Course: Popular Culture (MKVN12)

In the Popular Culture course, we learn to look critically at the cultural products and practices we encounter in daily life and see them in their social, historical, and economic contexts. Just like the Media Audience course, Professor Annette Hill's approach and understanding in these courses was the most hopeful and enjoyable period of my graduate program at Lund. I would like to thank her for providing an environment where knowledge is produced and discussed together, rather than a classical, vertical model of learning and thinking. This environment has created a breathing space for many students like me and me who are struggling with different difficulties in their lives. In Freire's words, these lessons reminded me how vital a hopeful dialogue is for the society we live in. I am very grateful for that.

Popular Culture was the course I looked forward to the most when applying for my Master’s degree at Lund University and after participating in the course I can say that my expectations were not only met but exceeded. 

As students, we had the chance to get to explore popular culture from a whole new perspective than just consuming it in our everyday life. A behind-the-scenes look into media and cultural industries and the introduction of concepts like cultural citizenship and social and cultural imaginaries allowed me to see pop culture with fresh eyes.

The teaching team adapted the course to the unfavorable conditions of the COVID-19 pandemic and achieved a valuable online learning experience for the whole class while still caring for and helping each individual student with their progress.

By far my favorite aspect of this course was the individual essay project at the end. With the freedom given to us by the teaching team, we were able to study the popular culture phenomena we enjoy the most – combining genuine curiosity with academic professionalism to get the best out of each and every student – a trademark of the Media and Communication Studies program at Lund University.

The Popular Culture course offers unique insight into the critical analysis of popular media. The focus of the course was on teaching us in-depth analysis of genre. In addition to the interesting lectures and seminars by professor Annette Hill, I greatly appreciated the guest lecturer professor Joke Hermes who introduced us to the compelling concept of cultural citizenship which can be used in many other fields of communication studies. The course is structured in a way that supports writing the final essay and you also get a chance to rehearse the analysis in a group project. Students get to decide the topic and concepts they use for the final essay, which I find exciting as it enables you to focus on the aspects you found most interesting during the course.

Creating a truly engaging learning environment when faced with the reality of online classes is no doubt a challenging task. However, Annette Hill’s contagious enthusiasm for the field of popular culture and the unique perspectives of such an international cohort allowed for many vivid and challenging discussions. This course allowed me to move beyond analyzing media texts as isolated cultural units, putting the cultural industries and historical and sociopolitical context at the heart of the analysis instead. As a first year student, it proved to be a very rewarding opportunity – not only to engage more critically with the field, but to dive into the key theories and concepts relevant for other research areas at the intersection of media, culture and society.

Taking the Popular Culture course was an eye-opening experience for me, one that I would wish for every media studies scholar to experience too. Previously, my interaction with pieces of popular culture such as music and film were not that deep and usually ended at just being entertained, passing time, or getting some few insights. However, after two weeks into the module, I realised there is more to popular culture than what meets the eye or the ear.

Lectures by course leader Annette Hill were packed with important information broken down into easily understandable concepts and theories making students realise that popular culture is constantly shifting and changing. I was also particularly fascinated to be immersed in understanding the composition of media and cultural industries as far as the creation of popular culture is concerned; how various genres are co-created by producers and audiences; and the social imaginaries and cultural citizenship that are brought forth by pieces of popular culture.

Another aspect that I loved about the course were the seminars that provided room for analysis of popular culture based on the theories and concepts that we were learning during lectures. It was fun to go through case studies with fellow students and discuss them in relation to the theories and concepts learnt on the course. Working in groups to conduct a genre analysis using the Genre Model was also an enjoyable aspect on the course. It was such a fulfilling experience testing the model and realising that it actually works. This experience helped me when carrying out my individual assignment which I enjoyed very much. All in all, I will never interact with popular culture the same way and this course is a must for people who want to be critical in the media and culture industries.

Popular Culture was both a theoretically enrichening and challenging course. From exploring why the study of popular culture matters, to applying what we learned to a topic of our own choice, the course covered a variety of interesting theories and case studies. Annette encouraged us to pursue our personal interests and taught us how to look at them through an academic lens with the help of her genre model. I personally learned a lot from this course and am happy to recommend it to anyone interested in examining how power relations are manifested in everyday pop culture texts.

Popular Culture is one of the most fascinating courses I have taken in the programme. The course is designed in an appropriate way for students to explore and deeply understand the contemporary phenomena in the form of popular culture. The use of genre model approach allows students to critically evaluate and analyze a mixed generic media form based on key components of the method. Moreover, through group work discussion and assignments, students from different countries could share ideas, experiences, and cultural perspectives with one another. This is really a great chance for students to learn, reflect and gain new knowledge from diverse backgrounds of identity.

