COURSE DESCRIPTION

REQUIRED TEXTS

ASSIGNMENTS

SCHEDULE
BY WEEK

WEEKS 1-5
Jan 14--Feb 13

WEEKS 6-9
Feb 21--Mar 13

WEEKS 10-15
Mar 25--Finals

ONLINE RESOURCES

LIBRARY RESOURCES at WSU

Copyright (c) 2003  by T.V. Reed. This is not an official site of Washington State University

AMERICAN POPULAR CULTURE:
Critical Approaches,
Critical Issues


 

Washington State University
Pullman, Washington



Course: AMST/ENGL 471: American Cultural Politics Since World War II: Popular Culture


Instructor: T.V. (Tim) Reed, English and American Studies


Time: Tues. & Thurs. 9:10-10:25


Place: CUE 416, Washington State University


Professor's Office Hours: Th 3-4:30 & Fri 10-11:30 in Wilson 104. And other times by appointment at ext 5-1560.


E-mail the professor at [reedtv@wsu.edu] or by clicking on this envelope :


 


COURSE DESCRIPTION

This course provides an upper-level introduction to critical issues and approaches in the study of recent American popular culture. We will explore the ways in which each of us is both a user of and is used by popular culture. Popular culture is all around us, influencing how we think, how we feel, how we vote, how we live our lives in countless ways. This course will use your own expertise as consumers of popular culture as a take-off point for exploring the various roles played by mass-mediated popular culture in our lives.

Popular culture analysis occurs in a number of different fields, including Sociology, Communications, Anthropology, History, Cultural Studies, English, Women's Studies, Ethnic Studies, and American Studies. Part of the task of this course will be to refine further your ability to read, evaluate, and synthesize materials from these different disciplines into your own interdisciplinary analyses.

We will look primarily at television, film, advertising, popular music, and computer cyberculture, with occasional forays into other types of pop culture. We will analyze how such critical factors as ethnicity, race, gender, class, age, region, and sexuality are shaped by and reshaped in popular culture.

The course offers you a chance to learn to use a variety of critical approaches to studying popular culture. The approaches we will use center around four main dimensions of pop culture:

1) Production Analysis (who owns the media? who makes these texts? with what intentions? under what technical constraints? how democratic or elitist is the production of popular culture? how much is commerce? how much creative expression?)

2) Textual Analysis (how do specific works of popular culture make their meanings? how do explicit meanings differ from implied ones? how do texts consciously and subconsciously shape those who hear, see, or touch them?)

3) Audience Analysis (how do different groups of popular culture consumers, or users, make similar or different sense of the same texts?)

4) Historical Analysis (how have these other three dimensions changed over time? how does current popular culture differ from that of ten, twenty, or thirty years ago? what accounts for the changes?)

We will learn these approaches through readings, discussions, assignments, and teaching them to others. Teaching them to others will take the form of "publishing" your work on the World Wide Web. Part of the work of the class will be to analyze, and work to improve the Web resources pages [www.wsu.edu/~amerstu/pop/tvrguide.html] connected to the course in order to make them more effective tools for other students and scholars to use. You will not, however, be graded on your technical expertise, and support for any of the Web work done in the course will be provided upon request. I also expect that students will be willing to assist each other in these matters. Indeed, "team" projects are encouraged for the final, web-based projects.

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REASONABLE ACCOMMODATIONS are available for students who have a documented disability. Please notify the instructor during the first week of class of any accommodations needed for this course. Late notification may cause the requested accommodations to be unavailable. All accommodations must be approved through the Disability Resource Center (DRC) in Administration Annex 206, 335-1566.

ACADEMIC HONESTY: Plagiarism of any kind, whether from books, paper archives, or Internet sources, is grounds for immediate failure of the course. You may also be subject to further punitive action from the University, up to and including dismissal.


REQUIRED TEXTS

Dines/Humez, eds. GENDER, RACE AND CLASS IN THE MEDIA (Abbr. GRC) Second Edition only

Book is available in the Students Book Corporation (Bookie) under Amst and Engl both.

