The Lantern

Issue date: 7/19/07 Section: Campus

Graphic by Caitlin Sampsel

Although most people watch the ABC series "Lost" for the drama, action and adventure, Jared Gardner views it to brilliantly engage in complex analyses of the structure and hidden meaning behind the series.

"It's hard to watch tv these days," Gardner said. "Watching shows like 'Lost,' means I have to take notes."

Gardner, an associate professor at Ohio State, coordinated a new undergraduate interdisciplinary popular culture studies minor to help OSU students make those same analyses.

"The study of popular culture allows them (students) to experience connections between the skills and training they are receiving in their majors and the world they will be navigating for the rest of their lives," Gardner said.

He said the minor was designed to help students bridge the gap between the popular, public and material cultures of students' daily lives and the cultures that are traditionally studied.

Gardner said students would come to him and say they felt disconnected from the outside world and this lead to the creation of the minor.

"I think the study of popular culture is increasingly important for students living-for better and worse-in a media-saturated world," Gardner said.

Students who declare the minor will study historical and global popular culture. The program offers a wide array of research tools, theoretical frameworks, methodologies and intellectual foundations to help students approach the field of study.

The minor requires the completion of 24 credit hours which consists of an introductory course, a course involving the historical study of popular culture, and a course focusing on popular culture outside of the U.S.

Gardner said other classes that can be taken for the minor come from a wide variety of fields, and he hopes to incorporate more classes about television and pop culture in the future.

Arts and Science 264: Introduction to Popular Culture Studies is the only required course for the major and will be offered for the first time in the fall. Gardner said the course was designed to give students tools they can use to study a wide range of popular studies, texts and topics.

"Part of the fun of the class is that this is a field that is always reinventing itself, so in addition to learning from the best models out there right now, we will work together to help shape new questions and answers for the future," Gardner said. "There is no dusty textbook in its tenth edition in this field, so we get to help write the text for the class and we will do so together online, laying the foundations for a dynamic resource that will change every year, like the field itself."

Melissa Haley, a sophomore in English, said she entered the minor because she can fill three general education curriculum classes that count towards it and then only have two more classes to take to complete the minor.

Becky Hitt, a junior in theatre, said she is interested in the minor because she has taken some classes in the field and really enjoyed them.

"Being a theatre major, it will be a great compliment to my line of work," she said.

Diana Norwood can be reached at norwood.27@osu.edu.

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