G-Dragon has become the first K-pop artist to be the subject of a 4-credit regular course in the United States.
This is the first time that a K-pop artist alone has been featured in a 4-credit regular course at the University of Southern California’s (USC) Annenberg School of Communication and Journalism, which is ranked among the top globally.
The course offering was announced via USC Annenberg’s official Instagram account. The post included hashtags #GDRAGON and #GD and featured a video of a USC student expressing excitement about the course. G-Dragon’s official account was tagged in the video, attracting significant attention.
Like the Beyoncé course at Yale and the Taylor Swift course at Harvard, the establishment of the G-Dragon course at USC is seen as academic recognition of K-pop as a global cultural phenomenon and the industrial and cultural value embedded in the “G-Dragon universe” beyond just an artist. It particularly suggests that his unique influence and trendsetting ability are key drivers in elevating K-pop’s status and creating new value.
Scheduled for the Spring 2026 semester, the course titled “COMM 400: Crooked Studies of K-pop: The Case of G-Dragon,” will be taught by Professor Hye Jin Lee. Although K-pop has achieved global success, it is still often discussed within frameworks critiquing its mechanical, commercial, and artistic limitations. This course aims to offer new discourse on K-pop by conducting an in-depth analysis of G-Dragon, regarded as one of the most influential and innovative figures in K-pop history.
The course will particularly focus on G-Dragon’s unique status as a “producer idol” and his cultural influence beyond music. Based on this, it will critically reinterpret K-pop’s structural, cultural, and aesthetic assumptions.
