ENG 384: Reading Popular Culture
Course Schedule, Spring 07

Week One
R 1.11 Introduction

Week Two
Introduction to Culture and Cultural Studies
T 1.16: "What is Popular Culture?" (Storey 1-15), Arnold "Culture and Anarchy" (6)
R 1.18: "The 'Cultural and Civilization' Tradition" (17-35), Leavis "Mass Civilization and Minority Culture" (12)

Week Three
T 1.23: "Culturalism" (37-57), Hoggart, "The Full Rich Life & The Newer Mass Art" (26)
R 1.25: Williams, "The Analysis of Culture" (32), Hall and Whannel, "The Young Audience"
Response 1

Week Four
Introduction to Theoretical Methods
T 1.30: "Marxisms" (47-70), Marx and Engles "Ruling Class and Ruling Ideas" (68), "Base and Superstructure" (70)
R 2.1: Adorno "On Popular Music" (73), Storey "Rockin' Hegemony" (100)

Week Five
T 2.6: "Psychoanalysis" (71-85) "Structuralism and Post-structuralism" (87-104)
R 2.8: Barthes, "Myth Today" (293), Wright, "The Structure of Myth & the Structure of the Western Film" (303)
Response 2

Week Six
T 2.13: " "Gender and Sexuality" (105-127)
R 2.15: Rakow, "Feminist Approaches to Popular Culture" (199), Tasker, "Feminist Crime Writing: The Politics of Genre" (232)
Paper 1 Due

Week Seven
T 2.20: Ang, "Dallas and the Ideology of Mass Culture" (189), Geraghty "Soap Opera and Utopia" (246)
R 2.22: Radway, "Reading Reading the Romance" (215)
Response 3

Week Eight
T 2.27: "Postmodernism" (129-152), Baudrillard "The Precession of Simulacra" (389), Creed "From Here to Modernity" (397)
R 3.1: West "Black Postmodernist Practices" (425), hooks "Postmodern Blackness" (454)
Midterm

Week Nine
3.3-3.11, Spring Break

Week Ten
Media: Fiction
T 3.13: Octavia Butler's Kindred
R 3.15: Angelyn Mitchell, "Not Enough of the Past: Feminist Revisions of Slavery in Octavia E. Butler's Kindred"
Lisa Yaszek, "A Grim Fantasy: Remaking History in Octavia Butler's Kindred"

Week Eleven
Media: Film
T 3.20: Welcome to the Dollhouse, Maslin's review for the NYTimes
R 3.22: Interview with Todd Solondz, Long "Nightmare in the Mirror: Adolescence and the Death of Difference"
Response 4

Week Twelve
Culture and Everyday Life
T 3.27: Gibian, "Shopping Center Spaces", Eisenbeis, "Mall of the Wild", Morris "Things to do with Shopping Centres"
R 3.29: Dr. Ervin Lecture

Week Thirteen
T 4.3: de Certeau "The Practice of Everyday Life" (516), Frith "Music and Everyday Life"
Paper #2 Due
R 4.5: No Class

Week Fourteen
Media: Music
T 4.10: Frith "The Good, the Bad, and the Indifferent" (586), Gilroy, "Get Up, Get Into It, and Get Involved" (52), Griffiths, "The High Analysis of Low Music"
R 4.12: Doyle, "Blue Shadows on the Trail", Taylor's "Music, Technology, Agency, and Practice",
Response 6

Week Fifteen
Media: Television
T 4.17: Freaks and Geeks, Fiske, "The Popular Economy" (557)
R 4.19: Interview with Paul Feig, from Fiske's Reading Television

Week Sixteen
T 4.24: Kipnis, "(Male) Desire and (Female) Disgust: Reading Hustler", Wicke, "Review: Through a Gaze Darkly: Pornography's Academic Market"
R 4.26 Penley, "Feminism, Psychoanalysis, and the Study of Popular Culture"
Last Class, Final Paper Due