Lesson 1
What are the basic characteristics of, and differences between, popular culture, high culture, and folk culture? How can they be distinguished in terms of how they are produced? Please make sure to use the definitions I have in the lecture and not something that you find online.
In addressing this you should not simply rely on common sense. Instead, be prepared to answer why, for example, opera is regarded as high culture today. In other words what are the social relations or social support networks associated with each of these types of culture? What is different about the way these forms of culture are produced and consumed?
Lesson 2
You will be expected to write about one of the two articles – not both, but if you write about both you may get a higher grade
Concerning the article The Dream World of Mass Consumption
How can the changes in the advertisement of goods be seen as a bringing about modern consumerism and product promotion? What exactly is the “dream world”, and how is it related to marketing?
Concerning the article Printing and the People
– be familiar with the basic ways that printing changed the people’s cultural habits. How did the arrival of the printing press create potential conflicts of social or political power? How did reading habits and attitudes vary across social groups? Be prepared to be able to make comparisons with the spread of modern media technologies.
Lesson 3
You will be expected to write about one of the two articles, not both, in answering the following question, but if you write about both you can get a higher grade
Historically, why did certain groups feel the need to defend “high culture,” and what sorts of social and cultural changes led them to feel this way? You should be able to draw on the readings to explain why new cultural hierarchies–ways of systematically judging culture–emerge.
Be able to explain how the articles William Shakespeare and the American People and Cultural Entrepreneurship in Nineteenth Century Boston demonstrate how the concept of “high culture” is not something that is “natural,” but emerges historically.
For both articles: How do elite consumers of “high culture” try to shelter themselves from the lower and middle classes? What were the social changes that prompted elites to take action to “protect” certain forms of culture?
Regarding the Shakespeare article, concentrate on what changes were made in order for the plays to become regarded and treated as “high culture.” In other words, be prepared to explain why Shakespeare’s plays became less popular to a broad audience in the late 1800s–how did the theater change, and how did popular entertainment change more generally?
Lesson 4
According to Fussell, what causes status anxiety over class in the US, and where in the class system is it most obvious?
What are, according to Fussell, the differences between the way the middle classes and elites show off their status symbols? Be prepared to explain this latter question with examples. I’m interested in issues of public display of class symbols.
What are the characteristics of the “x” class, and how can they be seen as being “outside” the system Fussell describes? Where do the “x” class people come from?
Lesson 5
Be familiar with the basic concept of cultural capital as described by Bourdieu, including the basic types of cultural capital, and how we can understand how people might use it to reinforce their social and economic capital?
Be prepared to use examples from Fussell to explain the concept of cultural capital.
In the article The Suit and the Photograph, you should be familiar with the author’s arguments about how the meaning of the suit varies across social classes. How might the concept of cultural capital be applied here in terms of how different groups feel comfortable or “at home” in the suit? How does social class affect the way one wears a suit?
How does Peterson’s article on “cultural omnivores” challenge the idea of high classes being associated with snobbery? How are the changes he discusses within the upper class over time associated with the idea of cultural capital? In other words, how might elites gain/maintain power through being omnivores instead of snobs?
Do you think that the ideas in Peterson’s article provide a more accurate picture of contemporary culture than the ones presented by Fussell in the ’80s?