Caritas: Confessions of a Pop Culture Academic

Greg Stevenson blogs about how he became convinced that the serious study of popular culture has academic merit. Excerpt:
One of my favorite classes to teach at Rochester College is a class titled "Religion, Media, and Youth Culture." I created this as a team-taught class. I teach it along with one of our Psychology professors and one of our Communication professors. It is a valuable learning experience for the students to see how popular culture looks through the eyes of different disciplines. We'll watch an episode of Battlestar Galactica or Buffy the Vampire Slayer together and then the students get to witness and join three scholars from different disciplines in discussion of that episode. I, for instance, may explore that episode's use of christological imagery, the Psychology professor may examine its use of Jungian archetypes, and the Communication professor may examine how it relates to contemporary communication theories.