Popular Culture and Narrative: Serial Storytelling
This MIT OpenCourseWare course examines how narratives unfold across time in serial forms, from Rembrandt's decades of self-portraits to The Wire, and from Charles Dickens's Pickwick Papers to contemporary journalism and reportage. Students look at how popular culture and fine art borrow techniques from each other, how audiences build expectations across installments, and how questions of evaluation and taste shift when a work is judged serially rather than as a finished whole. The course includes readings, screenings, and discussion materials drawn from literature, television, and visual art, along with assignments examining specific serial works in their social and historical context. Materials are available free through MIT OpenCourseWare; there is no certificate attached to this course.