Majoring in ‘High Culture’

Lindsey, I tend to agree with you. An entire major is a bit excessive. With that said, I am all for courses where the focus is on pop culture. With a background in journalism and mass communications, I have taken classes that specifically focused on popular music, television, movies, and the like. While big portions of each class examined the history of each, we also looked at how pop culture impacts/affects people. We examined how people interact with pop culture and how pop culture has been a major vehicle for trends, ideas, thoughts, mindsets, etc. Again, an entire major is probably too much, but courses within a major are definitely beneficial.

I imagine that the pop culture major is in the Sociology department. In my day this would have been called Modern Anthropology. Sociology is a study of groups of people, items of interest to those people, and how these people use and value those items. by studying pop culture it would be devoted to learning about our society and how the various things in our society are used and valued. While it is hard to imagine how a pop culture major could be a vocation, a major in sociology alone is not a career builder. Sociology or Anthropology (the study of different cultures) is a good addition to other majors, such as Psychology, English (writers), Journalism, even political science. If you think about what fields could benefit from the study of our society, then that is how the major could be used. It seems to me that college students are very aware of our world and the challenges that faces our country. Maybe one of these students can be inspired to make a difference. By studying the problems, then we can look to the solutions.