Music! Film! TV! Writing Popular Culture (Session 1)

Writing about pop culture is a playground for radical thought, for exciting, often polarizing ideas on race, society, and how the fictional and fact-based entertainment we breathe intersects with real life. From reboots and reality TV to blockbusters and horror movies, from sitcoms and romcoms to the expansive landscape of minority-led Hollywood productions, from the latest Mitski album to Lizzo, there is no shortage of material to write about.

This course will help students sharpen their critical skills and instincts, write within a specific beat, and brainstorm good, pitchable ideas and story angles. Through writing assignments and group exercises (watching movie/TV clips as a critic), students will brave the (internet) elements and learn to document pop culture, in the form of news blogs, reviews, interviews, criticism, and research. Along the way they’ll start to develop their own voice.

Notes: Counts as an elective for the journalism major and both journalism minors.