REL 165 - Religion and Popular Culture, 3 credit hours

This course explores the intersection of religion and contemporary popular culture in America. We will ask several important questions as we read, watch, listen to, and discuss the materials for this course. What is religion? What is popular culture? What role is religion playing in it and vice versa? Why? How do we assess combinations of the sacred and the secular? What does it all mean?

The intent is for you to develop the tools needed to assess the reciprocal ways religion and popular culture interact. Alongside these skills we will also explore the “meaning” inherent in this interaction. Assumed here is the idea that both religion and popular culture are ways of expressing meaning. Approaching both with this idea in mind inevitably invites our own individual reflection on the ways each of us seeks to create or discover meaning for ourselves, and what roles religion and/or pop culture plays in that process.