New Course to be Offered

I am out on PTO through April 10th for my Class of ’27’s spring break. I am pre-posting Daily Deacs to run while I am away.

In this Issue: today I share information about a new course I got approval to teach this fall

I am really excited to announce that I have proposed a new course to be taught, and it will launch this fall. The course is IMM 110, Studying Celebrities And Millennials and will be taught within the Immersive Media department.

Course description: IMM 110: Studying Celebrities And Millennials (3h)  

Exposes students to multiple case studies of celebrities who have played formative roles in Millennials’ lives and understanding of modern popular culture. A broad range of celebrities will be explored, enabling students to understand the ambiguous and often highly-charged nature of celebrity culture. The course focuses on three main aspects of modern celebrity:

1) Swifties, Beliebers, Stans, and Fans: this module will explore the unique subculture of celebrity fan bases, particularly as they relate to romantic rivalries (e.g., Selena vs. Hailey), with special attention paid to cross-cultural fan bases like the BTS Army  

2) Hidden Identities: this module is a study of how celebrities play out private grievances in public spaces such as song lyrics (e.g., Beyoncé and “Becky with the Good Hair”)

3) Social Media Strategy: this module will present a critical review of celebrity Instagram, TikTok, and Twitter accounts, with emphasis on how celebrities navigate negative press (e.g., Ye)

Learning Objectives

Upon completion of this course, students will be able to:

• Articulate an interdisciplinary definition of celebrity that accounts for both US and global celebrity.
• Provide an explanation of the role and importance of media saturation in developing a celebrity’s Q score.
• Recognize social media conditions that can enhance a celebrity’s image or damage it, and elucidate potential mitigation strategies for damage control.
• Illustrate the ways that Millennials have coopted celebrity concert-going as part of their own social framework, even to their economic detriment (e.g., what makes early-career Millennials spend $1000 to fly to Vegas for a girls weekend to see Usher or Taylor Swift in concert?)

• Leverage their knowledge of social media to construct a PR strategy for an up-and-coming quasi-celebrity.

• Foster an understanding of how a celebrity’s public identity can be co-created by fans who share that same identity.
• Offer a compelling argument for – or against – the suggestion that celebrities with massive social media followings should speak out on social issues.
• Orient their understanding of celebrity across disparate platforms, from the traditional performing arts, to YouTube stars and social media influencers.
• Learn to identify celebrity deepfakes, trolls, and bots.
• Soooooo sorry to fool you a day before the actual day, Daily Deacers – but belated APRIL FOOLS! You didn’t really think I’d be able to teach this class at Wake Forest, did you?  

Did any of you catch that my course title and learning objectives had hidden meanings?

Friends, don’t be too mad at the ol’ Daily Deac for trying to string you along today. I haven’t done an April Fool’s Daily Deac since 2019, before the pandemic. You know I love our Deac families!

Forgive me if I fooled you and enjoy your week 🙂