The History of U.S. Mass Culture From Minstrelsy to Hip Hop

Undergraduate credit

This course is an intensive historical examination of U.S. mass culture over the past two centuries. We begin with the very first "culture industries"of the 1820s followed by the expansion and evolution of U.S. commercial entertainment through the dawn of electronic media and globalization. The approach is deliberately comparative, cutting across many different eras and media, from museum exhibitions, theater, dance, and circuses to radio, television, film, and the Internet.