This is the page for: Understanding English and American Popular Culture

(Course-related content will appear here in reverse chronological order: the newest things at the top of the page, and older posts toward the bottom.)

Stranger in the Village

I mentioned that I would update by adding some reading that I’ll be expecting you to do for the first Discussion Panel. I’m going to announce the date of the panel on March 20th, but anyway, it’s a good idea to start reading the essay now. It’s called Stranger in the Village by James Baldwin. The essay is available online, here.

The first discussion panel will be on the Archetype of “The Other,” and will range from Baldwin’s essay to the movie we’ll soon be watching (Spike Lee’s Bamboozled) as well as my own upcoming lecture on the tradition of Blackface Minstrelsy in the 19th and 20th century. (Though other tangents — such as the depiction of “The Other” in Korean movies, for example, are also possible.)

Anyway, make sure you read Baldwin’s essay a few times so that you have enough of a handle on it to discuss, ask questions, and compare Baldwin’s experience of being “the Other” to the depiction of “the Other” in media.

Genre & Archetypes Lecture, Lost Handout (For Season 1, Episode 8)

Here are two things from today’s class:

Make sure you’ve read and figured out who is who, as well as what you think the different archetype names mean, by Thursday, March 13th. We’ll be watching Lost (Season 1, Episode 8: “The Confidence Man”) in class with English subtitles, and your (and your partner’s) written analysis of the episode will be due at our following class, March 18th, which we’ll discuss in class prior to my making a presentation of a Genre & Archetype analysis for the film 괴물.

Homework for Next Week

Hi all,

Next week (week 2, the 11th and 13th of March), we’ll be discussing and defining the notion of “Popular Culture” and I’m going to give you a lecture and presentation on two examples of the role of genre and character-archetypes in popular culture using two examples — one Korean and the other American. The media I’ll be discussing are the following:

  1. The Korean monster movie 괴물
  2. The American TV-drama Lost

If you are familiar with this movie and this TV show, then maybe spend some time thinking about the different characters and their relationships, as well as about which genre (or genres) each of these programs fits into. If you haven’t seen these programs, it would be worth your time to rent and watch 괴물 and to try get a chance to watch at least the first episode of Season 1 of Lost. (We will probably watch a totally different episode, but knowing the characters and the scenario is helpful for understanding my lecture on the topic!)

See you next week!

Get the Syllabus Here

I handed out the syllabus for this class earlier this week, but if you need to get a copy, you can download it in PDF format.

Welcome to the Spring 2008 Semester!

Content — including your syllabus and any homework information for the first week of classes — is coming soon! Check back in a day or two!

Thanks!

← Previous Page