SCCS Course Offerings

American Culture Studies Topics Course: First Ladies on the Screen

What does the First Lady do? Does she have official duties? How does she interact with the President? Everyone from historians to HBO to Paramount Pictures has an opinion about the role of American First Ladies. Find out more by looking at historical and fictional representations of First Ladies in film and on television. We will look at several examples of fictional first ladies in film. However, we will focus on five historical First Ladies (Abigail Adams, Mary Todd Lincoln, Eleanor Roosevelt, Jackie Kennedy, and Hillary Clinton) to see how popular culture remembers them and how the position of First Lady has changed over the last 250 years. ACS 3000 is combined with WS 3000

American Culture Studies Topics Course: American TV Drama Antiheroes

This course will cover the characteristics of the meta-genre “Quality TV”, and specifically the “antihero” character type that helped shape notable programs like The Sopranos, Mad Men, and Breaking Bad.  The evolution of the antihero will be tracked from these earlier shows to a more contemporary series, Succession.  Students will get to watch TV, read a few passages that can help them make meaning of their viewings, and discuss their findings with other students.  The objective of this course is for students to gain an understanding of how television series can sometimes rely on tropes and conventions of previous ones, while also contorting those tropes and conventions to elicit a different meaning.

Internet Communities

In this 6-week online course, we will take an interdisciplinary approach to the study of communities that exist primarily in virtual spaces. With a strong emphasis on theories and methods from folklore studies, we will explore the strengths and limitations of engaging in participant observation of digitally mediated communities; analyze various types of qualitative data to support ethnographic investigation; discuss the ethical considerations that arise in qualitative research online; and consider the evolution of Internet culture and norms over the past few decades. Through discussion board assignments and individual research projects, we will cover topics including but not limited to: communities that share videos, creative texts, and narratives; specific fan communities; online support groups; online (and app-facilitated) dating; occupational folk culture in online spaces; transactional communities such as Yelp, Uber, eBay, and Etsy; religious communities’ use of virtual spaces for worship and fellowship; and many other phenomena.