New graduate course, Fall 2010

This fall I will be offering POPC 6800: TV Comedy for the first time. This 3-credit seminar will look at many varieties of televised comedy, including sitcoms, stand-up, sketch comedy, animated comedy, and hybrid genres (comedy/reality, stand-up/sitcom, stand-up/reality, mockumentaries, fake news).

Areas of focus include:

• cultural politics: how do various comedic formats allow for or preclude critical engagement with hegemonic beliefs about gender, race, class, and sexual orientation?
• comedy criticism: what expectations do scholars and popular audiences bring to their reception of comedic texts, particularly of the possibility and desirability of integrating politics with comedy?
• aesthetics: what makes comedy funny or unfunny? what role do quality, aesthetics, and performance play in the political or comedic success or failure of a comedic text?

Comics  analyzed include:

• Dave Chappelle
• Margaret Cho
• Stephen Colbert
• Bill Cosby
• Ellen DeGeneres
• Kathy Griffin
• Richard Pryor
• Roseanne
• John Stewart
• Wanda Sykes

Shows analyzed include:

• Aqua Teen Hunger Force
• Flipping Out
• In Living Color
• Jackass
• Punk'd
• Reno 911 
• Saturday Night Live
• Scrubs
• The Simpsons
• Weeds
• Will & Grace

This class has a waitlist, and priority will be given to students with a background in humanities who are pursuing media studies as their primary area of research. If you would like to be added to the waitlist, email me (bcragin AT bgsu DOT edu) with:

• full name
• P number
• current degree program
• reason for taking the course

Summer 2011: POPC 2310/TV Sitcoms

This class provides an introduction to the study of situation comedy, asking questions such as:

• What makes sitcoms funny?
• Which sitcoms have influenced television the most?
• How are sitcoms related to social values and structures?
• How do sitcoms affect people’s beliefs?
• How are sitcoms constructed?

click here for syllabus

Popular Culture classes offered in Summer 2010

(The 1 or 2 after the class name indicates which summer session it is.)

Undergraduate Courses

1600 Intro POPC 1 Matthew WEB-BASED

1650 POPC and Media 2 Chuck T/Th 4:30-7:40

1650 POPC and Media 2 Matthew WEB-BASED

2200 Folklore and Folklife 1 Esther WEB-BASED

2500 Intro Popular Film 2 Jeff MW 6:15-9:25

3500 Female Body and Film Theory 1 Jeff MW 6:15-9:25

4240 Folklore of Death 2 Jack MTWH 11:00-12:35

2310 Health, Addiction and Culture 2 Montana MW 1:00-4:10

4850 Fieldwork/Folklore 1 and 2 Marilyn

4900 Problems/POPC 1 and 2 Marilyn multiple sections

Graduate Courses

6800 Popular Music in America 1 Jeremy MW 6:15-9:25

POPC 6660: TV as Popular Culture

This graduate seminar provides a basic introduction to critical television studies, by looking historically and thematically at key concepts and texts that have influenced television criticism and theory. Looking at a variety of kinds of TV programming, we examine themes such as gender, race, class, sexuality, postmodernism, and critical approaches and methodologies such as genre analysis, narrative analysis, textual analysis and ethnography. This interdisciplinary course is intended for students with a moderate amount of background in the critical approaches and philosophies of humanities-based scholarship – for example, familiarity with fields such as literary studies, film studies, critical/cultural studies, or feminist studies will help you to be successful in the course.
class blog

What we're watching in POPC 6660

What we're watching in POPC 2310

POPC 2600: Popular Culture Research

This research methods course helps Popular Culture majors and minors understand the process of conducting popular culture research. Students speak with popular culture scholars about their work, learn the major theoretical concepts and methods used in the field, and conduct their own original research project on areas of popular culture that interest them.
class blog