HIST411 - Popular Cultures, Europe and America, 1500 To the Present

This course explores the history of popular culture across a long durée of four centuries. We will chart key transformations in cultural forms, popular practices, and the meanings given to them. Throughout the semester we use a comparative method in examining popular culture in Europe, especially the early modern period, and in the United States in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. We will study many forms of print culture, drawing upon the remarkable primary materials in Penn’s Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books, and Manuscripts. We will also explore visual culture (paintings, engravings, photographs, movies, television) and musical /sound cultures. Topics include: the concept and uses of ‘popular culture’; folklore and vernacular culture; popular print culture and readings habits; popular knowledge and practices of working-class people and people of color; leisure and sports; gender, sexuality, style, and fashion; cultural destruction and preservation; the emergence of mass media and mass culture. In addition, we will introduce students to some of the classic theoretical works on popular culture.