One of the things I’ve been thinking about since I took “History of American Popular Culture Through Music” last semester, is present-day youths’ beleaguered acquiescence of society’s pervasive, biased criticism of contemporary American pop music. Before expounding my concern, I must say that the course proved itself to be one of the most productively engaging courses I’ve ever taken, one I looked forward to twice a week.
In the course, Professor Hilary Hallett tracks the development of American popular music beginning with the rise of minstrelsy and concludes the intellectual excursion with Motown. I highly recommend the course since it enables an exploration of the fundamental aspects of our nation’s social history throughout which Americans have increasingly constructed their social identities through a relationship to music.
