POLITICS AND POPULAR CULTURE B

Module Code: POU11034

Module Name: POLITICS AND POPULAR CULTURE B 2025-26

ECTS Weighting: 5
Semester/Term Taught: Semester 2
Contact Hours: 2 Hours Lecture per week
Module Personnel: Dr Sotirios Karampampas
Module co-requisite: POU11033- Politics & Popular Culture A

Learning Outcomes

Upon successful completion of the module, students will be able to

Identify and explain key theoretical approaches to the study of global popular culture in international politics.
Critically analyse how cultural texts/artifacts (e.g. films, series, music, memes) engage with global political issues such as nationalism, authoritarianism, war and migration.
Assess the role of popular culture in the projection of soft power and the construction of geopolitical identities.
Examine how digital media, fandoms, and cultural industries shape protest cultures and global imaginaries.
Communicate complex arguments about cultural politics clearly in written and oral forms.
Reflect on their own media engagement in relation to global political structures and cultural narratives.

Module Learning Aims

The module aims to

Introduce students to the theoretical and empirical study of popular culture within international politics.
Develop a critical understanding of how global cultural forms reflect, reinforce, or resist political power across borders.
Equip students with the analytical tools to interpret cultural artefacts, global cultural trends, and everyday practices of cultural consumption.
Foster comparative thinking about how popular culture operates across different geopolitical, economic and institutional contexts.
Encourage students to engage critically and reflexively with their own cultural environments as sites of political meaning.

Module Content

This module examines the political dimensions of popular culture in international and transnational contexts. Moving beyond the nation-state, it explores how films, TV series, music, digital media, memes, sports and fandoms participate in global power relations, shape political imaginaries, and circulate ideologies across borders. Students will engage with cultural forms through themes including nationalism, postcolonialism, global capitalism, migration, protest, and humanitarianism. They will critically engage with cultural texts and trends to understand how popular culture functions as both a site of domination and resistance in world politics. The module combines theoretical perspectives from international relations and cultural studies with empirical case studies, enabling students to critically analyse how popular culture both shapes and reflects the global political order.