Why controversial? That's where democracy enters into it, says Bayles. Whether it is theater or television, literature or film, opera or rap, 'I don't think the standards are all that different-which is an extremely controversial view,' she said. She wanted students to become familiar with the literature on aesthetic theory and to apply those theories to their own taste. If she accomplished nothing else in the course, she said, she wanted to impress upon her students that a 'traditional set of standards of excellence' can be perfectly suitable to judge popular culture. She takes it for granted that popular culture is what most students argue about when they argue about art. Bayles not only expected that but encouraged it. Though the seminar's five-page syllabus directed students to the works of Plato, Aristotle, Marx, Tocqueville, and Burke, as well as contemporary think-ers such as Marshall McLuhan, Michel Foucault, Roger Shattuck, and Isaiah Berlin, discussion among the 10 seniors (six women and four men) often turned to current music, television, and film.

Think a little elitism is such a bad thing. (1994), Bayles is equally at home discussing classical ideasĪbout art and modern trends in American culture. The Loss of Beauty and Meaning in American Popular Music Pop culture critic and the author of Hole in Our Soul: In that class, far from showing a preferenceįor opera, Bayles had spoken knowledgeably about how the rhymesĪnd sounds used by Eminem compared with those of other rappers, With an undergraduate's presentation on the lyrics and sound 'What Is Taste?' -a class that began with a discussion ofĮdmund Burke's essay 'Introduction on Taste' and concluded Hall cafeteria a few days after teaching a segment called To the opera,' she recalled in a conversation at the Lyons Were 'expecting me to deplore the fact that they don't go Program senior seminar, 'Democracy & Art.' At first, students Martha Bayles is not surprised that concernsĪbout snobbery and elitism come up frequently in her Honors Mosse, Jost Hermand, Ralph Ellison, and Isaiah Roger Shattuck, Clement Greenberg, Richard Grenier, Boris Horace, Friedrich Schiller, Marshall McLuhan, Russell Neuman, Stuart Miller, Alexis de Tocqueville, Edmund Burke, Plato,

Instructor: Honors Program Faculty Martha Baylesīedford Glossary of Critical and Literary Terms, by Ross

Hole in Our Soul by Martha Bayles