defining popular culture, teaching comics
The PCA-ACA email list has been abuzz lately with calls for the upcoming conference next spring in Boston, but also there have been a few interesting queries.
First, how do we define popular culture? One answer: "If you're looking for a one-liner, how about "the customs and
expressive (or, maybe, signifying?) practices of everyday life"?" The poster then went on to add that we must think of popular culture as more than simply mass-mediated culture, and that also we need to take into account the practices of groups, not solely individuals. Other posters drew attention to the distinction between popular culture and folklore and the inherent malleability and ephemeral quality of popular culture. Still another referred to cultural studies scholar
Graeme Turner, who termed popular culture "a site where the construction of everyday life may be examined" and who also studied the political dynamics of the power realtions we find in everyday life. Others referred seekers to
Stuart Hall and
Lawrence Levine.
When I teach, I always start the first class with a definition of terms-- American Studies, popular culture, fine arts, and semiotics. I'd love to hear how you define these terms for your students.
Second, a query on the list led me to find
Teaching Comics, which looks to be chock-full of helpful resources on using comics and graphic novels in the classroom, though I'm not sure if it's as useful for college classrooms as for K-12 education.
Any other resources out there on teaching comics? I've never tried it, but I'd certainly consider it.
Experience Music Project conference
The
Experience Music Project in Seattle, Washington, USA has announced a
call for papers for their upcoming conference, "Waking Up from History: Music, Time and Place," with a deadline of December 15, 2006, with the conference taking place in April 2007.
If you're in the area, the EMP also has a
variety of educational opportunities for teachers and students, including
a clearinghouse of lessons for K-12 classes and
teacher trainings.
Any K-12 teachers who'd like to share how they use popular music in their classroom? My students and I had a great discussion this week about music, culture, and race, and I have found that music is often the area of popular culture that gets the most engaged response from students.
new Berube book
Michael Berube, the scarily prolific Penn State professor of dangeral studies, has another new book out,
Rhetorical Occasions: Essays on Humans and the Humanities, which I highly recommend, though I haven't read it yet.
Well, then how can I recommend it? Firstly, I've read some of the essays in it already, like
The Elvis Costello Problem in Teaching Popular Culture, which originally appeared in the
Chronicle of Higher Education. "The Elvis Costello Problem" is Berube's answer to the critique often posed of teaching popular culture: namely, that we have no way of knowing what popular culture will stand the test of time, and therefore shouldn't spend time on shows or songs that may be forgotten five years from now.
Essentially, his argument draws on his background in literature to argue that that same stricture does not apply to teaching modern fiction, for reasons that can be extrapolated easily to the teaching of popular culture. But he says it much more elegantly in the article, and so I suggest you read it, and I'll be looking forward to my copy of the book itself.
Sports, Gender and Education
The current issue of the
Scholar and Feminist Online is all about sports and gender, with interesting pieces on the status and impact of Title IX, feminist activism and sports advocacy, and visual culture in the world of sport. I'm teaching on sports this semester, and may try and work in some of these issues. If you're teaching sports and gender and think this issue might help, the Scholar and Feminist also includes
tips on how to use S&FO in the classroom. Also, after digging in the S&FO archives, I found an issue on
feminist studies of HBO shows like
The Sopranos. I've used
Sex and the City in the classroom before, and may use these pieces when I teach it again.
On the sports front, there's also an interesting piece in
The Baltimore Sun about
rookie players trying to make themselves at home in a new area that ties home-buying to maturation, becoming a man, and the American dream. How many other aspects of team life are managed with this in mind, and might this be a reaction to the wild stories of NFL players past?
The
New York Times poses another question:
should we encourage young athletes to put their sports careers ahead of school? It's an issue that's plagued college athletes in recent years, but now seems to have trickled down into high school.
How do you teach about sports?
the CSI effect
This week's
Baltimore City Paper has a very interesting
interview with UM law professor Taunya Banks on the effect of criminal justice television shows on the prosecution, jury and defense in modern American trials.
A brief excerpt:
Banks: What I find amazing is that lawyer shows and these CSI shows are incredibly popular and have become the substitute for learning about how the legal system works, because most Americans don't serve on juries, and the only time that most Americans come into contact with the legal system is on those few occasions when they may be called for jury duty. So how should they know what's going on? They watch "Judge Judy". They watch "The Practice" or "Boston Legal" or the Law and Order stuff. It's really interesting to think about both sides of this influence. In
Homicide, David Simon recounted homicide investigators lamenting jurors who thought every case should have forensic evidence, or eyewitnesses, or fingerprints, or else they would not convict. Banks believes that while the effects of the shows may be damaging, the shows also encourage lawyers to use more visual aids in their cases and to bring as much forensic evidence as possible to courtrooms. We've all heard stories about amazing DNA break-throughs in cold cases or closed cases; perhaps if juries demand more DNa evidence, more DNA labs will function faster and be funded better by states and the federal government.
Have you used criminal justice shows in your classes, or written about their effects on juries and trials? Share your stories in the comments. Do you think these shows are beneficial or deleterious to American justice?
Greetings and Salutations
Welcome to the first post on Teaching Popular Culture, a blog for anyone interested in teaching and studying popular culture in the academic environment, no matter your discipline, degree status, or affiliation. We hope to include classroom activities, conference reports, mainstream and academic coverage of teaching and studying popular culture, and discussion and debates on major questions in the field. We will also host any calls for papers on aspects of popular culture that we see fit, and any resources we find or favor on academic popular culture work.
Popular culture studies is almost thirty years old and includes scholars from disciplines such as communications, English, media and film studies, women's studies, ethnic studies, American studies and sociology.
Ray Browne, interviewed here by Americana is generally considered a major figure in
the history of popular culture studies and also the founder of the only
graduate program in popular culture studies. While popular culture studies has permeated numerous fields in the humanities and social sciences, it's value and validity are still challenged by more traditional scholars. Therefore, we feel that popular culture scholars need a supportive environment in which to share their practices, ideas, and theories with each other in a free and open forum accessible by anyone.
Want to submit a post, call for papers, question for discussion or conference report? Let us know! We welcome input from anyone and everyone in the academic popular culture community. Email us at teachpopculture (at) gmail (dot) com with any and all suggestions.
