Wednesday, March 4, 2009

The Beatles

I had to share this snippet of an article I found on Huffington Post.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/03/03/uk-university-offers-mast_n_171656.html

The Liverpool Hope University is now offering a Master's Degree in "The Beatles, Popular Music, and Society."

This is quite possibly one of the neatest things ever and, of course, yet another reason why the liberal arts rock (and roll)! Literally.

More from the article:
"There have been over 8,000 books about the Beatles but there has never been serious academic study and that is what we are going to address," said Mike Brocken, who is directing the program at the university, which is in the band's hometown in northwestern England. Brocken said students would be expected to study the Beatles' songs, stardom, hometown and cultural impact through four 12-week courses and a dissertation. Brocken said studying the band was really a way of examining society as a whole. "If popular music is about anything, it's about people," he said. "If we look at popular culture, it simply provides us with a very complex mirror of ourselves."

6 comments:

Courtney said...

This is great! I loved reading the comments on The Huffington Post.

star said...

that is truly awesome.
i would love to spend some time getting a degree like that.

Anonymous said...

that would be a liberal arts program that I might be interested in! haha... you know me... allll science! Sounds really cool though!

saragraph said...

i like that the candidate today stated that studying the humanities is a "transforming experience." i've been sort of searching lately for a way to justify something i don't like justifying. i don't like simplifying myself or any field of learning in that way at all... but i do like that phrase.

Laminated Fragments said...

Saragraph: I totally understand what you saying. After hearing Dr. Azar Nafisi's talk last semester, I know why the liberal arts are so important, but I guess I feel that when I read Courtney's blogpost about that NYTimes article, I felt like so defeatist about supporting the liberal arts. But today, I feel like I could take on some stubborn politicos and argue about how important they are.

Laminated Fragments said...

Yeah, this does look like an awesome program, and I totally decided last night (when talking to Beamish) that I am going to create a Master's Program on Star Trek. I see a future post...