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The Program
The Department of Popular Culture at Bowling Green State University has been a leader in the scholarly movement to investigate
popular culture since its inception in 1973. Dr. Ray Browne's early efforts in the Department of English led in 1973 to the
establishment of the Department of Popular Culture as an M.A. program, followed with the establishment of the undergraduate
major a year later. Previously, in 1967, Dr. Browne had founded the Journal of Popular Culture; and in 1969 he founded the
scholarly association for the study of popular culture, the Popular Culture Association, which has been headquartered since
its inception at Bowling Green State University. Through these innovative curricular and programmatic developments and the
research and other professional activities of the faculty, the department has established its national reputation as the leader
in the study of popular culture.
Curriculum Development
Bowling Green State University is the only university in the United States to implement a graduate department devoted to the
scholarly study of popular culture. By expanding literature course offerings to include the research and analysis of detective
fiction, romance fiction, westerns, and other so-called genre fiction; and by developing coursework on popular film, popular
television, popular music, and folklore and folklife, the Department of Popular Culture in 1973 opened students to a consideration
of cultural forms that they were familiar with in their everyday lives, but had not reflected upon critically. Through the
consideration of popular materials, students confronted issues concerning the relationships of commerce to art, the popular
media to society, and the popular use of the mass media. Very quickly, a high student demand for popular culture courses developed
on both the graduate and undergraduate levels. Students found them relevant, meaningful, and challenging. In 1977, the Department
of Popular Culture became a founding and contributing member of the American Culture Ph.D. program at Bowling Green State
University, and in 1987, popular culture became an area of concentration in that program.
Bowling Green State University has provided national leadership in the development of the research and analysis of popular
culture. Since the initiation of the department at Bowling Green, popular culture courses have been developed in other universities
throughout the United States and internationally as well. Many of these institutions have modeled their courses on those at
Bowling Green; indeed, many of them have adopted the textbooks edited by faculty members Christopher D. Geist and John G.
Nachbar (1983 and 1992) for their courses.
PREREQUISITES FOR GRADUATE WORK:
Admission to the M.A. program requires a minimum 3.0 accumulative GPA and 3.0 GPA in a specified discipline in which at least
20 semester hours of work have been completed. Applicants who hold an undergraduate degree in an interdisciplinary program
that precludes 20 semester hours of work in a single discipline may be admitted upon the recommendation of the graduate committee.
CAREER PATHS:
The graduate program in popular culture is a genuinely interdisciplinary Master's degree program. Students often elect to
take up to half of their classes outside of the Department in such other disciplines as English, history, journalism, sociology,
political science, mass-media and art history. Students have gone on to Ph.D. programs in folklore, history, English and other
disciplines. Many students create vocational specialties for themselves by electing courses from one or more disciplines.
These specialties often include internships outside of the university. During the past few years our graduate students have
been placed in internships in public relations companies, at magazine publishing houses, at private schools, at an international
sports reactive, at historic villages and museums, and at an organization dedicated to preserving folk art.
Contact Information:
Angela Nelson, Chair
Jeff Brown, Graduate Coordinator
Popular Culture Building
Phone: 419-372-2981
Fax: 419-372-2577
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