By Tia Harne In today’s contemporary society, the concept of art and the world in which it belongs is difficult to define. What constitutes art? What is an art world? According to Howard Becker, an American sociologist revered for his studies of occupations, education and art, that which is considered art and its respective art…
Tag: Popular Culture
A Sociological Look inside a Film Reel
By Ryan Redilla In Dr. Vaccaro’s Honors Core course, the students learned about art worlds. An art world contains many different characteristics and is very subjective. The class turned to sociologist Howard Becker to help figure out what an art world truly is. The class defined an art world as a realm that consists of…
Cultural Appropriation and Sociology
By Tierra Williams Starting in the 1950s, the biggest social movement of the 20th century began. This movement is known as the civil rights movement. African American people, as well as whites, banded together in order to fight for the equal rights of African American men and women. This movement proved to be very successful as…
The Sociological Art World of Korean Pop Music (KPop)
By Danielle Rosenberger This paper was for the Robert Cook Honor’s College Core Unit C, which was taught be Dr. Vaccaro. It is a class where the main focus was on the critical thinking question “how do we define Art?” through the lens of Sociology. The class explored different genres of art and attempted to to…
The Sociology Behind YouTube as an Art World
By Megan Palmer The Robert E. Cook Honors College at the Indiana University of Pennsylvania is a community of scholars who debate philosophical questions. Each semester is divided into two units, each focusing on a different core question. For Unit C, the third unit, I was given the opportunity to answer, “How do we understand…
Sociology and The Art World of Photography
By Elizabeth Ambrose This semester I had the opportunity to study with Dr. Christian Vaccaro, a passionate associate professor for the Indiana University of Pennsylvania’s Sociology program, in my Honors College Core class for Unit C. In his class, we focused on the sociology of different art worlds such as music, fashion, street art, and…
The Sociological Art World of Victoria Secret’s Fashion Show
By Ekaterina Minchenkova Hello, my name is Ekaterina Minchenkova, I am an Honors College student, and one of my units there was Sociology. Basically, in that unit we were talking about art and our main question was “How do we understand art?”. From sociological perspective we defined art as a complex structure of art collaborators-people…
History of Psychedelics in Western Culture
Undoubtedly, figureheads, such as, Timothy Leary, Aldous Huxley, and Ken Kesey, in the psychedelic movement had huge cultural impact during the 1960’s and beyond. From the anti-establishment to the radically spiritual views, ideologies proposed during the 1960’s revolutionized popular culture.
Ascribed Statuses: observed through Beyoncé
I will discuss how Beyoncé may never be just a person, but rather must be a black female person, and how she both actively fights and embraces these ascribed statuses she has experienced in life.
Engaged Sociology 