"Popular culture" and "culture studies" have become mainstays of the humanities in higher education. Like most other humanities courses, popular culture courses today mainly serve the usual politically correct program of the existing dominant class in the academy. Nevertheless, such courses can also be a powerful tool for instructors who wish to exercise criticism of contemporary institutions and actively resist the degenerative trends that hold the society in their grip. In this article, the author offers a history of popular culture and, in describing the syllabus of his own course in popular culture, illustrates "one way to wean students from the guilt and self-righteousness" of political correctness--by exposing them "to the world that existed prior to it." (Contains 28 footnotes.)