POPULAR CULTURE IN MODERN WORLD GENRE, MEDIUM, CONTEXT

Course Objectives:

This course aims

• to introduce key concepts of and debates around popular culture
• to address the impact of social, economic, and political developments on popular culture and its products throughout modern history
• to provide students with a degree of “literacy” of world popular culture by familiarizing them with not only the historical context but also the recurring narratives, themes, tropes, images, etc. across works of culture from various geographical and temporal contexts

Course Content: In 1938, a radio drama called “The War of the Worlds,” based on H. G. Wells’s homonymous novel, created and performed by Orson Welles was aired. Presented in “breaking news” format, the play narrated a fictional alien invasion and created chaos on mass scale as it convinced many of its listeners that the invasion was authentic. As an example of popular culture, Wells’s radio drama had real-life repercussions for several reasons: the play sounded like breaking-news, radio was at the time the main source of news for Americans, and the American public had already been on edge due to the pending war in Europe. The case of “The War of the Worlds” showcases what this course tries to unpack.

As an area that been dismissed as “mere entertainment,” popular culture provides invaluable insights into a given social, political, and economic context. Accordingly, this course takes popular culture seriously and engages with some conceptual questions in relation to popular culture: What is culture? Is it possible to differentiate popular culture from other types of culture? How can we define the relation of the “popular” with capitalism and democracy? How does the “real life” speak through works of popular culture and vice versa? How does the invention of new technologies and mediums affect popular culture? In the context of these questions, each week we focus on a different case study of varying mediums and genres (e.g., books, print media, radio, film, television, etc.; scifi, crime fiction, invasion-scare, melodrama, horror, etc.) with the intention to unfold the complex set of relations among technology, society, politics, economy, and culture. Given the reciprocal relationship between popular culture and its context, this course (1) will discuss the ways in which certain social, political, economic, and technological developments have shaped popular culture; (2) will read the modern history through the lens of popular culture. Each week, our discussions will be centered around the cultural products that were produced in the context of certain historical moments and periods (e.g., industrialization and labor movements, imperialism, world wars, global economic crises, etc.). Because what we characterize as popular culture today emerged initially in Europe and the USA, we will initially focus on cultural works within the English-speaking countries. Moving into the 20th century, however, our purview will expand to the non-English speaking and non-Western parts of the world.