Imagine a class of students that is attempting to take the perfect selfie with their teacher; who it seems is a master of art. Surprised? Well, don’t be, because, this might be a regular sight at the City Lit College in London that has recently introduced a course in ‘the art of self-portraiture’ or more simply, taking a selfie. Now those students enrol themselves to get rid of clicking imperfect selfies or leaving people on the edges of a group selfie out, I take the liberty to inform you about many other such courses offered by institutes that would make the study-haters think twice before dropping out of colleges. Whether the courses are useful or waste of time is up to you to decide. # The Otis College of Art and Design offers a course titled ‘Harry Potter: Literary Tradition and Popular Culture’. According to the institute’s website, this course examines the Harry Patter phenomenon in terms of its folkloric origins, literary structures, and its effect on popular culture and critically analyzes the various themes and values expressed through Rowling’s books in an effort to understand how and why Harry Potter has made reading fun again. Well, have fun then. # The Columbia College of Chicago has gone a step ahead and introduced a course ‘Zombies in Popular Media’. So all those zombie fanatics and zombie apocalypse believers now have a common place to be at. However fascinating it may sound, we really wonder what the discussions would be like here. World War Z and The Walking Dead are sure to come up. Maybe in a few years they will also come up a recipe of turning oneself into a zombie. # Captain Kirk, Spock, the Jedi and everyone associated with the Star Trek franchise would simply love this course offered by the Georgetown University. The course itself is an introduction to metaphysics and epistemology philosophy but there is a twist here. The lessons are taught as philosophical issues that pop up when the Star Trek cast ventures into unknown places. Trekkies will have a field day at these lessons. # Call her weird or an alien, Lady Gaga’s antics brought her fame and also inspired a University of South Carolina professor, Mathieu Deflem, to start a course titled ‘Lady Gaga and the Sociology of Fame’. The University website explains how Deflem watched the singer on a show and thought her to be ‘an extraordinarily talented and exciting new artist who was doing great things musically and creatively’. Alright, let’s just stop at that.
Posted on: Thu, 15 Jan 2015 12:16:40 +0000