Popular Culture: From K-pop to Selfies (CULS20018)
Undergraduate level 2Points: 12.5Online
Please refer to the return to campus page for more information on these delivery modes and students who can enrol in each mode based on their location.
Overview
| Availability | Semester 1 - Online |
|---|---|
| Fees | Look up fees |
Popular culture shapes how we think and feel, how we relate to one another; in short, how we imagine and live our lives. This subject examines the dynamics between popular culture, media consumption, and our social worlds. It will draw on students’ own consumption of popular culture as entry points to explore the various roles mass-mediated popular culture plays in our lives. From pop music and blockbuster films to viral videos, memes and selfies, this course interrogates: How can we define what is ‘popular’? What do debates about popular culture tell us about current political anxieties? And how does popular culture maintain, reproduce or challenge our existing social and political formations within and across cultures in an increasingly globalized world? The subject is organized around a series of questions about production, regulation and consumption that will introduce students to a range of key concepts in cultural studies. The goal is to familiarise students with debates in cultural studies about the politics of mass culture, popular culture and viral culture, drawing from examples of both twentieth century and contemporary computer-mediated cultural practices.
Intended learning outcomes
On completion of this subject, students should be able to:
- Demonstrate a developing knowledge in current research on a range of specific instances of or practices in popular culture.
- Understand the importance of the ways in which Cultural Studies has theorized popular culture.
- Engage critically with scholarly approaches to the circuit of culture model covering the production, regulation and consumption of mass cultural forms
- Demonstrate developing understanding of the relationships between particular examples of popular cultures and broader cultural and political formations in an increasingly globalized world
- Effectively use research skills to produce a research essay based on a case study in the field of popular culture that demonsrates the capacity for detailed description and reflective analysis.
- Understand the disciplinary specificity of Cultural Studies approaches to popular culture and popular media their inter-relationship with approaches in related disciplines.
Generic skills
- Apply critical and analytical skills and methods to the identification and resolution of problems within complex changing social contexts.
- Apply an independent approach to knowledge that uses rigorous methods of inquiry and appropriate theories and methodologies that are applied with intellectual honesty and a respect for ethical values;
- Articulate the relationship between diverse forms of knowledge and the social, historical and cultural contexts that produced them;
- Act as informed and critically discerning participants within the community of scholars, as citizens and in the work force.
Last updated: 12 March 2025
Eligibility and requirements
Prerequisites
None
Corequisites
None
Non-allowed subjects
None
Recommended background knowledge
Understanding of Cultural Studies as a disciplinary formation, as taught in CULS10005
Inherent requirements (core participation requirements)
The University of Melbourne is committed to providing students with reasonable adjustments to assessment and participation under the Disability Standards for Education (2005), and the Assessment and Results Policy (MPF1326). Students are expected to meet the core participation requirements for their course. These can be viewed under Entry and Participation Requirements for the course outlines in the Handbook.
Further details on how to seek academic adjustments can be found on the Student Equity and Disability Support website: http://services.unimelb.edu.au/student-equity/home
Last updated: 12 March 2025
Assessment
Semester 1
| Description | Timing | Percentage |
|---|---|---|
Blog
| From Week 2 to Week 12 | 30% |
Essay
| Mid semester | 30% |
Research essay
| End of the teaching period | 40% |
Tutorial attendance Hurdle requirement: This subject has a minimum hurdle requirement of 80% attendance and regular participation in tutorials. Assessment submitted late without an approved extension will be penalised at 10% per day. In-class tasks missed without approval will not be marked. All pieces of written work must be submitted to pass this subject. | Throughout the teaching period | N/A |
Last updated: 12 March 2025
Dates & times
- Semester 1 - Online
Coordinator Ben Gook Mode of delivery Online Contact hours 12 x 1.5 hour Lecture, and 12 x 1 hour Tutorial per week Total time commitment 170 hours Teaching period 1 March 2021 to 30 May 2021 Last self-enrol date 12 March 2021 Census date 31 March 2021 Last date to withdraw without fail 7 May 2021 Assessment period ends 25 June 2021 Semester 1 contact information
Time commitment details
140
Last updated: 12 March 2025
Further information
- Texts
- Breadth options
This subject is available as breadth in the following courses:
- Bachelor of Biomedicine
- Bachelor of Commerce
- Bachelor of Design
- Bachelor of Fine Arts (Acting)
- Bachelor of Fine Arts (Animation)
- Bachelor of Fine Arts (Dance)
- Bachelor of Fine Arts (Film and Television)
- Bachelor of Fine Arts (Music Theatre)
- Bachelor of Fine Arts (Production)
- Bachelor of Fine Arts (Screenwriting)
- Bachelor of Fine Arts (Theatre)
- Bachelor of Fine Arts (Visual Art)
- Bachelor of Music
- Bachelor of Science
- Available through the Community Access Program
About the Community Access Program (CAP)
This subject is available through the Community Access Program (also called Single Subject Studies) which allows you to enrol in single subjects offered by the University of Melbourne, without the commitment required to complete a whole degree.
Please note Single Subject Studies via Community Access Program is not available to student visa holders or applicants
Entry requirements including prerequisites may apply. Please refer to the CAP applications page for further information.
- Available to Study Abroad and/or Study Exchange Students
Last updated: 12 March 2025