Students from all parts of the country have been attracted to our graduate program during the last two decades. One reason is close student-faculty working relationships. Normally, about 16-20 graduate students study with members of the graduate faculty. Another factor is the highly individual nature of study programs jointly developed by the student and the graduate advisor which produces Popular Culture Master's theses covering a wide-range of topics and subject areas. Each program is designed to fit the interests and needs of the individual graduate student. A third advantage is the excellent holdings of the  University Library, especially in popular culture materials. The  Music Library and Sound Recordings Archives, with some 700,000 items, is the finest academic collection of popular music in the United States. The  Ray and Pat Browne Library for Popular Culture Studies contains an extraordinary collection of popular print materials ranging from hardcover best-sellers to movie posters and television scripts.

Students in the interdisciplinary Master's degree program have gone on to Ph.D. programs in folklore, history, English, American studies, and other disciplines. Many students create vocational specialties for themselves by electing courses from one or more disciplines, such as English, American culture studies, history, journalism, sociology, political science, communication studies, and art history. These specialties often include internships outside of the university. During the past few years our graduate students have been placed in internships in public relations companies, at magazine publishing houses, at private schools, at an international sports reactive, at historic villages and museums, and at an organization dedicated to preserving folk art.

The Department is able to offer a number of graduate assistantships for the Fall Semester of each academic year. Normally, these assistantships are for teaching, research, or other duties assigned within the Department of Popular Culture.