USC Class Examines The Selfie As Cultural Artifact
LOS ANGELES (CBSLA.com) — Selfies have made their way from social media to USC classrooms in a new class examining the photos as cultural artifacts.
The #SelfieClass, formerly called Writing 150: Writing and Critical Reasoning: Identity and Diversity, analyzes "gender, sexuality and race portrayed in social media," school officials state in a news release.
Mark Marino, an associate professor at the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences, leads the class, required for first-year students.
"When we look at selfies, we're also looking at the beginning of the 21st century," Marino stated.
"The cultural moment of the selfies will pass and become something that's iconic of our age, the same way that photographic self-portraits or painting self-portraits or religious journals were the selfies of their moment," he continued.
Freshman students are asked to critically examine "society's influence on self-identity and how selfies reflect and affect the global culture in which we live" as part of the curriculum, officials said.