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WiSe 20/21: Changing Narratives About American Popular Culture and the Popular Media

Winfried Fluck

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How can the claim be justified that such popular genres as film noir, the detective novel, the women’s melodrama, comics or rap videos can provide important insights into American culture? When the field of American studies was established, its main reference was high culture, defined as a culture of critical negation. Popular culture, especially in such manifestations as Hollywood movies or commercial television, was dismissed as a form of commodified mass culture, an argument for which Frankfurt School critical theory had provided the blueprint. This course will trace the gradually changing views of American popular culture in American studies, starting with the mass culture debate of the 1950s and bringing the story up to the digital present. As a part of this history, key terms of cultural analysis such as myth, symbol, ideology, formula, stereotype, camp, interpellation and seriality will be compared in their explanatory range. Topics that will be highlighted include the long-lasting Americanization debate, depictions of violence and the question of media effects, changing perspectives on the representation of class, race, and gender, the transformation of American culture by black culture, the relation of popular culture and populism, and the strongly divergent views of American society on which different approaches to the study of American popular culture are based. The course will be taught online, student participation is encouraged. All of the reading material will be available on Blackboard. Registration: all participants must be registered via Blackboard and Campus Management before the first session. If you cannot register online, please contact Regina Wenzel (culture@fki.fu-berlin.de) before the beginning of the term; or if you would like to participate, but cannot attend the first session, please contact me (winfried.fluck@fu-berlin.de). Online, Synchronous. close