Popular culture

Klaus Dodds, Lisa Funnell

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingChapter

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Abstract

In her book, Pop Culture: The Culture of Everyday Life, Shirley Fedorak defined popular culture as “the culture of our everyday lives. Popular culture is a mirror of societal dynamics and has the power to shape and reflect cultural ideals, generate resistance and activism, and represent changing social realities.” As an academic field, popular culture is a vibrant area of research, with specialist journals such as Journal of Popular Culture (established in 1968) and professional networks including the Popular Culture Association (founded in 1971). Other academic journals cater to specific areas of popular cultural activities or products, such as comic books, novels, film, television, shopping, fashion, and music, including the Journal of Popular Film and Television, Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics, and the recently established International Journal of James Bond Studies. There are also a handful of universities offering stand-alone undergraduate and graduate degrees in popular culture, notably Bowling Green State University (USA) and Brock University (Canada), while others combine and/or couch the study of popular culture with/in other fields, such as media (University of Huddersfield, UK), sociology (Texas State University, USA), and English (Dalhousie University, Canada). Overall, popular culture is an expanding field of study that is attracting an increasing number of interdisciplinary researchers and students.
Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationInternational Encyclopedia of Human Geography
PublisherElsevier
Pages223-228
Number of pages6
Editionsecond
ISBN (Electronic)9780081022962
ISBN (Print)9780081022955
Publication statusPublished - 29 Nov 2019

Keywords

  • Popular culture
  • Film
  • Television
  • Geopolitics
  • Geography

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