When Spy magazine set out to list the 50 stupidest college courses in America, they found an easy target in the study of popular culture.
"UFOs in American Society," they quoted from the Temple University course book.
"'...Films such as "The Day the Earth Stood Still" and "The Thing" will be shown.'"
At Harvard, the canon still seems to rule the roost--the best Spy could muster was a course on Welsh poetry.
But based on the 1992-93 course catalogue, students can easily match extra-curricular fancies to their academic work--even when those fancies are movies and pop novels.
Take Music 31, for example: "The Origins of Rock and Roll," taught by Graeme Boone, assistant professor of music.
Boone, whose popular course of jazz has cast him as a sort of dean of hip, says the Establishment did not "see the course as out of place."
Neither have the white collars bothered Andrea S. Walsh, lecturer on Women's Studies, who teaches a Social Studies tutorial called "Popular Culture and Modern American Society: Analyzing Multiple Forms of Media."
Boone uses Little Richard and Pat Boone in week 12 of his course and Jerry Lee Louis and Dick Clark in the 13th.
Walsh uses "The Wizard of Oz."
Neither uses Spike Lee films. But that's okay. He teaches here.
Still, Harvard is no Temple University--a class on UFOs wouldn't quite cut it. The registrar might also balk on a Brandeis course:
"From Ancient Astronauts to Lost Continents: Fantasies and Facts in Archaeology" is described, in part, this way: "...Extraterrestrial aliens responsible for ancient Mayan culture in Central America?..."
In the end, Harvard is Harvard--the place founded by Puritans and haunted, as H.L. Mencken said, "by the fear that somewhere, someone might be happy."
Take the libraries. Harvard has 12 million volumes, countless periodicals and a number of foreign language alternative journals.
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