{"id":214471,"date":"2024-05-21T07:35:59","date_gmt":"2024-05-21T11:35:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/?p=214471"},"modified":"2024-05-21T07:39:21","modified_gmt":"2024-05-21T11:39:21","slug":"listen-up-uconn-popcast-digs-deep-on-culture-and-society","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/2024\/05\/listen-up-uconn-popcast-digs-deep-on-culture-and-society\/","title":{"rendered":"Listen Up: UConn Popcast Digs Deep on Culture and Society"},"content":{"rendered":"

While they\u2019ve been coworkers and friends for years, two political science professors in the University of Connecticut\u2019s College of Liberal Arts and Sciences have established another level of depth to their relationship: hosting a podcast about popular culture and politics.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Jeffrey Dudas<\/span><\/a>, a professor of political science and affiliate faculty of American studies, joined UConn in 2004. His studies focus on law, politics, and cultural themes and sets of values for communities. These, he says, directly tie to the broader study of popular culture, which he\u2019s been looking into more closely for the last five years. <\/span><\/p>\n

When <\/span>Stephen Dyson<\/span><\/a>, a professor of political science and the director of the Humanities House Learning Community, joined UConn in 2007, the pair hit it off immediately. Dyson\u2019s interest in popular culture began when he \u201cgot bored\u201d with what he calls traditional political science, and began using popular culture in his teaching and research.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

With their shared interest, Dyson and Dudas view their <\/span>UConn Popcast<\/span><\/a> as an iteration of their many conversations relating political science and other topics in the humanities to each other. \u201cContrary to appearances, we don\u2019t just run our mouths,\u201d Dyson laughs. Dudas agrees: \u201cYou have to do a bunch of work to make it look like you haven\u2019t done anything.\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

When the first episode launched in August of 2022, the UConn Popcast was actually called \u201cUConn Polipop,\u201d and was created as promotional material for <\/span>UConn\u2019s Master\u2019s degree program in Politics and Popular Culture<\/span><\/a>.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cOf course, the idea was totally mine,\u201d Dyson jokes, to which Dudas notes that their friendship works well because he\u2019s been able to tell when Dyson is lying \u201cfrom the get-go.\u201d <\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWe didn\u2019t necessarily have money to advertise [the Master\u2019s degree], but we had this,\u201d Dudas adds.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

In addition, teaching during the pandemic made the jump to podcasting easier for the pair.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWe got pretty comfortable in front of the camera and listening to ourselves,\u201d Dyson says.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The name-change from UConn Polipop to UConn Popcast came about to allow the discussions to branch out into a broader set of issues and topics.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWe were running across texts or movies that were not really obvious where the political science was, but they were still meaningful, so instead of shoehorning politics into something, this freed us up to not worry specifically about finding the political science aspect,\u201d Dudas says. <\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Each episode of the UConn Popcast \u2014 which releases roughly once a month, though this can be a hard goal to hit for the busy professors \u2014 utilizes a three-part framework to analyze a piece of popular culture as a \u201ctext.\u201d Dyson and Dudas prepare notes ahead of time, before sitting down and hitting the record button.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

As for the three-part framework, it resembles the pairs\u2019 teaching style.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

First, Dyson explains, they look into the text \u201con the surface\u201d \u2014 asking, \u201cWhat did the author of the thing explicitly put into the work?\u201d before diving into the \u201cmythologies,\u201d or the \u201cstructures groups or societies might bring to decode or understand the texts.\u201d <\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Finally, they look into a \u201clevel of critique,\u201d or as Dudas explains, \u201coffering a take on the text that is often unusual or distinctive.\u201d <\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWe try to give a sense of what critics have made of whatever we\u2019re talking about, and frequently disagree with the accepted criticisms,\u201d Dudas says. <\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Dyson and Dudas have used this framework for a variety of episodes on a wide range of topics, including Taylor Swift and Olivia Rodrigo, James Bond movies, reality television, and even the recent Netflix adaptation of \u201cThree Body Problem.\u201d\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Navigating Youtube\u2019s algorithm while posting each episode has been an interesting yet fun challenge, Dyson notes. <\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe algorithm is a total mystery,\u201d he says. \u201cThe most exciting time of my life is watching the views, seeing how early I can tell how an episode will perform.\u201d <\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

One of their episodes on Taylor Swift has performed exceedingly well, making Dudas especially the \u201cgo-to guy\u201d for media requests on the topic, as a self-described \u201cSwiftie\u201d well informed of her work and presence in popular culture.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cAt one point I wasn\u2019t able to respond to them quickly enough,\u201d he says. <\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

All of the work that goes into the UConn Popcast is in addition to Dyson and Dudas\u2019s work as professors and scholars. While they don\u2019t play episodes for their classes, they do mention it to their students, and often use popular culture themes in their teaching.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The pair is also currently collaborating on a book that will discuss popular culture with their unique viewpoint. They\u2019ve referred to the UConn Popcast episodes as \u201cverbal first drafts\u201d of a few chapters.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Dyson and Dudas are especially proud of the accessibility of the UConn Popcast, and how it brings humanities discussions to a broader audience beyond UConn.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cOne of the things I\u2019m proudest of is the fact that the podcast takes an open vision of what counts as meaningful pop culture,\u201d Dudas says. \u201cFocusing on what\u2019s popular shows you what a community is thinking about and how it feels.\u201d <\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Two professors of political science at UConn analyze popular culture through the lens of the humanities<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":68,"featured_media":214473,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"video","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_crdt_document":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1711,2226,2460,2235,2234],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[1902],"class_list":["post-214471","post","type-post","status-publish","format-video","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arts-culture","category-clas","category-faculty","category-today-homepage","category-university-life","post_format-post-format-video"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-23 08:33:37","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/214471","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/68"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=214471"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/214471\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":214527,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/214471\/revisions\/214527"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/214473"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=214471"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=214471"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=214471"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=214471"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=214471"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}