Game of Thrones has shown up in academic settings before. There was a class at the University of Virginia that centered around the show, and another at Northern Illinois University. Call it pandering, call it an easy A, but the show has proven rich and popular enough to inspire thoughtful analysis—that we run a whole website devoted to it is proof enough that there’s plenty of material around. As the series becomes more and more popular, its presence in academia is only likely to grow stronger.
The University of California at Berkeley is another college that offers a Game of Thrones course, and the Associated Press put together a video giving people an inside look at what it entails.
The course, appropriately enough, is part of the college’s Film Studies program, and looks to be a low-level course: Film 108. With any luck, students who sign up for the course because of the show’s popularity will become interested enough to look deeper into film, which seems like a noble enough use for Game of Thrones.
Also, the opportunity to study the fossilized remains of actual dire wolves (as far as I can tell, “dire wolf” is the real-life spelling while “direwolf” is the Song of Ice and Fire spelling) has got to be a nice perk.
Next: Kevin Bacon, of all people, renews the call for male nudity on Game of Thrones