Colleges go pop culture

Higher ed is getting light on textbooks, heavy on US Weekly these days. It was announced Wednesday that Skidmore College in upstate New York is offering a new course this summer: “The Sociology of Miley Cyrus: Race, Class, Gender and Media.” Guess “Human Sexuality 203” wasn’t cutting it; if a little twerking is what it takes to keep students in class these days, these schools are happily obliging, dangling the hottest celebs as centerpieces of the college syllabus.

Madonna, the original provocateur, was the subject of a course back in 1997 at the University of Amsterdam, which set off a wave of celeb-centered classes to follow, and the University of South Carolina should be “applauded” for being the first school to pick up on the intellectual merits of Gaga. In 2010, “Lady Gaga and the Sociology of Fame” was a hit for the Southern school.

The Post covered The Roots’ member Questlove’s foray into the oeuvre of Prince at NYU in “Prince 101.”

The following classes might lead to a Ph.D. in pop culture:

Beyoncé

Rutgers University’s upcoming summer class “Politicizing Beyoncé” promises a deep examination of Sasha Fierce through the prism of gender politics and feminist perspectives.

The class, which has been previously offered at the school, has been a hit. “It’s important to shift students away from simply being consumers of media toward thinking more critically about what they’re engaging on a regular basis,” Kevin Allred, who teaches the course, said in an interview.

We’re already crazy in love with this course.

Jay-Z

Georgetown University may be in Washington, DC, but the students there are parsing politics — and pop. “Sociology of Hip Hop: Jay-Z” is more than just a Jay-Z admiration society.

“This is not a class meant to sit around and go, ‘Oh man, those lyrics were dope,’ ” Professor Michael Eric Dyson told the Washington Post. “We’re dealing with everything that’s important in a sociology class: race, gender, ethnicity, class, economic inequality, social injustice . . . His body of work has proved to be powerful, effective and influential. And it’s time to wrestle with it.”

Bruce Springsteen

Most Garden Staters already worship at the altar of The Boss. Now he graces the syllabus at Jersey’s Rutgers University in the course “Bruce Springsteen’s Theology.” Glory days, indeed.

Princeton University — also in Jersey — offered a different spin on Bruce: “Sociology From E Street: Bruce Springsteen’s America.” A course catalog described the class this way: “During most weeks, a guest who has lived a life like one of Springsteen’s characters will be interviewed in class.”

Harry Potter

There’s plenty of navel-gazing over the wunderkind wizard at Appalachian State University, in Boone, N.C. The school’s “What If Harry Potter Is Real?”is fraught with all of the existential questions. “How can fantasy reshape how we look at history? The Harry Potter novels and films are fertile ground for exploring all of these deeper questions,” promises the course description.

Bob Dylan

University of Alaska Anchorage was white-hot in 2012 when it offered the humanities class-slash-jam session. According to the Anchorage Daily News, the professor “had them imagine that Dylan had died in a motorcycle accident in 1966. They were to compose a set list for his memorial concert. For the encore, they needed to select a Dylan tune that had personal meaning to them, and explain why.”

Rock stars as intellectual muses. Yes, the times they are a changin’.