continued thought and reflection.  Of the major themes we have discussed, I would like you to select the theme(s) you have found most interesting for cultivating your own understanding and you think may be most relevant to your personal and social future.  Then, using the theme(s), construct an essay with the following components—while referring to the course readings in each section: 

FIRST:  What is popular culture? Summarize your thoughts and the ideas/theme(s) from the course you found most interesting.  Draw and cite from the relevant course readings, videos, discussions, or other assignments to support your informed summaries.  Assume in this essay that your audience, at least for the first part of this essay, is a college audience with little formal study of popular culture.  Informed by a course theme(s), explain some aspects of the nature of popular culture in the United States today or on the contemporary dynamics of popular culture production and consumption. 

SECOND: Discuss how understanding the theme(s) of the course has shaped your understanding of popular culture and your personal engagement. Discuss your own thinking and experience over the course of the semester in terms of understanding popular culture, what you found most applicable to your experience.

THIRD: Discuss how your cultivated understanding and perspectives will assist you in the future as a human citizen. 

You will need to write this essay from the position of an informed analyst of popular culture.  In other words, even as you discuss your personal understanding or experience or your future, you must demonstrate your application of the approaches, and research perspectives, we developed in class--even if you maintain a personal perspective that doesn’t “buy in” to perspectives explored in class.  For instance, you may have ideas inconsistent with those in the course, and you are free to discuss your ideas, but you must do so in comparison to the scholarly approaches, demonstrate your knowledge of those approaches, and support your ideas with evidence and analysis beyond personal opinion.

Feel free to discuss your thoughts and/or conflicts in the last sections of this essay, but construct your arguments well and demonstrate your understanding of the analytical perspectives, even if you choose to critique or highlight the limitations of such perspectives or explore your discontent with them. 

Your challenge should be at least 3 single-spaced pages.  It should be well-organized, coherent, creative, grammatically correct, and insightful.  Above all, it should demonstrate your understanding of the course material and of popular culture from an informed perspective and your thoughtful reflection about course material, whether you choose to integrate a course analyses into your life after this course or not.

DUE: MONDAY, MAY 7, 12:00 (NOON) IN MY OFFICE (Phinney 401) or in the main office of the Department of Sociology, Anthropology & Justice Studies (Phinney 101).  Essays may be turned in earlier.