The interdisciplinary minor in American Popular Culture helps students to assess from a variety of perspectives the icons and ideas they encounter every day, to think critically about the images and assertions of the mass media and commercial culture, and to see the experience of popular culture as it interacts with questions of gender and ethnicity in the American context.  Students choose five classes, including one upper-division elective, from a curriculum organized to explore: Critical Approaches to Popular Culture; Gender and Ethnicity in American Popular Culture; and Popular Culture in the Arts. Twenty units are required in all, four at the lower-division and sixteen at the upper-division level.      

Lower division requirements
Choose one course (4 units).
American Studies 206m, Politics and Culture of the Sixties   OR
American Studies 285m, African American Popular Culture 

Upper division requirements
Choose four courses (16 units), at least one from each of the groups below.  

Critical approaches to popular culture: choose one  (4 units)
American Studies 301g, America, the Frontier, and the New West  OR 
Communications 384, Interpreting Popular Culture    OR 
Comparative Literature 365, Literature and Popular Culture   OR 
English 392, Visual and Popular Culture    OR 
History 380, American Popular Culture    OR 

Gender, ethnicity and American popular culture: choose one  (4 units)
American Studies 357m, Latino Social Movements    OR 
American Studies 365, Leadership in the Community    OR 
American Studies 385, African American Culture and Society  OR 
American Studies 395m, African American Humor and Culture  OR 
English 448m, Chicano and Latino Literature   OR 
English 449m, Asian-American Literature    OR 
English 476, Images of Women in Contemporary Culture   

For further information regarding the American Popular Culture minor, contact Cynthia Mata Flores at 213.740.3800 or cmflores@usc.edu.