College to offer class on Lady Gaga

University of South Carolina at Columbia professor Mathieu Deflem is channeling his self-professed love for the 24-year-old global pop icon into a new undergraduate course called "Lady Gaga and the Sociology of Fame," the New York Times reported.

"The central objective is to unravel some of the sociologically relevant dimensions of the fame of Lady Gaga," the course description states.

"What is important about the course is it isn't a musicology course," Deflem told the Daily Gamecock . "It also isn't a literary criticism course. It's not a poetry course. It's not like a dance course. It's not an art course. It's distinctly sociological."

The course will examine how exactly Lady Gaga managed to become so famous so quickly, Deflem said, pointing out that the pop diva has more than 10 million Facebook fans and 6 million Twitter followers.

Deflem, 48, is a "Little Monster" (what Gaga calls her fans) who has traveled the world to attend more than 28 of her shows, owns more than 300 of her records on vinyl and CD. He also runs a fan site devoted to the eccentric songstress.

College courses on pop celebrities are nothing new in American academia.

Both UCLA and USC have offered classes on the Beatles. The University of Iowa is famed for its " Anthology of Elvis " class taught by British writer and critic Peter Nazareth. While several years ago, the University of Illinois offered a course called " Oprah Winfrey – the Tycoon ," which analyzed Oprah as a symbol of gender and race issues in the media.