African American Popular Culture

The course will focus on the production of popular or ‘pop’ culture in the United States with special emphasis on linkages between ‘mainstream’ pop culture and pop culture originating in the African American experience. The course will provide a sociological perspective for understanding and examining topics related to popular culture including Black film, R&B, literature, Disco, art, Rap, and Hip Hop and their correlates to topics such as the African oral tradition, folklore, and minstrelsy. Through the use of music, film, dance, literary and visual arts, and poetry, students will gain insight into ways that shared meanings and ways of life have emerged via U.S. traditions, in general, and the African American experience, in particular.