Published on Brock University (http://brocku.ca)
MA Program in Popular Culture
The study of Popular Culture focuses on the communicative practices and experiences of everyday life considered within their cultural, economic, political and social contexts.
Popular Culture may be defined broadly as expressive practices and performances in daily life. The study of Popular Culture is the scholarly investigation of expressive forms widely disseminated in society in both historical and contemporary contexts. The forms of Popular Culture include both traditional literary texts or works of art as well as the mass media (television, film, radio, recordings, advertising, newspapers and magazines) and sport, rituals, fashion and fads.
The study of Popular Culture is approached in the MA Program at Brock holistically, viewing these expressive forms both as aesthetic objects and within the social and cultural contexts in which they are created, disseminated, interpreted and used. The Master of Arts Program in Popular Culture is interdisciplinary in nature, drawing on theoretical perspectives, approaches and methods from a variety of disciplines in the Humanities and Social Sciences, including the established field of Cultural Studies. Themes and topics addressed in the program will emphasize both historical and contemporary perspectives in Popular Culture, while students are encouraged to explore research methods ranging from quantitative content analysis to ethnographic observation and unstructured interviews, from archival research and oral histories to semiotics and other forms of textual analysis. The program espouses no single theoretical or methodological perspective, and its pluralistic approach is reflected in the number of different disciplines from which participating faculty are drawn.
