Pop culture classes offer new learning perspectives

Pop culture college courses, which relate fads that are relevant in today’s society to classic education topics, have emerged over the past few years and are becoming increasingly popular today.
Courses such as “Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse” and “The Science of Harry Potter” are now being offered around the world and in a variety of fields.
ULM currently offers several classes dealing with pop culture, including a course called the “Sociology of Film.” This course shows how society is reflected through different films and focuses on ways these films can be perceived by individuals.
“It would be great to know more about pop culture in this generation when the world is changing every day,” said MyRanda Royal, a junior aviation major from Marion. “It is nice to be informed about things other than books and basic education.”
ULM also offers a sociology pop culture class that is literally called “Popular Culture.”
According to the University’s catalog, this class examines various forms of pop culture and how they influence socialization and society’s way of life. This course is taught by sociology professor Neil White, who describes pop culture as a way of “getting students excited about looking at things in a new way.”
In the past, ULM offered a course, which was based on a book about the sociology of the television series “Seinfeld.” The formal name for the course was Advanced Topics: Psychology 4011.
This was a capstone course for psychology majors, which focused on topics ranging from intimacy to animal play behavior to ethnocentrism.
Joseph McGahan, the sociology professor who taught the course, said he was interested in theories of humor, partially satire, and wanted to make these theories relevant to students by using examples taken from comedic situations in “Seinfeld.”
McGahan said, “Think about how much fun it could be to relate pop culture to classical teachings. For me, ‘relevance’ is a golden word; pop culture likely is relevant to students…”
Other pop cultures offered at universities around the states include: “Learning from YouTube,” “Simpsons and Philosophy” and “Arguing with Judge Judy.”