{"id":14772,"date":"2019-02-27T16:00:23","date_gmt":"2019-02-27T16:00:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.golive.clarku.edu\/news\/2019\/02\/27\/higgins-school-of-humanities-to-present-spring-symposium-on-pop-culture\/"},"modified":"2025-05-19T09:52:06","modified_gmt":"2025-05-19T13:52:06","slug":"higgins-school-of-humanities-to-present-spring-symposium-on-pop-culture","status":"publish","type":"story","link":"https:\/\/www.clarku.edu\/news\/2019\/02\/27\/higgins-school-of-humanities-to-present-spring-symposium-on-pop-culture\/","title":{"rendered":"Higgins School of Humanities to present spring symposium on pop culture"},"content":{"rendered":"\n \n

Lectures to examine racism and blackface, oversized McMansions, and music of the \u201970s<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n Visiting Artist Brian Ulrich talks about “Magic Lanterns,” an exhibition of his work on view at the Higgins School of Humanities until April 26. The exhibition is part of the Higgins spring symposium, Pop Cultures.\n

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This spring, Clark University’s Higgins School of Humanities<\/a> is exploring the glitzy and glamorous, retro and campy, catchy, annoying, or simply bewildering phenomena of pop culture.<\/p>\n

“We love what we love. We can’t help it — guilty pleasures, stylish schlock, the tunes we can’t get out of our head, the TV shows we binge,” writes Meredith Neuman<\/a>, director of the Higgins School. “Popular culture is driven as much by a taste for the new and surprising as by the need for the familiar and comforting. It suggests the fluidity between high and low art, the substantive and the frivolous. Pop culture also can provide a critical reflection of society, producing insight and dialogue. It can create new worlds, inviting us to imagine radical alternatives and to speculate ‘what if?’ ”<\/p>\n

An exhibition of work by photographer Brian Ulrich<\/a>, “Magic Lanterns,” opened Feb. 20 and will be on view in the Higgins Lounge at Dana Commons through April 26. The photos, portraying contemporary consumer culture, draw from a larger project, The Centurion<\/a>, which explores growing economic disparity and the resulting social, economic, and psychological effects that result when luxury and wealth become preeminent definitions of success.<\/p>\n

Upcoming events in “Pop Cultures” include:\n<\/p>\n