Even though summer is closing in, registration for Autumn Quarter is still open, so we wanted to take the chance to highlight WRD 288 Rhetoric and Popular Culture taught by Justin Staley (with the help of Tim Elliot) Tuesday and Thursdays 11:20-12:50pm. We asked Justin to expand on the course and some of his favorite aspects.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What will be fun about this class will be the wide range of artifacts and events we\u2019ll examine: music, art, books\/comics, television shows, commercials, movies, restaurants, even memes. We aim to use enough works to appeal to a similarly wide range of students. We (Tim Elliot, with whom I developed the course, and myself) think that this could be one of the best, and most challenging parts of the course: how ephemeral pop culture can be. The course will absolutely need to be fluid in order to capture this and stay culturally relevant.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There are some aspects of pop culture that might be more visible or prominent than others, but we\u2019re more interested in how the rhetoric surrounding pop culture affects our perception of it, especially in determining \u201cvalue.\u201d The way critics write about things sort of melds reputation, prestige, time, and era along with hundreds of other factors and influences what we consider to be worthwhile art, and what we consider to be unworthy of that distinction. We want students to think deeply about how writers and speakers draw conclusions about art and how the cultural values embedded in creative works connect with (or challenge) prevalent social, political, economic, and racial ideas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Our biggest assignment in class will be for students to create a review in any style or genre they choose. They might choose to review a short comic, a podcast, an album, a film or television show, and much more. Students will have the option in this assignment to choose the format or modality of this review, for example, a purely textual review, a podcast, or a video, keeping in mind the benefits and drawbacks to working in different media.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It\u2019s tough to say at this point, but I think the thing I\u2019m most excited to teach would be about music and music reviews. A lot of my freelance writing in the past revolved around interviewing artists and bands who were coming to town for shows, and it was some of my favorite writing I\u2019ve ever done. We have such strong opinions about music: what\u2019s considered \u201cgood\u201d and what\u2019s merely popular; what\u2019s \u201cart\u201d and what\u2019s bullshit. I suppose you could say the same thing about films, especially these days, but music is probably just a bit more personal to me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Tim is most excited about teaching the comic books section, as well as the part of class where we focus on the controversial \u201cEnd of Year\u201d lists: what the critical consensus is (if there is one) around different artists, authors, and movies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Autumn 22 will be my first time teaching the course (and the first time overall that the course will be taught). Tim Elliot and I will probably take turns teaching the course, building each time on what\u2019s working most effectively, and what students respond most to. Each course will no doubt be different depending on who teaches it, as well as when we teach it, owing to how transitory pop culture can be, but we aim to keep the spirit of the course the same regardless of how it changes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We think it\u2019s important to drop the pretense about what we think is \u201cgood\u201d or \u201cnot good\u201d in a wider cultural context. Throw your taste out the window.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A sneak peek of WRD 288 offered in the upcoming Autumn Quarter. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":12030,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,472],"tags":[594,572,24,578,544],"class_list":["post-12028","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-courses","category-undergraduate","tag-course-spotlight","tag-courses","tag-rhetoric","tag-undergraduate","tag-wrd"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wrdblog.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12028"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wrdblog.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wrdblog.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wrdblog.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/17"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wrdblog.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12028"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wrdblog.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12028\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wrdblog.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12030"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wrdblog.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12028"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wrdblog.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12028"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wrdblog.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12028"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}