The Strangest (Real) College Courses
The stupidest college courses are the wackiest, most rudimentary, and oddest college courses actually taught at respected universities. From the things that you really should already know how to do, like getting dressed - something you can learn at a Princeton University course - to learning how to argue with television personality Judge Judy - like offered by the University of California, Berkeley - these real college courses teach skills that exactly zero employers look for in prospective job candidates.
So if that advanced calculus or macroeconomics class you're taking is just too mainstream for you, head over and try one of these silly college courses. You never know when skills like street-fighting mathematics or the joy of garbage will come in handy.
Want more stupidness? Check out the stupidest baby products for bad parents, the dumbest lawsuits in recent history and the top 10 dumbest celebrity quotes of the decade.
- 1300 VOTES
The Sociology Of Miley Cyrus: Race, Class, Gender, And Media
From: Skidmore College in New York
Assistant professor Carolyn Chernoff is heading up this course, which will "[provide] rich examples for analyzing aspects of intersectional identities and media representation." Says Chernoff, "I created it as a creative and rigorous way of looking at what's relevant about sociology and sociology theory."
- 2256 VOTES
What If Harry Potter Is Real?
From: Appalachian State University
"This course will engage students with questions about the very nature of history. Who decides what history is? Who decides how it is used or mis-used? How does this use or misuse affect us? How can the historical imagination inform literature and fantasy? How can fantasy reshape how we look at history? The Harry Potter novels and films are fertile ground for exploring all of these deeper questions. By looking at the actual geography of the novels, real and imagined historical events portrayed in the novels, the reactions of scholars in all the social sciences to the novels, and the world-wide frenzy inspired by them, students will examine issues of race, class, gender, time, place, the uses of space and movement, the role of multiculturalism in history as well as how to read a novel and how to read scholarly essays to get the most out of them."
- 3229 VOTES
How To Win A Beauty Pageant
From: Oberlin College
"This course examines US beauty pageants from the 1920s to the present. Our aim will be to analyze pageantry as a unique site for the interplay of race, gender, class, sexuality, and nation. We will learn about cultural studies methodology, including close reading, cultural history, critical discourse analysis, and ethnography, and use those methods to understand the changing identity of the US over time. This course includes a field visit to a pageant in Ohio."
- 4183 VOTES
Oh, Look! A Chicken!
From: Belmont University
"This course will pursue ways of knowing through embracing [little ants, carrying a morsel of food across the table] what it means to be a distracted [I could sure enjoy a peanut butter sandwich right now] learner as well as [OMG--I get to go to the beach this summer] developing an awareness [I need to trim my fingernails] of one’s senses. The instructor teaches in the school of music, [do I hear water dripping?] so there will be an element related to that woven [spiders are amazing] into the course. [oh, it's the fish tank behind me] Those registering for this section may even learn to juggle [I'll be right down, I just have to finish this...what was I working on?]."
- 5150 VOTES
Philosophy Of Phish
From: Oregon State University
"Major philosophical theories about art and its meaning, from ancient to modern times. How philosophers have understood beauty, the imagination, art and knowledge, art and pleasure, art and emotion," in 2014, through the lens of Phish, offered online as Dr. Jenkins follows the band on their summer tour, teaching from the road.
- 6145 VOTES
The Phallus
From: Occidental College
"A survey of theories of the phallus from Freud and Lacan through feminist and queer takings-on of the phallus. Topics include the relation between the phallus and the penis, the meaning of the phallus, phallologocentrism, the lesbian phallus, the Jewish phallus, the Latino phallus, and the relation of the phallus and fetishism."