Annette Hill is a professional professor. She does not only share theoretical concepts and her highly practical research experiences on the course, but she also orients students to have a clear plan in the study. For instance, she would approve a student group to kick off a research project until the group had an exact work plan for the project. Following this, I have learnt that once I have an explicit plan for a task, I will be able to complete it well during a set timeframe. I, therefore, strongly recommend the course.

You might think you know a thing or two about media and culture until you enrol in the course of Popular Culture. This course is a highly advanced one on media and cultural industries as well as genre and storytelling, and social and cultural imaginaries. It may sound startling at first but the course is strategically designed to take you through all these themes step by step in both individual and group-driven activities. The key, I learnt, is to investigate even the littlest aspect of things as it may lead to surprising results. 

Within this course, you will be taught a new genre model created by the course leader, Annette Hill, which will provide you with interesting ‘tools’ to analyse your favourite examples of popular culture. The key, in this case, is that context is everything.

All in all, the Popular Culture course will equip you with the tools necessary to boost your media fluency and define, shape, and evolve your understanding of popular culture in the context of the society we live in today. 

Popular Culture was the first course of my postgraduate study journey. This course provided me with great resources to explore different and/or mixed media genres and a good theoretical foundation for my postgraduate study overall.

At first, I was a bit intimidated by this module because I was not familiar with any of the course concepts (which is normal). However, through learning key concepts about popular culture from the lectures, the seminars, the mentor meetings and multiple sensibly selected readings, my self-confidence built up, I no longer felt intimidated, and many of the course concepts became interesting. What I found particularly rewarding was the Media Genre Model created by our professor Annette Hill. This innovative model not only enabled me a better understanding of the mixed-genre media productions, but also guided me delving into the very core of the mixed-genre per se. With the enlightenment of the key concepts from the course, I gained new perspectives and visions of popular culture through working on the assignments of the module. At the end of this course, I was very pleased and surprised to find that I had achieved something really great!

In this course, you will pick up a lot of knowledge about media and culture, and you will have a greater understanding of why popular culture matters. There will be lectures, seminars, workshops, and mentor meetings that will help you throughout the journey. This is a module with great quality and very engaging learning environments.

The popular culture course is a well-designed course by the course leader Annette Hill. The course provides a perfect template of how popular culture is integral in understanding our media and society. I love the practicality of this course; the concepts are what the student can connect to without ambiguity. The lectures and seminars are well structured in a way for you to understand how the genre model is put to action in the study of popular culture. The genre model provides an immersive tool in understanding how forms – mixed genres, media platforms, styles – are integral to the meaning-making process of popular culture.

The course helps the student to think differently about our popular culture. Taking it beyond the buzz around popular culture by investigating it through the elements of the genre model – context, definitions, styles, themes, values and engagement. The course is engaging, fun-filled and allows you to learn something new from your classmates during the group works. I am strongly recommending this course for prospective students who are willing to have a deeper knowledge of popular culture.

If I had to use a fantastical word to describe this course in Popular Culture, I would use 'treasure map'. Each part of the course seems to be independent, but in fact they are intertwined and influence each other. Although I had some difficulty understanding them, with the explanation of the genre models and the practice of using them, you will find that all the previous lessons can be taken as a whole. And you end up with the core treasure of the treasure map!

I would like to highlight in particular the most important and interesting research method in this section of the course - the Genre Model. In the group work project, we discuss together the selection of interesting research cases and the practical use of  Genre Model to better connect and deeply understand different theoretical perspectives. Each small failure will lead to a future flash of success. Through trial and error, we were able to gain a better understanding of a method that is still "growing". For me, the genre model has also taught me to think in a more complete and logical way about the analysis of my case studies.

Finally, Popular Culture was the second-to-last course in my study abroad career. Although, due to the epidemic, most of our courses took online. However, the few offline seminars allowed me to experience the clash of different cultural ideas from around the world. More importantly, I felt love through this class! A virus can keep us from embracing, but it will never separate love. And of all the cultural connotations, love will always be the most touching and unforgettable!

This course was intellectually stimulating in that it did not focus solely on particular elements of popular culture, but rather on how popular culture can be seen as just that: popular elements of culture. This, of course, leads to questions about what ’culture’ actually is or how it can be understood, which is a discussion the course also engages with. Throughout the course I was able to explore society, in popular culture, through the lens of genre, which proved to be very rewarding and gave me fascinating philosophical insights. Anyone with an interest in structures of meaning and what the latest television series can tell us about the world we live in will enjoy this course.

The course gives me an opportunity to apply a cultural approach to genre analysis, where I get to understand the significance of making choices and defending them during the interpretation of a generic form. The newly acquired genre analysis method and genre model enable me to integrate the research methods I have learned before and give me the capability to generate a more comprehensive and holistic picture of a genre.

