College Offers Course on Game of Thrones

Winter quarter is coming
By Michael Harthorne,  Newser Staff
Posted Aug 15, 2015 1:00 PM CDT
College Offers Course on Game of Thrones
Game of Thrones' Night's King announces a research paper due Monday.   (HBO via AP)

Finally, a class to make the maesters proud. Students at UC Berkeley, already home to a philosophy course based on The Simpsons, have entered the world of Westeros with a film studies class based on HBO's Game of Thrones. Berkeley PhD candidate Justin Vaccaro had been trying to get permission to teach the class since the end of the series' first season back in 2011 and was finally allowed to do so this summer after the end of its fifth, the Berkeley News reports. According to the course catalog, Film Genre: Game of Thrones takes a look at the "sometimes contradictory but always complex and interesting politics of the show."

Tech Times reports this includes studying Game of Thrones' portrayal of women, power, terrorism, religion, democracy, violence, and even climate change. And the reading list for class includes selections from heavy hitters like Foucault and Rousseau. The popularity of Game of Thrones apparently extends to the classroom, where Vaccaro's 27 students make this his most well-attended summer course in four years, the News reports. One senior in the class says she wants to find out what's going on in the real world that's made the show so appealing to modern audiences. "Although it is set in the fantastic past of quasi-historical medieval Europe, the issues Game of Thrones is addressing are truly for our present reality," she tells the News. (More Game of Thrones stories.)

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