MA in Popular Cultures

Full Time code: 880017

Part Time code: 880018

The MA in Popular Cultures is a new interdisciplinary programme which draws on expertise from across the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. The programme takes not only British and American, but also European Popular Cultures as its subject of enquiry. It is designed to engage students in debates about the very nature and definition of ‘popular culture’, challenging the notion that popular culture is unworthy of serious study, while complicating and contesting the polarities between values ascribed to ‘High’ and ‘Popular’, serious and frivolous, meaningful and mass.

As well as offering students a thorough training in research methods, the programme enables them to develop the tools to think critically about a wide range of media, periods and contexts, from the medieval carnivalesque through Walt Disney to key ‘sites’ of popular culture, such as the seaside and the sports stadium. It is one of very few MA programmes in Popular Culture in the UK.

The MA will appeal to students with an interest and background in American Studies, Gender Studies, Popular Culture, Film Studies, History, Cultural and Media Studies, Modern Languages, and English Literature amongst others. Entry requirements are a good BA degree in a humanities-based subject.

The course is offered as a one-year full-time programme (course code 880017) and as a two-year part-time programme (course code 880018). The predominant mode of examination on this programme is by coursework and continuous assessment.

Students pursue three core compulsory modules (Research Methods I and Theorising Popular Cultures in semester 1, and Research Methods II in semester 2). They are then free to select three optional modules (one in semester I and two in semester 2). The final component is the compulsory dissertation (due in the September) which provides students with the opportunity to research and produce an independent, in-depth study on a topic of their own choice, with guidance from an appropriate academic supervisor.

Optional modules include*:

European Crime, Mystery and Detective Fiction

Gender and Disney

Gender in Popular Culture

Gothic Vampires and ‘Others’ in European Literature and Film

Language Transfer in Relation to Film, Television and the Media

Postmodernism and the Pulps

Representing Pearl Harbor in American History and Culture

Stand-Up Comedy

The Body in Politics, Culture and Society

The Popular and the National

Valuing Popular Cultures