How is power exercised through culture? In what ways do our everyday entertainments and recreations condition us politically? This class will challenge you with at times demanding readings in recent theories of Cultural Studies, then task you to apply these framings in real time to contemporary cultural artifacts. What kind of subject cohesions are constituted in Game of Thrones? Does Starcraft destabilize hegemonic articulations of space? How does Justin Bieber re/produce intersectionalities of gender and age? What work is being done through contested analogies of race in HBO's Girls? If you are up for wrestling with extensive readings on contemporary theories of power, then exercising your developing critique through application to popular culture in daily discussions and 10-15 pages of graded writing, this class should suit you well.