George Brown is proud to present 'Pop Culture,'  an exploration of North-American popular culture. This interdisciplinary course explores North-American popular culture and its effects on the world. The student's perspective in this course developed by Dr. Reeves Medaglia-Miller,  is that of a cultural researcher, an observer seeing the Northern way of life for the first time. Through a political study (gender, race, and class analyses) of film, television, computer technologies, music, and advertising, students learn connections between these media and their political, historical, social, and economic contexts. Also studied will be the idea of popular iconography, which is the idea that numerous icons and symbols have their own unique and powerful political, social, or ethical connotations and influences.

Computer access is essential to the successful completion of this course {access is available in the St. James Library/Learning Commons).  With Internet access, students will contact the course's exciting web site, and print out readings, assignments, and other resources. Students on-line will also be able to use 'Links' to gain access to fascinating websites related to the course's content.  It should be noted that web resources do not take the place of actual books, articles, journals, or newspapers, three of which are required sources for students' essays.

Readings will be available on the course website. Other materials will be used and/or distributed as appropriate.

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Films    Students will view award-winning documentaries, such as Simcha Jacobovici's "Hollywoodism" and Hermann Vaske's "The Fine Art of Separating People from their Money." 

Students will also view a number of video 'clips' from important films such as Michael Wadleigh's Woodstock and Robert Townsend's Hollywood Shuffle, analyzing them and examining their sociopolitical contexts.  Students will compare, for example, how the Woodstock phenomenon, with its peace iconography, arose during a time of national opposition to the controversial Vietnam War, while Pulp Fiction too arose out of a time of unparalleled violence, both internationally and at home.