Writing-Based Inquiry Seminars:
Descriptions for Spring 2008
(please note: section topics and descriptions are subject to change)
Title: Popular Culture and Race
Course: WBIS 188
Section: 018
Instructor: Schacht
This section of WBIS will focus on the representation of race and ethnicity in U.S. popular culture. How does popular culture reflect racial and ethnic identities and to what degree does it shape them? What does the imagined future we see in Battlestar Galactica have to tell us about race in the U.S. today? What can we learn from the numerous film versions of Last of the Mohicans (made from 1911 to 1991), and how do these adaptations reflect or critique the vision of ethnic and racial identities presented in the original 1826 text? The course will include a segment focused on the representation of Native Americans in popular culture as well as another segment focused on the portrayal of race and ethnic identity in science fiction.