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GH 301: Stranger Things

GH 301: Stranger Things

Netflix's blockbuster hit, Stranger Things, instantly captured the imagination of Baby BoomersGeneration X and Z, and Millennials. For Baby Boomers, the series offered a walk down memory lane, romanticizing the 1980s and inducing reminiscence and longing. For newer generations, it combined the best of young adult pop culture: science fiction, horror, the heroes' quest, coming-of-age angst, and pre-adolescent and adolescent friendship. However, the popular series unquestionably glosses over controversial aspects of the 1980s and often misrepresents life in small-town Indiana. This dissonance provides an opportunity for us to learn through the lens of politics, culture, race, gender, and sexual orientation/identity, and to explore the rise of Reagan socio-political culture and the Moral Majority, the history of reproductive rights in the United States and the Women’s Movement, race relations in the 1980s, and homosexuality and the devastation of the AIDS epidemic.

The GH 301 seminar, Stranger Things, will examine the social, cultural, and political themes embedded in the Netflix series Stranger Things. Class discussion is the primary mode of instruction. The course is reading and writing intensive. Students will respond to journal prompts, write a seminar paper and facilitate a class period as a member of a facilitation group.

application-pdf.png Tentative Syllabus (PDF)

Instructor: Dr. Linda Maule

Please contact Dr. Maule if you have questions about this course.