Throughout the vast majority of human history, people were both entertained and enlightened by stories and myths that were verbally passed down from generation to generation. Colleges and universities later studied these myths under the academic discipline of “Folklore.” By the mid-twentieth century, however, the folklore of the past had evolved into something different. People were still entertained and enlightened but through the new mediums of film, television, science fiction novels, and comic books. Although the stories and myth were fundamentally the same as “folklore,” these modern-day narratives were instead labelled with the less academically-sounding “popular culture.”
College professor Ray Browne recognized this shift during the early 1960s. He also noticed that the studying of what was referred to as the “classics” had become so embedded into the curriculums of colleges and universities that contemporary stories and myths were being overlooked. While the narratives of old were insightful and considered “classics” for a reason, this focus on the distant past failed to recognize that the times had inevitably changed. It was within this atmosphere that Browne and a number of his colleagues began promoting the study of popular culture as a supplement to the classics.
Not everyone agreed with their efforts. “Such individuals opposed radical change just for opposition’s sake,” Browne wrote in his 2002 history of the Popular Culture Movement, entitled Mission Underway. “They did not feel that new methods should be tried to alter points of view and old methodologies because they were not needed. Old wine in old bottles was still the proper drink. The proponents of Popular Culture studies, thinking that the old wine had been in the old skins too long, did favor such radical changes.”
Ray Browne was already attracted to popular culture by the time he arrived at Purdue University as an English professor in 1960. He was fortunate to have a department chair who was open to different approaches and met likeminded academics at both Purdue and other nearby universities. Eventually Browne discussed the idea of holding an American culture conference with two of his colleagues, Russel Nye and Marshall Fishwick.
The initial concept eventually evolved into the Midwest Conference on Literature, History, Popular Culture and Folklore and was held at Purdue University during the spring of 1965. The conference not only had the blessings of the university but the American Studies Association and included participants from Duke University, Indiana University, the University of Pennsylvania, and the University of Texas. The event was such a success that a second one followed shortly thereafter.
When folklorist Donald Winkelman vacated his position at Bowling Green State University, he recommended Browne as his replacement. Ray Browne was eager to accept, but wanted reassurances that he could incorporate elements of popular culture into his folklore classes. He also asked for a $4,000 annual subsidy to publish a quarterly academic magazine called the Journal of Popular Culture. After securing both, Browne converted his folklore courses at Bowling Green into a hybrid of folklore and popular culture. Despite Browne’s upsetting of the proverbial applecart, his efforts were fully supported by the department chair, the president of the university, and the Board of Trustees.
Success made Ray Browne even more determined to make popular culture an official discipline within academia. After consulting with colleague Russel Nye, the two professors decided that a Popular Culture Association – similar to the American Studies Association that helped sponsor the pair of conferences at Purdue – would be an effective way to attract supporters. In preparation for the 1969 ASA national conference in Toronto, Browne, Nye and Marshall Fishwick published a series of pamphlets supporting popular culture and then met with two hundred attendees interested in becoming involved with the newly founded Popular Culture Association.
The maiden conference of the PCA was held at Michigan State University in 1971. “There is a drive here toward what seems to me are worthwhile new dimensions in education on both the undergraduate and the graduate levels,” Bowling Green State University President Hollis A. Moore, Jr. told the crowd. “The key to this new thrust is not so much the clichéd word relevancy, though it is still a worthwhile term, as sensitivity – an awareness of the needs and hopes of education in the broadest sense – and humaneness in a world that is becoming increasingly dehumanized, with the resulting frustration, anxiety, even terror, that stalk the world today.”
There were 250 attendees at the inaugural PCA conference. That number doubled by the second, then reached 700 during the fourth, and continued to grow with each successive year afterwards.
While both the Popular Culture Association and Journal of Popular Culture were gaining ground and attracting media attention, Ray Browne suddenly found himself under attack from a handful of professors at Bowling Green State University. In 1971, they accused Browne of misspending taxpayer’s money on popular culture classes, being a disservice to students through his teaching methods, and disgracing academia in general and Bowling Green in particular by his promotion of popular culture.
When the accusations fell on deaf ears, Browne decided to up the ante by creating of a formal Department of Popular Culture at the university consisting of himself and one other professor. The same arguments as before were lobbed against Browne, but when the Dean of Business Administration declared that “he was tired of the whole business and the council should approve the Department and then get on with important business,” the first Department of Popular Culture in the Unites States was officially established at Bowling Green State University.
A master’s degree in popular culture was already being offered by the English Department, which meant that the fledging Department of Popular Culture had six students when it launched. From there, the curriculum snowballed.
“At one time with a faculty of seven we were teaching one-half of the BGSU student body of 15,000 over a four year period,” Browne wrote in Mission Underway. “In other words, during the tenure of one generation of students, four years, we taught one half of them. At first we did not have a large number of majors and minors, and for a while that fact worried us. But we understood the students were taking courses in which they could make a living.”
In Mission Underway, Ray Browne wrote of himself and his colleagues, “Popular Culture to us was the everyday, the vernacular, the heritage and ways of life that we inherited from our predecessors, used and passed on to our descendants. It was the cultural environment that we lived in.” Over fifty years later, the movement that Ray Browne helped launch is still going strong, with both the Department of Popular Culture at Bowling Green State University and the Popular Culture Association – as well as Journal of Popular Culture – continuing to lead the way.
Anthony Letizia