2018-2019 Academic Catalog

Apr 18, 2024

2018-2019 Academic Catalog [ARCHIVED CATALOG]

HS 100 - Symposium Seminar

Students will explore the Higgins School’s symposium theme in-depth through event attendance, readings and screenings, in-class discussions, and short written assignments. While the symposium program is interdisciplinary by nature, the section instructor will draw particularly from their areas of specialization. This half-unit course may be added to a standard four-course load without fifth course approval, is offered on a “pass/fail” grading basis, and may be repeatable for credit. As with other Higgins School courses, this class is designed to help students to strengthen and enhance their college experience and to forge connections across and beyond conventional coursework.

Topic for Spring ‘19 “Pop Cultures” - We love what we love. We can’t help it-guilty pleasures, stylish schlock, the tunes we can’t get out of our head, the TV shows we binge. Popular culture is driven as much by a taste for the new and surprising as by the need for the familiar and comforting. A pop sensation is often fleeting-a phenomenon today, a stale joke tomorrow, but nonetheless evolving out of a specific time, place, and need. When a phenomenon endures, however, its status shifts from fad to cultural moment, from commercial success to critical legitimacy, from cult favorite to beloved classic. A serious consideration of what makes popular culture suggests the fluidity between high and low art, the substantive and the frivolous. Popular culture can provide a critical reflection of society, producing insight and dialogue. It can also create new worlds, inviting us to imagine radical alternatives and to speculate “what if?”.

Anticipated Terms Offered: Most semesters, beginning Spring 18

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