The Critical Essay: Popular Culture

The Critical Essay: Popular Culture, often simply Popular Culture (or Pop Cult), is a Writing course in the CTY program. As with all the Critical Essay courses, its prerequisite is Crafting the Essay. Its course code is WR4B, and it is offered at Lancaster, Los Angeles and Saratoga Springs first session.

Course Description

Popular Culture is a critical essay course in which the students analyze today's popular culture, searching for underlying meanings and implications on today's values, ideas, and other nuances of the modern world. The course consists of writing numerous essays on different subjects in modern America. Such topics may include MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, magazine advertisements, movies, songs, college campuses, television shows, etc. The class is intensive, more so than Crafting the Essay, but is manageable. The class is known for many digressions into watching modern TV shows and movies or listening to music. Instruction in writing focuses on style and content rather than structure.

Class History

In 09.1 at Lancaster, Robin taught the course with TA Mike Schlegelmilch. There were many Schlegelmilch jokes made throughout the session.

There are also rumors that Lady Gaga took this class at CTY to focus her analysis of popular culture. Lady Gaga went to Skidmore. Some TAs and RAs have relations to "Stephanie".

In 10.1 at Lancaster, Robin returned to teach the course with TA Sarah Kolb. The class became known for their love of grass orgies/tummy parties and holding hands. The students frequently held grass orgies during breaks on the grassy areas outside Stager. When Pop Cult's break coincided with Etymologies' break, TA Caroline often yelled at the students for violating PDA rules and even yelled at TA Sarah for not "controlling the children properly". However, TA Sarah and teacher Robin did not care about PDA rules. In fact, Robin encouraged grass orgies in the middle of the classroom. However, she prohibited spooning and heads in laps. Pop Culture often stirred fear in fellow CTYers through their excessive use of the phrase, "GET SOME!" (thus, creating awkward moments) and PICTURE TIME! During this class, many dance offs occurred in the middle of the classroom along with awkward games of charades and the viewing of random TV shows such as Arrested Development and The Simpsons. Students in Pop Culture often referenced the objectification of women, harems, the Grapist, and the idiosyncrasies of fellow Pop Cult-ers (the nose fetish, the knowledge of the molestation of cows, etc.) in daily conversation. The Pop Culture class was often targeted by the RAs during the dances as well. SRA Kirsten especially loved to point her flashlight at Pop Culture's many grind lines and dancing circles. Only this class could have discussed gun porn, POWERTHIRST, and Cats monologues while still staying "relevant" to the class syllabus.