History and Popular Culture

This module examines the ways popular culture shapes understandings of history on two different levels. First, it examines how the popular culture of a specific era can reveal much of the social milieu of the time and help contextualise events of that period. Second, it will examine how popular culture, such as a film, created at a later time can influence perceptions about an earlier era. This module will examine instances and eras of popular culture to discuss the challenges of deriving historical knowledge from popular culture. Each iteration of the module may vary in its focus. This semester the module will focus on American society in the late 1960s, and examine the topic mainly through films