124184 VK BEd 08b.3: VK Cultural Studies and Language Education (2023S)

American popular culture presents Alaska as the last frontier, a beautiful, but dangerous wilderness, hard to penetrate and empty. Reality TV-shows such as Deadliest Catch (Discovery,+ 2005-2022), Alaska: The Last Frontier (Discovery Channel, 2011-2020), Gold Rush (Raw TV, 2010-2021) or Yukon Men (Paper Route Productions, 2012-2016) 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 with the exception of Alaska and Hawaii). Cinematic adaptations for example of Jack London’s 1903 novel The Call of the Wild that features Harrison Ford (20th Century Studios 2020), or John Krakauer’s Into the Wild (1996), while surely more nuanced than the sensational frontier myths in reality TV, equally support nostalgia about heroic masculinity and wilderness.
In this class, we will revisit these and other myths about Alaska and their echoes in today’s mainstream culture from a critical intersectional perspective. We will ask, among other things, which periods and aspects of Alaskan history are brought forward by these popular culture production and which ones 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 into 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 the recent TV-show Alaska Daily (2022) that focuses on anti-Indigenous racism, the violence and murder of Alaska Native women, and that features female white and Native heroines. Looking at these and other examples, we will ask how contemporary popular culture speaks back to the masculinist myths about the state. Moreover, analyzing popular culture that is produced by or features Alaska Native individuals and groups, we will ask how they intervene into American national identity discourses, claim history, fight stereotypes, and make claims to American national identity and its territory.

Aims

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