NOTE: Some of the class readings are available ONLY ONLINE, linked through this electronic version of the syllabus. Online readings appear as lighter-colored, underlined pieces on the hard copy of this syllabus. Note also that there are some LIBRARY RESERVE readings on a couple of days.


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GRADING REQUIREMENTS & ASSIGNMENTS

Active participation in class discussions. Grade value: 15%

This is a discussion class in which your active participation is an essential part of your grade. And the best way to feel confident to talk in class is to come prepared, having read and thought about the assigned readings.


Quizzes. Grade value: 15%

On a random basis over the course of the semester you will have a series of short-answer quizzes on the readings at the beginning of class. The purpose of the quizzes is to let me know which concepts are coming through well, and which ones I may need to go over again. You will get one per cent of credit for each correctly answered question up to a total of 15%. There will be a two extra quizzes, but if you miss more than two you will be losing percentage points.


Short paper #1 (3pp.) Grade value 15%

Film Review: You will write a review of two films we will see in class, "Ethnic Notions" and "Color Adjustment." You will write as if you were writing for a journal called History and Film, and will analyze one or more themes present in both films. The purpose is to demonstrate your understanding of the changing nature of popular culture over the course of historical development.

Click here for the full assignment.


Short paper #2 (4pp.) Grade value: 20%

Textual/Production Analysis: You will analyze an advertisement from a mass circulation magazine or newspaper that deals with an item of clothing you or someone you knows wears. At the same time, you will research the company that makes the item, learning about the production process that is invisible in the advertising. The purpose of the paper is to give you a chance to apply our work on "semiotic" textual analysis, and to learn how to research and analyze the material production process.

Click here for the full assignment, and links for research.


Final Website or Paper Project. Grade value 35%

This Website project will present a multimedia critical analysis of or critical introduction to some aspect of popular culture, with hyperlinks to other relevant sites and sources. Part of the aim of the project should be to provide new materials not covered in the existing Web resources page. What you design and how you design it is restricted only by your imagination. You will not be graded on your technical expertise, and technical assistance will be provided for anyone who wishes it. Technical literacy is an increasingly useful skill, but for those who wish it, the option of a traditional final paper is also available.

A PRELIMINARY PROJECT DESCRIPTION will be DUE April 10 for feeback from the instructor, and on April 22nd we will do IN CLASS PEER REVIEWS of the work in progress. The preliminary description should include a brief list of books, articles and web sites you will consult in making the project. I am also willing to look at first drafts of final projects, provided the URL is given to me at least 10 days before they are due. Projects involving two or more people are welcome, and I am happy to discuss ways to insure that each member of the team is fairly and individually evaluated. The class will work to collectively identify projects we think members the class should undertake.
Projects will be presented to the class during the time scheduled for our final exam session.

Cick here for a longer description of the term paper and web projects (including sample web projects and resources for learning to build web pages).

THE FINAL PAPER or WEBSITE PROJECT URL IS DUE BY 4:30 ON WEDNESDAY, MAY 9th. No late projects will be accepted.

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COURSE OUTLINE AND READING SCHEDULE:


WEEK 1 * T Jan 14 -- Personal Introductions & Course Overview


Th Jan 16 -- Key Concepts, the Course Website, and Online Resources


PART 1: APPROACHES TO STUDYING POPULAR CULTURE

WEEK 2 * T Jan 21 -- Studying Pop Culture
REQUIRED READING:

  • Kellner, "Cultural Studies, Multiculturalism & Media Culture" (GRC 9-20)
  • Read through the "Glossary" (GRC 727-738)
  • STUDY QUESTIONS

Keywords Lecture Outline

Th Jan 23 -- (Re)Viewing our Ethnic Notions

VIDEO: "Ethnic Notions"


WEEK 3 * T Jan 28 -- Making Some Color Adjustments

 

VIDEO: "Color Adjustments"

 

Th Jan 30 -- Discussing the Videos

REQUIRED READING:

