What are the patterns, meanings, and rituals in popular culture that shape our lives and serve as a mirror of society? This course will show how the study of popular culture is a window into sociological thinking and an ideal topic for sociological analysis. Through the medium of popular culture (art, music, film, fiction, fashion, television, and the mass media) societal actors both reproduce and resist dominant values propagated by the culture industries in society. By thinking deeply about the ostensibly trivial, and by taking our popular pleasures seriously, the sociological imagination can unveil how we routinely maintain and sometimes challenge powerful social forces such as social inequality. In essence, the course will explore the domain of the popular in order to highlight the political and social debates it mobilizes.
Prerequisite(s):
ENGL 099, SOCI 100 or SOCI 103
Transfers to:
UBC SOCI 2nd (3)
SFU SA 2XX (3), SOCI
UVIC SOCI 2XX (1.5)
UNBC SOSC 2XX (3)
TRU SOCI 2170 (3)