Week 1

How has the academic reception of popular genres changed over time, and what might be the value of studying them?

Genre fiction was historically excluded from the sphere of authorized literary canon for a long time, with its establishment as a new form of literature being resisted by many academics and intellectuals. Bias for what we know as classical literature was challenged with the influx of multi-modal texts that conveyed imagined worlds and unconventional characters, thus not seen as something that could be taken seriously alongside literature that has been regarded as a threshold by the elite.

The emergence of popular genres are often the product of technological development, and society in itself is a structure that has constantly developed and changed over time. To have access to media that does this simultaneously and unconventionally, and to have an openness to understand it’s creation, existence and purpose, will only further develop our capacity to understand and dissect a myriad of ideas that have and still dominate many societies. The acceptance of popular genres and their inclusion in education allows an abundance of creatives from all sorts of walks of life to share their stories in a multitude of ways, coming with them an abundance of culture, experiences and worldviews.