  • Pieterse, "White Negroes" (GRC 111-115)
  • Sun, "Ling Woo in Historical Context: The New Face of Asian American Stereotypes on Television" (GRC 656-666)
  • Hall, "The Whites of Their Eyes" (GRC 89-93)
  • STUDY QUESTIONS
     

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WEEK 4 * T Feb 4 -- Thinking About Historical Analysis

REQUIRED READING:

  • Lipsitz, "The Meaning of Memory: Family, Class and Ethnicity in Early Network Television" (GRC 40-47)

** SHORT PAPER #1 DUE IN CLASS **

Th Feb 6 -- Introducing Textual Analysis

REQUIRED READING:

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WEEK 5 * T Feb 11 -- Beauty and the Beast of Advertising

VIDEO: "Still Killing Us Softly"

Th Feb 13 -- Doing Textual Analysis of Advertising

REQUIRED READING:      

  • Kirkham & Weller, "Cosmetics: A Clinique Case Study" (GRC 268-273)
  • Kilbourne, "The More You Subtract, the More You Add" (GRC 258-267)
  • Fejes, "Advertising and the Political Economy of Lesbian/Gay Identity" (GRC 212-222)
  • STUDY QUESTIONS

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WEEK 6 * T Feb 18 -- Doing Textual Analysis of War

REQUIRED READING:    

Th Feb 20 -- Colorized Advertisements

REQUIRED READING:      

  • Ghosh, "Con-Fusing Exotica: Producing India in US Advertising" (GRC 274-282)
  • Wilson, "Advertising and People of Color" (GRC 283-292)
  • STUDY QUESTIONS

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WEEK 7 * T Feb 25 -- Introducing Production Analysis, 1: Political Economy of Media

REQUIRED READING:

Production Analysis Lecture Outline

Feb 27 --- Production Analysis, 2: Elites, Workers and Production Processes

REQUIRED READING:

  • selections from, "No Sweat" (LIBRARY RESERVE)
  • Steinam, "Sex, Lies and Advertising" (GRC 223-229)
  • Stabile, "Nike, Social Responsibility & the Hidden Abode of Production" (GRC 196-203)
  • STUDY QUESTIONS

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WEEK 8 * T Mar -- Pop Music and the Production Machine

VIDEO; "Money for Nothing"

**SHORT PAPER # 2 DUE IN CLASS**

Th Mar 6 --Introducing Audience Analysis

REQUIRED READING:


WEEK 9 * T Mar 11 --

REQUIRED READING: Engendering Audiences

  • Radway, "Women Read the Romance" (GRC 202-14)
  • Lee & Cho, "Women Watching Together" (GRC 355-61)
  • Hayward, "Consuming Pleasures: Active Audiences and Soap Opera" (GRC 507-521)
  • Rogers, "Daze of Our Lives: The Soap Opera as Feminine Text" (GRC 476-481)
  • STUDY QUESTIONS

Th Mar 13 -- Racing, Classing, and Sexing Audiences

REQUIRED READING:

  • Sender, "Selling Sexual Subjectivities: Audiences Respond to Gay Window Advertising" (GRC 302-313)
  • Crane, "Gender and Hegemony in Fashion Magazines" (GRC 314-332)
  • STUDY QUESTIONS

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SPRING BREAK Mar 17-21


                                    PART 2: ISSUES IN POPULAR CULTURE

WEEK 10 * T Mar 25 -- Sex, Li(v)es and MTV

VIDEO: "Dreamworlds"

Th Mar 27 -- Sexuality and/or Pornography

REQUIRED READING:

  • Rich, "Naked Capitalists" (GRC 48-60)
  • Jensen, "Pornography and the Limits of Experimental Research" (GRC 417-423)
  • Boyle, "The Pornography Debates" (GRC 406-423)
  • STUDY QUESTIONS

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WEEK 11 * T Apr 1 -- Everyday Pornography?

