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Here's another college course to go along with underwater basketweaving and ballroom dancing on the all-time goofy curriculum.#SelfieClass—Writing 150: Writing and Critical Reasoning: Identity and Diversity as it is officially listed—is taught by Associate Professor Mark Marino at USC and takes a serious look at selfies as an expression of self-identity in 21st century culture. "Scholars are examining selfies because they are one of those cultural artifacts that have this delicious ironic energy around them," Marino tells USC News. "They've been trivialized by lots of people—which is another sign that it's probably taking a look at them from a cultural studies point of view."
On Medium, Marino posted one of the assignments: an essay with the prompt "How do your selfies produce or obscure a sense of your identity?"
Marino isn't the only academic who takes the selfie #seriously. Crosstown rival UCLA has their own course in the Digital Humanities department called "Selfies, Snapchat & Cyberbullies: Coming of Age Online". The Selfie Researchers Network lists dozens of academics from across the globe taking a critical look at the selfie. "Our goal is to develop a vocabulary for talking about technological and cultural change that accommodates the diversity and contingency of human experience," writes Professor Miriam Posner in her syllabus for the UCLA course.
Sure, lots of people like to say that the selfie is just proof that Millennials are vain, self-centered youngins' who like to look down at their phone. Whatever. Those people are probably cranky old white men with columns in the New York Times.
[h/t L.A. Weekly]
Watch the video below about USC's #SelfieClass
