Top 10 strangest college courses in the world

Top 10 Strangest College Courses in the World

Most people head off to college to explore their options and decide who they want to be.  They want to create memories and experiences that will last with them for a lifetime. Well, some of these courses may do just that, though maybe in a way that is slightly quirky.  From Underwater Basket Weaving to the Art of Walking, these courses may not get you a job in the real world but will definitely liven up a mundane timetable. Read on to know about the 10 Strangest College Courses in the World.

1) Myth and Science Fiction: Star Wars, The Matrix, and The Lord of the Rings

These days there is a new trend in offering absolutely novel subjects in the University curriculum in which the Professor tries to draw a resemblance between the mythological characters, past legends and the modern time heroes. For example, Centre College in the USA is offering a class focusing on present day epics like Star Wars, The Matrix and The Lord of the Rings. In this course, the lecturer, Lee Patterson, draws a comparison between the present day heroes with the past mythological characters like George Lucas, the Wachowski brothers, J.R.R Tolkien, Homer and Virgil.  The course also takes a stock of television shows like Star Trek, Stargate, The X-Files and Babylon 5. 

2) Underwater Basket Weaving

There are some universities which offer courses where you can use your spare time to acquire a qualification which is absolutely worthless.  This course is known as “underwater basket weaving” and the term is now synonymous with a course that’s believed to be worthless. This course involves crafting baskets by dipping reed or stalks of plants into water and letting them soak. I’m guessing that full body immersion is optional as you don’t need a diver’s license to enroll on this module.

3) Simpsons and Philosophy

Apparently we’re not supposed to judge this course by its name. Taught at the prestigious University of California at Berkeley, this two-unit class is claimed to be a fairly rigorous philosophical course.  The text of the class is the book “The Simpsons and Philosphy : The D’oh of Homer” and includes essays from eighteen philosophy academics exploring pressing topics such as comparing Homer Simpson and Aristotle and Bart Simpson and Friedrich Nietzsche.  They ask weighty questions such as is Marge’s voluminous hair life-affirming or a symbol of the degradation of society?

4) The Science of Harry Potter

If you think this is a course where you can sit around and watch the movies again, then you’re in for a disappointment.  It is actually an honors course offered by Frostburg University which uses sciences to try and determine whether certain acts and organisms from the world of Harry Potter could exist in real life. The course was compiled by Frostburg physics professor George Plitnik. The class discusses topics such as whether or not Fluffy the three headed dog could be explained by genetic engineering or if antigravity research could actually produce a flying broomstick.

5) Learning from YouTube

This course was launched by Pitzer College in Claremont California in the fall of 2007 as part of its Media Studies module. Taught by Alexandra Juhasz, this course focuses on using, learning from and analyzing YouTube. It literally involves watching YouTube to study its impact on culture. It was started after the teacher was underwhelmed by the quality of the video content on the site.  Students also upload their own videos to the class YouTube channel.

6) Maple Syrup: The real thing

Offered at Alfred University in New York, this course covers every conceivable aspect of maple syrup. It also explores the history of maple syrup production. It also includes tours and trips to local producers and festivals to show the processes the Native Americans started with maple syrup.

7) Zombies in Popular Media

Most people enjoy a good old zombie movie but it you’re one of those unique few who really have a thing for animated corpses then you should take admission in the University of Baltimore or Columbia College. This course allows students to “get ready for a zombie apocalypse” by writing horror scriptts, watching zombie flicks and drawing storyboards of their ideal monster movies. This course also covers the history of voodoo in Hair, and video games like Resident Evil.

8) The Art of Walking

This course might sound like a classic example of the oddity of college but it’s actually a class that deals with Immanuel Kant’s “Critique of Judgment”. Offered at Centre College, Kentucky the class aims at bringing walking and its importance back into a society that seems to be dominated by vehicles and other forms of transportation. It requires students to play about with intellectual ideas at their desks and walk and explore nature preserves, battlefields, cemeteries and farms. They also have reading assignments and “freelance walking assignments”.  At the end, each student is issues a “license to walk”.

9) David Beckham

Offered at Staffordshire University as a part of the BA in Sports, Media and Culture, this is a 12-week module that focuses entirely on David Beckham.  They cover topics such as his ever-evolving hairstyles, the state of his marriage to Posh and his status “as the object of a great many fantasies”.

10) Lady Gaga and the Sociology of Fame

As if all the attention she’s getting isn’t enough, Lady gaga now has her own degree course at the University of South Carolina.  Taken by Professor Mathieu Deflem who seems more like a Gaga groupie than a teacher, the course gets students to “engage in sound and substantiated scholarly thinking” on her meteoric rise to fame.