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. Its former prerequisite was Crafting the Essay; however, the current prerequisite is any CTY Intensive Studies writing or humanities course or at least a B in ninth grade English. 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.
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 "Stefani". It is unlikely that Gaga took Pop Culture essay, for during her teenage years the singer was much less focused on pop culture and its evisceration as a whole than on writing love songs; she discovered Andy Warhol and pop art at 20-21. RANDOM FACTS!
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.
At LOS.10.1 Pop Culture was taught by Lupe Escobar and TAed by Derek. The girls in Pop Culture were in the same hall as the girls in Physics, and since both were classes with prerequisites their hall had almost all of the female nevermores on campus. The class was extremely fun and several people in the class agreed it was one of the best CTY classes they'd taken. They started every class with a music video and had discussions on everything from feminism, hip hop, Harry Potter, and Twilight. The class was probably one of the loudest at lunch everyday, thanks to the hilarious Alex H. practically yelling inappropriate jokes everyday. One of the highlights of the class was watching Twilight together and finding it absolutely hilarious during study hall, then spending most of the next morning bashing Twilight and talking about why Harry Potter is better. A highly recommended class.
At LOS 11.1 Pop Culture was taught by CTY Princeton instructor Mara Drogan. Derek Gray returned to TA the class. It was a small class with only 11 students. The students in this class enjoyed singing the songs "Air Force Ones" by Nelly and "Vans" by The Pack after watching them and analyzing them one day. They also had a love/hate relationship with the song "Friday" by Rebecca Black: though they said they hated it, some reference to the song showed up in all of their idea webs. The pop culture class was filmed for a CTY promotional video after doing a unit on branding (in this case specifically, educational branding and how CTY brands itself).
