This semester, Georgetown is offering an array of popular culture-themed classes, from “Philosophy and The Wire” to “Videogames in Critical Content.” While the courses are in high demand, the idea of merging TV and movies with serious academic questions has drawn criticism and ridicule.
A course called “Philosophy and Star Trek” has been offered at Georgetown for a decade but has been appearing on “Strange College Courses” lists across the internet for almost as long. Bestcollegesonline.com has it on its “20 Completely Ridiculous Liberal Arts Courses That Really Exist” list. The article praises Georgetown for being a prestigious university, but said, “When classes like this pop onto the course offerings list, we cringe.”
Dr. Linda Wetzel, who teaches the Star Trek course, disagrees. “I think Star Trek is very philosophical,” she said. “When I watched it as a kid, I saw it as an ideas show rather than just Star Wars.”
Take an episode of Star Trek where two of the characters switch bodies, she said. “That’s not possible unless the mind is not physical. It’s an excuse to examine the dualism philosophy that says we’re composed of two substances.”
Kyle Fruh, a graduate student in the Georgetown philosophy department who teaches “Philosophy and The Wire”, said he did not create the class to discover something about The Wire. While he uses the show to get some philosophical ideas straight, he makes minimal use of it in class.
William Bejan (MSB ‘12), a student in “Philosophy and The Wire,” said professors battling the perception of not teaching a real class end up neglecting the pop culture material a little. “This has left it more to individuals… to draw the connections between the philosophy and the fiction,” said Bejan in an email.
Another advantage of linking pop culture with philosophy is that students are usually far more interested in participating if they can talk about their favorite shows—”Philosophy and The Wire” had 11 students on the waitlist at the end of the Add/Drop period. Several other culture-themed courses—”Television and American Society,” “Cultural Politics of Television”—were also in high demand.
“The show does a lot really well, [and it’s] how we can make philosophy classes more acceptable, more exciting, more appealing,” Fruh said. “The goal is to get students who might not have otherwise wandered in. Give them something that will last, be of value of them, and help shape a view of what is worthwhile in higher education.”
Wetzel realized the potential of a pop culture philosophy class when she saw that students could grasp difficult concepts much more easily when she used pop culture references.
“When I present someone’s argument that he can doubt his body exists, [my students] would be yawning,” she said, but when she talked about The Matrix, her students got the concept right away.
Wetzel said she was surprised that more students kept enrolling in the Star Trek course. “The material is hard. I thought I would teach this once and word would get out that it’s a lot of work, but students keep coming.”
Fruh is optimistic about the future of pop culture classes at Georgetown.
“This feels different,” he said. “I think there’s a sustainable kind of model here that you can use in the future and there’s a lot of material out there that is perfect for classes like this…. This is one strategy to adopt for coping with the crisis of justification—to get people excited about these things, about studying English and philosophy.”
