UC-Berkeley offers summer class on 'Game of Thrones'

Jamie Altman | Chapman University

Instead of binge-watching Game of Thrones this summer, University of California-Berkeley students are learning about it in the classroom.

Film 108, a film class taught by Justin Vaccaro, uses the popular HBO series Game of Thrones to explore democracy, climate change, corruption of the American Dream and other related topics, according to a UC-Berkeley news release.

“[The Game of Thrones'] whole attitude about a world that is morally complicated, and where answers don’t come easily or at all, is strangely very compelling and strangely reassuring,” said Vaccaro, who is a Berkeley Ph.D candidate in film and media studies.



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Vaccaro proposed the idea of a Game of Thrones-based class during the show's first season, and got the go-ahead during the show's fifth season. The show has s been nominated for 24 Emmy's.

"This course will examine how and why Game of Thrones achieved such notoriety and popularity," the class description reads. "Its success was not so much a fluke but a perfect storm of influences and circumstances on the one hand, and a fully realized aesthetic and thematic vision on the other."

However, the class is not all fun and games, as its required readings includes works from authors Rousseau and Foucault.

The 6-week course is record-breaking for Vaccaro, as 27 students are taking the class -- his highest summer enrollment since 2011.



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"The show is in many ways a discourse on power and the relationship between ruler and ruled," says the class description. "But the series is also concerned with power and status in the personal sphere. How is power manifested in and through bodies, especially those of women, children, persons with disabilities, and the poor, or those of different ethnicities, religions, and sexualities?"

Northern Illinois University offered a similar course last spring called "Game of Thrones, Television and Medieval History." The class integrated stories from the series with facts of the past, with the goal of showing students what can be learned from contemporary media.



Jamie Altman is a Chapman University student and member of the USA TODAY College contributor network.

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