MA Program in Popular Culture
10th Anniversary
The program celebrated its tenth anniversary in April with students, graduates, faculty, and staff.
Honours for MA PCUL's Founding Director
Barry Grant receives CAUT Award and is elected to the Royal Society of Canada.
Coming soon: Habitus of the Hood
New collection edited by Hans Skott-Myhre and Chris Richardson (MA PCUL '08)
Covering Niagara
New edited volume from Popular Culture Niagara showcases work of MA PCUL faculty and graduates
Indigenous Screen Cultures in Canada
From Marian Bredin, co-edited with Baldur Hafsteinsson.
Researching Local Popular Music
Scott Henderson discusses the St. Etienne music scene with Angil & the Hiddentracks
Canadian Television: Text and Context
New from editors Marian Bredin, Scott Henderson, and Sarah Matheson
MA Program in Popular Culture
The study of Popular Culture focuses on the communicative practices and experiences of everyday life considered within their cultural, economic, political and social contexts.
Popular Culture may be defined broadly as expressive practices and performances in daily life. The study of Popular Culture is the scholarly investigation of expressive forms widely disseminated in society in both historical and contemporary contexts. The forms of Popular Culture include both traditional literary texts or works of art as well as the mass media (television, film, radio, recordings, advertising, newspapers and magazines) and sport, rituals, fashion and fads.
The study of Popular Culture is approached in the MA Program at Brock holistically, viewing these expressive forms both as aesthetic objects and within the social and cultural contexts in which they are created, disseminated, interpreted and used. The Master of Arts Program in Popular Culture is interdisciplinary in nature, drawing on theoretical perspectives, approaches and methods from a variety of disciplines in the Humanities and Social Sciences, including the established field of Cultural Studies. Themes and topics addressed in the program will emphasize both historical and contemporary perspectives in Popular Culture, while students are encouraged to explore research methods ranging from quantitative content analysis to ethnographic observation and unstructured interviews, from archival research and oral histories to semiotics and other forms of textual analysis. The program espouses no single theoretical or methodological perspective, and its pluralistic approach is reflected in the number of different disciplines from which participating faculty are drawn.
