Popular Culture: Introduction

Timetable

Module aim (aims)

Introduction to the main directions of scientific reflection on popular culture, ability to interpret selected works of popular culture, acquiring comparative competence (comparison of popular culture in different regions or cultures.

Pre-requisites in terms of knowledge, skills and social competences (where relevant)

Syllabus

Course learning content:

Definition of popular culture

State of research on popular culture (criticism and affirmation)

Mass communication and the information revolution; features of cyberculture; media poetics

Aesthetic and axiological problems of popular culture; postmodern aesthetics; the phenomenon of kitsch

Consumerism (globalisation, macdonaldisation, infantilisation)

Identity changes and transformations in the approach to carnality.

Ludological aspects of popular culture

Visual aspects of culture

Popular literature - definition, evolution, genres

The reception of history in popular culture

Fan culture

Reading list

1. Adorno, Theodor & Horkheimer, Max. “The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception.”
2. Althusser, Louis. “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses.”
3. Barthes, Roland. “Myth Today.” in: Mythologies
4. Baudrillard, Jean. “The Precession of Simulacra.”
5. Benjamin, Walter. “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.”
6. Bourdieu, Pierre. Pierre Bourdieu, “Distinction,” and “The Aristocracy of Culture”
7. De Certeau, Michel. “Introduction.” The Practice of Everyday Life.
8. Fiske, John. “The Popular Economy.” Television Culture.
9. Fiske, John. Understanding Popular Culture
10. Hall, Stuart. “Notes on Deconstructing ‘The Popular.’
11. Hebdige, Dick. Subculture: the Meaning of Style.
12. Jameson, Fredric. “Postmodernism, or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism.”
13. Storey, John. “Cultural Theory and Popular Culture An Introduction”.
14. Strinati, “Introduction to Theories of Popular Culture”