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Essay Instructions: Popular Culture and the Humanities
How does something become a trend? How can a technological innovation or new gadget become a part of our cultural myth? Popular culture is fruitful place to observe what we have learned this term. Advertisers and media outlets use art, music, film, and literature in order to sell their products and promote their ideas. We can also see how items of popular culture seem to appeal to our morality and our definitions of happiness.

In this unit, we investigate popular culture through a discussion of modern mythologies and a closer look at how advertisers work to persuade us.

Essay Instructions: Popular culture is all around us; in fact, it could be argued that this entire course emphasizes pop culture. You have defined and evaluated the major trends of 20th Century art, music, film, and literature, and you have also explored the figureheads behind theories of freedom, morality, and happiness. All of these contributions have been left behind as artifacts, telling you about the values of the past.
To connect your Unit 8 discussion to cinema, consider the film The Gods Must Be Crazy. This film is a comedy devoted to the premise of discovery and meaning. While flying over a remote corner of Africa, a pilot tosses out a soda bottle. The bottle is discovered by a man who has no idea what it is. Cut off from mass media, he believes it to be a message from the gods. He and his fellow villagers try to figure out what it could possibly mean.
For your response to the Unit 9 Discussion Board, imagine that someone cut off from mass culture finds an artifact from today?s culture, an item from popular culture. In your Discussion, consider the following points:
1. Explain what item you would like this person to find
2. Indicate what you hope this item would signify to them
3. Explain how you imagine this item could be interpreted. What might some of the possible uses for this item?
4. How is this item representative of pop culture?

Essay Instructions: In 1200 outline Lawrence W Levine's argument from his paper the "the folk law of industrial society: Popular culture and its Audiences that mainstream popular culture is forced upon us artificially via newspapers, magazines, movies etc. criticisms would be good also ie. from Robin D. G Kelly and Natalie Zemon Davis.

please describe what is popular culture, how have historians defined it and how is it different to mass or folk culture. how do different historians define the role of the audience in relation to popular culture.

Essay Instructions: An exploration of a popular culture form or practice in depth. This project will (a) cross time/cover a period of time (as distinct from being based only on contemporary observations) and (b) draw from original sources and scholarly (research-based) secondary sources. You will be developing an intellectual argument about, or an interpretation of, a practice, and you may incorporate material you take from the web. If you can prove that the material is a valid primary source (a first-hand account or piece of evidence) or, if an article, it was based on original research and was refereed.