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Skidmore College offering summer course on Miley Cyrus

Carolyn Chernoff, at Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, N.Y., is offering an intensive summer course called "The Sociology of Miley Cyrus: Race, Class, Gender, and Media."

By Kate Stanton
UPI/John Angelillo
UPI/John Angelillo | License Photo

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If you're a Skidmore College student and you can't get enough of the media back-and-forth about Miley Cyrus' transformation from Disney Channel princess to twerking, tongue-happy pop star, then you're in luck.

Carolyn Chernoff, a visiting assistant professor of sociology at Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, N.Y., is offering an intensive summer course called "The Sociology of Miley Cyrus: Race, Class, Gender, and Media."

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Like everything else to do with Miley, it seems to begin with that VMAs performance.

"I was teaching a course called Youth Culture in and out of School, and the 2013 MTV Video Music Awards (VMA) became the twerk heard ’round the world,” Chernoff told the Saratogian. “I showed that video to my class, and the students had so much to say.”

The class description says it will "using Miley as a lens through which to explore sociological thinking about identity, entertainment, media and fame."

Class themes will include the "rise of the Disney Princess," "allies and appropriation" and "bisexuality, queerness and the female body."

"Unfortunately, the way we talk about female pop stars and female bodies, class matters, gender matters, sexuality and sexual performance matters, but race matters a lot [too] and the way we talk about white pop stars is quite different than how we talk about the bodies of women of color," Professor Chernoff told ABC News. "[Cyrus] complicates representations of the female body in pop culture in some ways that are good, bad, and ugly."

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[Saratogian, ABC News, Buzzfeed]

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