10 University Courses You Won’t Believe Actually Exist

As a student, you may sometimes find it hard to resist the pull of daytime television viewing – but with this course, again taught at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, you could actually incorporate that into your studies. Entitled ‘Daytime Serials: Family and Social Roles’, this module focuses on popular daytime television series (especially soap operas) and uses them as case studies to investigate how men and women are portrayed in the family and at work. It analyzes the themes and characters in the daytime shows and compares them to prime-time programs. So basically the course might as well be called ‘Soap Opera Studies’. Weird? Yes. Real? Totally.

‘The Joy of Garbage’?! Really? OK, this is just too weird! Professor Virginia Matzek teaches this course at Santa Clara University and she says it’s actually pretty popular. She asks students to investigate garbage as if they were archaeologists uncovering a hidden treasure. The professor claims the course is not a joke, and that she actually teaches students cold, hard science using trash and waste as the central focus. The main idea is to show that societies deal with their waste the same way they take care of their environment. What do you think of that? Would you ‘dig’ this course (literally)?

‘The Science of Superheroes’ is actually a new creative way of teaching… physics! I know, this might sound a bit disappointing, but it’s actually an innovative way to make a tough subject more engaging and accessible. In this course, students learn about real principles of physics using the entirely fictitious superpowers wielded by their favorite superheroes, such as Spider-Man, Superman, Wonder Woman and Batman. Well done University of California, Irvine, and well done Professor Michael Dennin!

Let’s go from superheroes to, well… pigs! That’s right: pigs. Professor Karim M. Tiro teaches a course titled ‘A History of the Pig in America’ at Xavier University in Cincinnati. The module focuses on the history of pigs in time, their depiction in literature and perceptions in society. If you are interested in studying all sorts of trivia about pigs, starting from the origin of the 16th-century word "buccaneer" (grills on which they cooked pork) to the fights British colonists and Native Americans had over ‘Babe’s friends’, then this course is for you!

Zombies are becoming more and more popular in the academic circles today. These two universities teach courses on ‘Zombies in Popular Media’, examining the presence of the “walking dead” in popular culture. They also explore how the brain-eating creatures have influenced voodoo in Haiti, movies like Resident Evil and video games such as Doom. Very creepy, indeed, but also quite fascinating. If you’ve watched The Dawn of the Dead more than once, this could be the course for you.

Shall we move on from zombies to something more pleasant like TV shows? How about ‘Lost’? It is definitely one of the most popular TV series ever made. Actually, it is so popular that Vanderbilt University has even decided to dedicate an entire course to the show. Professor John M. Sloop teaches a cultural class and claims that Lost is a perfect case study, because of the variety of characters, religion-versus-science themes and intricate plotlines. Students even watch episodes of the show and discuss them afterwards. If that isn’t a cool class, I don’t know what is!

As if the previous courses weren’t weird enough, the University of New York at Buffalo teaches a module about porn! What’s that about?! ‘Cyberporn and Society’ examines the role of pornography in the development of the internet and how it has affected society. The lecturer, Alexander Halavais, explains that the aim is neither to appreciate or criticize porn, but simply to discuss the interaction between pornography and technology. The course does not include any viewing of adult films whatsoever – but you’re still likely to face some tricky explanations when people ask what you’re studying!