Professors know that to keep students interested, their courses sometimes need to have a little more fun and hipness than your average college class. Buzz-generating topics in this spring’s lineup of courses focus on the popularity of zombies, celebrities like Lady Gaga and more.

Since a recent report found that students in their first two years of college make little educational gains (one reason being that faculty are so focused on their research), it’s great to see that some of these courses are available to freshman and sophomores. It’s not all hype about the topic, but there’s a point to what they’re learning.

COLLEGE ZOMBIELAND

You may feel like the walking dead after a night of studying for a major test, so why not learn about zombies in college? Several schools offer classes around this theme, including Georgia Southern University’s Zombies 101: The Living Dead in Film, for first-year students. The seminar covers everything from Night of the Living Dead to recent films like Zombieland and the zombie spin on classic books like Pride and Prejudice.

GAGA OVER LADY GAGA

There’s no poker face in this University of South Carolina course, Lady Gaga and the Sociology of Fame. Professor Mathieu Deflem describes the class as a “sociological analysis of selected social issues related to the career of Lady Gaga.” The course looks at business and marketing, media, fans, live shows, gay culture, religious and political themes, sexuality, gender, and other topics to discover the culture of the fame exemplified by the case of Lady Gaga. Another course, From Elvis to Lady Gaga: American Pop Culture 1950-2010, at Saint Leo University in Florida, focuses on how pop culture has changed over time.

GIVE INTO YOUR XBOX, PLAYSTATION ADDICTION

Although you will have to put down the controller, there are some courses that seek to connect with students who are addicted to video games. Sure, some schools are offering degrees now in the fast-growing field of video game design, but for those who don’t want to work in the gaming industry for a living, you still see how video games relate to other college topics and society. In Video Games: History, Theory, and Social Impact, offered by Pennsylvania’s Lebanon Valley College, students examine video games as cultural artifacts (maybe that would be my old Atari?), works of art and more.

BATTER UP

One of spring’s favorite sports – baseball – also has sparked the topic of college courses, like Baseball Statistics at Birmingham Southern College and Baseball History at York College of Pennsylvania. Take these courses, and you’ll likely be looking at your college team or the major leagues in a different way.

—Lori Johnston. Delaney Young contributed.