WEDNESDAY, Sept. 17th| Writing About Your Favorites: Intro to Pop-Culture Analysis is a two-hour crash course in the basics of writing about your favorite television shows, movies, music, and more. All you need is to bring in mind a pop-culture artifact you’ve always wanted to write an essay about and we will flesh out the piece as a group.
This class is designed for beginners with no experience in pop-culture writing or cultural criticism. We will read and discuss work by established critics like Roger Ebert and Vulture’s Angelica Jade Bastien, and class leader Sezin Devi Koehler’s own Much Ado About Keanu: A Critical Reeves Theory, culture critics who have established a solid baseline for intersectional analysis. And yes, Roger Ebert totally did that before it even had a name.
The class will work from prompts and brainstorming to help you find an angle into your favorite piece of media that unpacks not just its significance to you as an individual, but to culture and society as a whole. It doesn’t matter how high or low-brow your favorite is, you’ll get tips on how to see its bigger picture and social significance.
Sezin will offer constructive feedback on essay ideas and outlines, as well as a first read of your essay draft after class with notes and ideas of places you could pitch the piece. Students can submit essays of up to 1500 words, due no later than ten days after this class concludes.