Wednesday, January 29, 2014

The ABC’s Of Beyonce? Rutgers University Offers ‘Politicizing Beyonce’ Course.

Beyoncé taking center stage at the GRAMMYs is one thing, but in a classroom?

Apparently, Sasha Fierce is making her mark at Rutgers.

A course called “Feminist Perspectives: Politicizing Beyoncé,” is being offered at the New Brunswick, N.J. university and taught by PhD student Kevin Allred.

Allred is a doctoral student and lecturer in the school’s Department of Women’s and Gender Studies. He told the Rutgers Today newspaper the idea for the course stemmed from his four semesters teaching Women’s Studies 101.

“This isn’t a course about Beyoncé’s political engagement or how many times she performed during President Obama’s inauguration weekend,” Allred said. “Rather, the performer’s music and career are used as lenses to explore American race, gender, and sexual politics.”


More misery.

9 comments:

  1. "Miserable Perspectives: Politicizing Fab"
    :-)

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  2. The "isn't it horrible they're talking about popular culture" thing makes me miserable.

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    Replies
    1. I don't get this. My reading of the article seemed pretty positive.

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    2. Oh and thanks to Reg W for send it in.

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    3. I'm a bit confused, Jonathan. The article seems to be really complimentary.

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    4. The comments section for the article brings up some negative feedback from the general public, none of whom have obviously taken a course like this and actually learned something valuable about societal trends or standards.

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    5. Sorry, I have to admit that I didn't read the article. But I've seen so many like it that I really didn't want to spend the time. Even the positive ones are basically troll-bait, othering the academy by pretending that interest in something contemporary is extraordinary.

      And every other mention of this I've seen (on twitter, mostly) has been "those wacky professors, dumbing down, etc." As I said to one such on twitter, "When we study classics, people call us insular and irrelevant. When we study live culture, people call us shallow. Can't win."

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  3. Oh, well, fine, you can use any text to teach some of this. But it feels very 1992 Cultural Studies to me.

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    Replies
    1. Lots of people haven't yet made it to 1992, culturally speaking.

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