Starting with offering background knowledge of cultural industries and labor relations, professor Annette Hill will walk you through all the key concepts with her well-structured lectures and inspiring workshops. Genre work and inter-generic spaces will shed light on the co-creation of popular culture by both audiences and producers, while social imaginary and cultural citizenship will help address a broader framework to examine sense of belonging and recognition from media storytelling. 

You will have a chance to discuss and apply the concepts in your literature during reading group presentations and experience the genre analysis process in the group project before launching your own research. The course leader will also provide valuable guidance during the individual tutorial for your own project to make sure you are on track. If you are willing to dig deeper into the social and cultural values behind pop culture trends and see how genres are formed as cultural categories, Popular Culture will be your top choice

The study of pop culture is not about what’s art and what’s trash. It’s about how we use it to shape our identities, relate to others and find a sense of belonging. All of it figures into the reception and production practices surrounding different media content. And how often do you get to learn about that through a mockumentary about froufrou Kiwi vampires?

It is this context that makes Pop Culture essential for a more nuanced understanding of media, culture and society. Annette Hill puts students to task with thought-provoking lectures and readings, all of which come together in an individual essay that encourages you to think critically about your favorite television shows, movies, internet memes and more. Here, the method of genre analysis allows you to fully comprehend not just media content but the cultural industries, histories and politics behind it.

Hill peppers her lectures with colorful — at times comedic — examples from contemporary culture and her own research; and invites her students to give their own. From her love of Derry Girls to What We Do in the Shadows, it’s hard not to get excited along with her. I wholeheartedly recommend this class.

The popular culture course is an eye-opening investigation of genre studies. The course is very dynamic as it helps me explore various aspects of popular culture ranging from sound to visual productions. During this course, we were not only studied the history of popular culture but also developed our understandings of several concepts such as cultural citizenship, social imaginary, visual culture and cultural industries.

Annette is a very helpful, kind and brilliant professor. Asides from the lectures and its well-complimented reading materials, Annette also passes on an amazing approach to the study of genres and she calls it as a “genre model”. This model explores different elements such as contexts, definitions, forms, themes, values and engagement. A combination of lectures, seminars, group projects and final essay is an effective way of learning, creating more astonishing experiences. Since students came from diverse backgrounds, the course has offered us an opportunity to gain a deeper understanding of the popular culture through discussions and sharing of different cultural experiences. Additionally, group works have served as a great platform for us to practice the genre model through investigating a contemporary cultural form, chosen from a range of reality TV shows, music, documentaries, YouTube videos, movie series, or podcasts.

Most interestingly, the course contributes to my understanding of contemporary Cambodian music genres. Prior to the study, I did not pay attention to the style of music as I always listened to music based on its popularity and melody. However, this course has significantly changed the way I listen to music. I could genuinely say that “I enjoyed the course and it is highly recommended!”

Popular culture is a rewarding module that I would strongly recommend. It trains you to critically look at popular culture in everyday life through media and cultural studies. 

You will learn the method of genre analysis and contextualise it in a specific cultural context, which will guide you in the investigation of the power dynamics surrounding popular culture. The genre model will further provide you a systematic view in examining popular culture both internally (e.g. styles and themes) and externally (e.g. contexts, definitions, values and engagement). There are a lot of thoughtful concepts that will provide you a fresh view in the study of popular culture, such as genre work, intergeneric spaces and cultural citizenship. 

During the course, Professor Annette Hill offered valuable guidance and access to her invaluable knowledge. Her specialities in media and cultural studies guided us in navigating genres in popular culture. Overall, this is a really helpful course for those who are interested in uncovering the power dynamics in popular culture through genre analysis.

Popular Culture was an interesting and theoretically challenging course. It expanded my perspectives on popular culture and allowed me to discover the broad conceptual possibilities of studying different phenomena around the topic. The course was stimulating with its interactive lectures, group assignments and the final essay, which demanded quite some effort and concentration. However, the course structure was well planned and generated a cumulative development of understanding about the topic, allowing us to build our knowledge step by step.

Annette encouraged us to use our own experiences and interests as a compass in our learning path. We got to explore (popular) cultural phenomena and forms of our own interest, and this freedom was one of the best features of the course. I must say, I was not the most excited about studying popular culture in the beginning, but thorough the course I realized how relevant the subject actually is for anyone willing to understand media and contemporary societies on the whole. Annette’s own passion for the topic truly showed and motivated my own work, as well.

