Identity in Popular Culture
| Code | School | Level | Credits | Semesters |
| SOCI1012 | Sociology and Social Policy | 1 | 20 | Autumn UK |
- Code
- SOCI1012
- School
- Sociology and Social Policy
- Level
- 1
- Credits
- 20
- Semesters
- Autumn UK
Summary
This module introduces students to the importance of studying culture for understanding the social world we inhabit.
The study of culture illuminates how we understand ourselves and others and the meanings we attribute to the world around us. By examining culture we see that many of the 'common sense', 'normal' or 'natural' understandings we have of what it means to be male or female, gay or straight, white or black, middle-class or working-class, are specific to our particular society, and are also laden with implicit judgements about the relative worth of these identities.
The module considers a range of cultural forms from the everyday popular culture that surrounds us in our daily lives, from Hollywood films to reality TV to 'ethnic' cuisine and explores the ways in which social identities and social relations such as class, gender or racial difference are represented and played out in popular culture.
Target Students
Available to level 1 students in the School of Sociology and Social Policy and level 1 and level 2 subsidiary students from outside the school and exchange students.
Classes
This module is taught through a combination of lectures and seminars.
Assessment
- 40% Coursework 1: 1,500 words.
- 60% Coursework 2: 2,500 words.
Assessed by end of autumn semester
Educational Aims
To ensure that students will:Gain an appreciation of the role of culture in social life, through developing an understanding of key concepts and theories.Understand the ways in which cultural ideas and practices intersect with identities and generate forms of compliance and resistance.Understand the ways in which symbolic accounts of the world are produced, circulated, and diversely received and consumed.Learning Outcomes
On completion of the module students should have acquired:
Knowledge and Understanding
- A critical and reflexive understanding of the role of culture in social life.
- An understanding of the relationships between culture, power and self.
- An understanding of the ways in which forms of cultural consumption are embedded in everyday life and language, and in which identities are constructed and contested through engagements with culture.
Intellectual Skills
- An ability to analyse, assess and present academic information.
- An ability to relate academic knowledge to everyday situations and a capacity for self-reflection, as active participants in social and cultural life, on knowledge acquired through academic study.
- An ability to read, assess and represent sophisticated written evidence and argument and to articulate ideas using the formal and specialised language of their disciplines and fields of study.