124181 VK BEd 08b.3: VK Cultural Studies and Language Education (2025W)

Alaska is the biggest of all U.S. states, with vast natural resources and a fascinating history and culture. And yet, most people associate Alaska with a limited set of myths and clichés. Arguably, most of the ideas about Alaska come from American popular culture, which presents it as the last frontier, a dangerous and empty wilderness. Jack London’s 1903 novel The Call of the Wild and its TV adaptations (e.g. with Harrison Ford, 20th Century Studios 2020), or John Krakauer’s Into the Wild (1996) play on familiar tropes of heroic masculinity, fighting nature, conjuring up past myths of colonial expansionism and the exploitation of natural resources that have long been deconstructed for the “lower 48” (all US states except Alaska and Hawai’i). Reality TV-shows such as Deadliest Catch (Discovery,+ 2005-2025), Alaska: The Last Frontier (Discovery Channel, 2011-2022), Gold Rush (Raw TV, 2010-2025) or Yukon Men (Paper Route Productions, 2012-2016) offer an even more sensationalized version of the familiar frontier myth, supporting nostalgia about heroic masculinity and wilderness.
This class will revisit these and other myths about Alaska and their echoes in today’s mainstream culture from a critical intersectional perspective. Among other things, we will ask which periods and aspects of Alaskan history are brought forward by these popular culture productions and which are silenced. Using theories and methodologies of intersectionality and decolonization, we will interrogate popular culture for disseminating settler colonial discourses and unequal gender and racial hierarchies.
While critically investigating the reconstruction of colonial ideas, racism, sexism, and forms of problematic masculinity through contemporary popular culture, we are also looking for less prominent, but existing discourses about Alaska.
We will analyze cultural productions that counter the problematic ideas about Alaska, such as the animated series Molly of Denali (WGBH Kids, 2019-2024), or the TV show Alaska Daily (ABC, 2022-2023), that feature Native heroines and culture. We will ask how contemporary popular culture speaks back to the masculinist myths about the state. Moreover, analyzing popular culture and art produced by or featuring Alaska Native individuals and groups, we will ask how they intervene in American national identity discourses, claim history, fight stereotypes, and make claims to American national identity and its territory.

Aims
Using representations of Alaska as an example, the students will learn how to analyze popular culture for its underlying ideologies and discourses critically. They will acquire important methodological tools and theories on gender, masculinity, intersectionality, and decolonial approaches that will allow them to analyze popular culture productions systematically.
Students will be assisted in developing relevant research questions for theses that use basic methodology and theoretical background.