AAAS 326: Social Media & African Popular Culture

AAAS 326: Social Media & African Popular Culture

This course deals with popular creative forms and critical commentaries (re)produced or/and circulated by ordinary people - as opposed to the social and political elites - in the context of social media in Africa. Social media in Africa stages an unprecedented explosion of new popular forms, and digital genres circulate the perspectives of everyday people. With the understanding that popular culture is an arena in which non-elite subjects in different African countries create aesthetic forms, we will examine in this course the implications of literary and cultural expressions from different regions of Africa that are born-digital and remediated modes of subverting power and the normative culture. Students will explore how forms of popular culture-including Nollywood films, and other expressive forms on YouTube and other social media-serve as a running commentary both on contemporary Africa as well as on historical processes and changes in the continent.