This course really broadened my mind regarding culture in general, and pop culture in particular. Coming from a background in the arts, I had mostly an industry oriented, or individual creator based view of pop culture. In this course you don’t do auteur theory at all. You study culture more as a social phenomenon, something that circulates in society and that people engage with in various ways. You learn to think about pop culture as dialogical, not just something producers create and audiences consume. Genres exist and evolve through an ongoing reciprocal exchange between industries, producers and audiences. This is a new way of looking at pop culture for me, and an enriching one. The course is cross-disciplinary and firmly situated in the humanities. Thus, you’ll make several stops on this journey, in social sciences, cultural studies, traditional and new media studies, visual culture etc. 

Clarity, structure and conviviality are some words that come to mind when thinking about professor Hill’s teaching. Reading groups and case studies are used as a way of practicing and preparing for the essay, a great way of ’getting into it’, and getting to know your class mates (your greatest asset). These sessions were a fun and challenging way to begin applying theoretical concepts from the literature on real cases. With a background in comics and animation, I know what it’s like to be ”below the line”, having no say about anything. The cultural industries are full of such people, with uncertain and temporary forms of employment. The last thing I’d be interested in is ’ivory tower arrogance’. This course is the opposite of that! Professor Hill teaches her students to approach pop culture with respect and curiosity, no matter if that culture is considered ’high’ or ’low’. I warmly recommended Popular Culture

This Popular Culture course was a really enjoyable and enriching experience as I was able to have a more critical look at media that is a part of my everyday life.  We were encouraged to focus on our own areas of interest giving space for everyone to learn from each other. The focus on genre and the introduction of the genre model as a new methodology were particularly interesting as well as being able to apply it to our own case study for the final essay. The literature and use of contemporary examples made it easy to understand how each concept could be applied to different case studies. Annette was a very engaging professor which made the course that much more fun to participate in. Overall, I came out of this course with a much better understanding of the relevance of popular culture

Popular Culture was my first lecture in English and my first course in the Media and Communication Masters and I couldn't imagine any better way to start this programme. During this course Annette Hill explains why popular culture from a cultural perspective matters in media studies and combined with the course readings you will get an amazing overview of this field. She taught us not only different theories and concepts in and around the field of Popular Culture but also a very helpful method to analyse media genres which will be very beneficial for the next courses as well as the master thesis.

Not only is Annette Hill herself enthusiastic and passionate about this field of study and can therefore give a lot of examples from her own research but she also explains all academic concepts and theories in a very understandable way. You will learn a lot from her knowledge and experience in researching this rapid-changing and at the first glance very tangled field. I really enjoyed the class discussions since these highlight the international importance of popular culture as a field of study field and you will hear a lot of different cases from all over the world.

During this course you will do a group presentation where you can practice the method and combine the concepts from the readings in regard to a particular popular culture case. This will make you more confident for writing the essay since the method isn't new to you anymore by then. When it comes to the essay topic Annette Hill is also really open to niche cases if you can explain why this particular case matters. So all in all, this course will give you a perfect start in this programme and you will gather important theories and methods for your future research in Popular Culture and genres in general. 

Popular culture course gets me a fresh perspective on media representation in terms of imagination and storytelling, as well as the power relations between the cultural industry, producers and audiences. With the group project and individual essay, we have freedom to choose various and interesting case studies such as political memes, documentaries, ASMR videos to understand the key concepts and method of a cultural approach to genre analysis. I highly recommend the course for students who want to explore the role of popular culture in the study of media, culture and society.

Popular culture is an inspiring and enriching course. You will have an in-depth understanding of key concepts in the field of popular culture, such as cultural citizenship, cultural industry, and visual culture. There are chances to participate in various learning practices, including lectures, group work, seminars, and individual essay. During the process of reading and researching, you can gain the relevant practical experience of genre analysis, which will lay the foundation for qualitative researches in other course modules and social science studies.

This course is a good beginning for first-year students. Because Annette is so considerate and enthusiasm, she values everyone's ideas and efforts, and never spares to give constructive advice and help. Group discussion is a process of reflecting the reading and getting familiar with classmates. It will provide you insights into different media contexts by sharing opinions and colliding ideas with classmates from different cultural backgrounds. In a word, I strongly recommend this rewarding course to those who want to immerse themselves in the field of media research and popular culture.

Popular Culture is a pragmatic and enjoyable course. As always, Professor Hill has given a clear introduction and helpful guides during both the class and individual tutorial. The course broadens my horizon to understand and study popular culture from different perspectives, including historical and cultural, industry and audiences, visual and sound etc.. The literature and the lectures were challenging and exciting, driving to desiring more knowledge. The concept I learned from this course has given me a lot of inspirations to design my thesis work. I did enjoy discussing the concepts, theories and cases during class and group workshops. Also, in this course, Annette provided with us the method of genre analysis to conduct a case study. The model she gave us helped us to have more creative and in-depth thinking about popular culture.

I will highly recommend this course to you because it is not only helping us to widen our experience in the academic field but also a chance to help us to understand our everyday life better.