Want to learn how to take the perfect selfie and earn college credit for it?
This fall, an Indiana University Northwest communications professor will offer a 400-level “Mass Communications and Culture” class all about selfies.
“People think selfies aren’t worthy of nuanced conversations, and they are,” IU Northwest professor Eve Bottando told the Chicago Tribune. “It’s an excellent teaching moment.”
The class will look at research being done on selfies, as well as discuss when is an appropriate time to take a selfie, according to ABC-affiliate WPVI.
The Indiana university isn’t the only school finding academic value in the study of selfies. The University of Southern California looked at selfies as an expression of gender, race and sexuality in the 21st century as the topic of its freshman introduction to writing course last semester.
“Scholars are examining selfies because they are one of those cultural artifacts that have this delicious ironic energy around them,” USC Associate Professor Mark Marino tells USC News. “They’ve been trivialized by lots of people—which is another sign that it’s probably worth taking a look at them from a cultural studies point of view.”
“When we look at selfies, we’re also looking at the beginning of the 21st century,” Marino added. “The cultural moment of the selfie 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.”
