Popular Culture and the Media
You are expected to apply the analytic skills that you have learned in the course as you research a major topic or issue in the area of popular culture and write a scholarly essay on it.
This essay should be approximately 3,000 words in length, and should include notes and a bibliography.
On the whole, is popular culture progressive or reactionary?
Explain the opposing viewpoints on this question among writers on popular culture, and set out the relevant criteria by which works of popular culture might be judged in this regard.
In framing your answer, choose four appropriate works from different genres (literature, film, television, and music), including at least one that is not American, and identify the elements in them that support your argument as well as any that run counter to it. Do you find significant differences between the genres on this question?