REQUIRED READING:

  • Caputi, "Everyday Pornography" (GRC 434-450)
  • Dines, "King Kong and White Women" (GRC 451-461)
  • STUDY QUESTIONS

Th Apr 3 -- (e)Racing and (de)Classing Women

REQUIRED READING:

  • Oulette, "Inventing the 'Cosmo' Girl: Class Identity and Girl-Style American Dreams" (GRC 116-128)
  • Zook, "'Living Single' and the 'Fight for Mr. Right': Latifah Don't Play" (GRC 129-135)
  • STUDY QUESTIONS

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WEEK 12 * T Apr 8 -- E-world: Cybertopia or Cyberian Wasteland?

REQUIRED READING:

  • McChesney, "The 'Titanic' Sails On: Why the Internet Won't Sink the Media Giants" 677-683)
  • Nakamura, "Where Do You Want to Go Today' Cybernetic Tourism, the Internet and Transnationality" (GRC 684-687)
  • Berry and Martin, "Queer and Asian on and off the Net: the Role of Cyberspace in Queer Taiwan and Korea" (GRC 149-154)
  • Arnold and Plymore, "Cherokee Indians and the Internet" (GRC 715-22)
  • STUDY QUESTIONS

 

Th Apr 10 -- Mass Mediated Tough Guys

VIDEO: "Tough Guise"

**PRELIMINARY STATEMENT OF FINAL PAPER or WEB PROJECT DUE IN CLASS**

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WEEK 13 * T Apr 15 -- Making (Real) Men?

REQUIRED READING:

  • Katz, "Advertising and the Construction of Violent White Masculinity" (GRC 349-358)
  • Breazeale, "In Spite of Women: 'Esquire' Magazine and the Construction of the Male Consumer" (GRC 230-243)
  • STUDY QUESTIONS

Th Apr 17 -- Gun Play(s)?

REQUIRED READING:

  • Gerbner, "Television Violence: At a Time of Turmoil and Terrror" (GRC 339-348)
  • Turner, "This is For Fighting, This is For Fun: Camerawork and Gunplay in Reality-Based Crime Shows" (GRC 642-650)
  • Jenkins, "Lesssons from Littleton: What Congress Doesn't Want You to  Know About Youth and Media" (GRC 385-394)
  • STUDY QUESTIONS

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WEEK 14 * T Apr 22 -- Talking Trash? : Racy, Classy, and Sexy Talk Shows

REQUIRED READING:

  • Tavener, "The Case Against Sleaze TV" (GRC 548-552)
  • Gamson, "Sitting Ducks and Forbidden Fruits" (GRC 553-570)
  • Moorti, "Cathartic Confessions or Emacipatory Texts? Rape Narratives on the Oprah Winfrey Show" (GRC 522-533)
  • STUDY QUESTIONS

Th Apr 24 -- Rapping About Rap, Race, Gender, Class and Sex

REQUIRED READING:

  • Perry, "Who(se) Am I?: the Identity and Image of Women in Hip-Hop" (GRC 136-148)
  • Davey D's Hip-Hop Corner Explore this site for a variety of materials on and debates about Hip-hop.

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WEEK 15 * T Apr 29 -- Media Education and Activism

REQUIRED READING:

  • Klein, excerpts from "No Logo" (Photocopied Handout)

REQUIRED SITE VISITS: Visit the sites linked below and explore the various kinds of alternatives to mainstream popular culture they advocate. Develop some definitions of the kinds of resistance you find there ("culture jamming," "hacktivism," "boycotts," "satire" "parodies" "alternative journalism""media literacy" etc.).
Then come to class prepared to discuss what you think are the most effective kinds of alternative pop culture making and unmaking. Your arguments should be based in what you have learned about production, textualitiy, and audiences, and be rooted in historical analysis.

In addition to these sites, check out the MEDIA ACTIVISM page of our Website for more examples.

Th May 1 -- Sheroes, Dolls and/or Women
REQUIRED READING:


FINALS WEEK SESSION: Website Presentations & Peer Evaluations

** FINAL PROJECT S DUE TO INSTRUCTOR BY 4:30PM, ON WEDNESDAY, MAY 7th. NO LATE PROJECTS WILL BE ACCEPTED.

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