This certificate offers masters or doctoral students the opportunity to understand popular culture through a wide range of theoretical and methodological frameworks, particularly in the fields of media studies, cultural studies, and performance studies. The Popular Culture Certificate provides an overview of popular culture (such as music, film, social media, literature, radio, and TV) as a rich site of analysis where power, taste, consumption, and identity interact in complex (and often ambiguous) ways. The certificate is designed to prepare students interested in acquiring an interdisciplinary knowledge of popular cultural practices in various historical and geopolitical contexts. The Graduate Certificate in Popular Culture will benefit students who want to follow career paths inside and outside academia — in areas such as journalism, museums, technology design and development, and various creative industries (from fashion to cinema).

Course List

Code	Title	Semester Credit Hours
Select two of the following:		6
FILM 694/WGST 694	Gender and Genre
PERF 603	Performance, Power, and Identity
PERF 604	Performing Vernacular Culture
PERF 605	Globalization and Performance
PERF 606	Performing Gender and Sexuality
PERF 607	Performance and Technology
PERF 615	Spectacle and Performance
PERF 616	Sport as Performance
PERF 621	Graduate Studies in Popular Music Research
PERF 622	Performance and the Construction of American Identity
PERF 625	Latino/a Expressive Culture
Select two of the following:		6
COMM 634	Communication and Gender
COMM 661	Media and Identity
COMM 662	Survey of Media Studies
COMM 663	Seminar in Media Studies
ENGL 658/FILM 658	Topics in Film History
ENGL 680/WGST 680	Theories of Gender
ENGL 683	Topics in Theory
SOCI 651	Sociology of Culture
Total Semester Credit Hours		12

Students may request approval from the certificate coordinator to include courses with popular culture content not appearing on this course list.