Course Rationale: The Memosphere in the Public Sphere

The rise of internet memes and meme culture over the past two decades is a novel development in the history of popular culture, one closely tied to the burgeoning of social media since the early 21st century. Scholarly opinions on the subject have ranged from enthusiastic optimism to bleak pessimism, depending on whether the dynamics of meme culture are thought to display social media’s perceived tendency to promote social polarization, cultural fragmentation, and political tribalism. In this class, an introduction to the range of scholarly perspectives - from linguists, literary critics, political theorists, media scholars, and art historians - on the internet meme as a cultural form and the memosphere as a mode of cultural exchange and communication will motivate an exploration of the process of writing, and of writing as a form of critical thinking.