ENGL 525PDI: POP POETS DIVAS ICON

California State University, Northridge

This course will consider the history of popular media culture through the lens of poets, singers, performers, and writers from across the 17th-21st centuries, focusing on figures ranging from Aphra Behn, Margaret Cavendish, Nell Gwynn, Sarah Siddons, and Jane Austen to Beyoncé, Stevie Nicks, Taylor Swift, Chappell Roan, and Sabrina Carpenter. Balancing poetics, close reading, and presentist historicist readings, students will analyze how changing media technologies and sociopolitics influence these figures' reception and their ability to conform to and/or resist prevailing cultural norms.