Starting spring semester, a class called Lady Gaga and the Sociology of Fame will be added to the coursework at the University of South Carolina. The molding of young American minds aside, USC’s mascot is the Gamecock. Ha. Lady Gaga. Gamecocks. She wants to take a ride on your disco stick. (These are the jokes a minor in sociology will buy you, thank you very much.)
According to professor Mathieu Deflem, who has seen her 28 times in concert and runs a Gaga fansite, the course will focus on looking at the pop star as a social event.
“It’s not the person, and it’s not the music. It’s more this thing out there in society that has 10 million followers on Facebook and six million on Twitter. I mean, that’s a social phenomenon. It’s a global social phenomenon. The central question of the course is, this fame… how can it be accounted for? What are some of the mechanisms and some of the conditions of Lady Gaga’s rise to popularity?”
More in the video after the jump.
