Pop Culture and Protest in U.S. History

Overview

In this module, we will examine critical approaches to the study of American popular culture in the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Pop culture has served many purposes in American history, and in this course, we’ll examine how different kinds of pop culture—music, fiction, television, film, advertisements, and poetry, to name a few—have been used in the recent past as resistance, or as a means of protesting the contemporary status quo. In particular, we will explore the following questions: Who has produced resistant pop culture in different eras of American history, and with what intentions? How did these cultural producers construct these texts to specific ends? Who has consumed this pop culture in the past, and how did they make sense of the message? What accounts for the changes in protest pop culture over time? As we explore these questions, we’ll also analyse our current culture, and each of you will produce your own protest pop cultural text in accordance with the themes, questions, and types of protest we will discuss this semester.

Learning Objectives

On successful completion of this module, students should be able to:
Students will identify the primary eras and themes of protest in recent American history (1900-present).
Students will learn the basic theories and methods of cultural and textual analysis.
Students will critically examine a variety of primary sources as a means of understanding change over time in American cultural history.
Students will evaluate relevant historiographical debates and approaches.
Students will apply these basic methods to specific pop cultural texts from American history.
Students will generate original pop cultural texts based on their mastery of the history of protest and the methods of cultural and textual analysis.

Skills

Students will improve their ability to engage with and critique a variety of historical interpretations.
Students will develop their ability to identify and locate primary and secondary sources and to exploit them in constructing sustained and coherent arguments.
Students will enhance their self-confidence, team-working and oral and written communication skills by engaging in group discussions, making presentations, and submitting written work.

Assessment