Curriculum and Social Inquiry Commons^™

Discoursing The Grateful Dead: Scholars, Fans, And The 2020 Meeting Of Southwest Popular/American Culture Association, Nicholas G. Meriwether

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

Academic conferences serve many functions but at heart they are pedagogical enterprises, designed to teach, share, and refine knowledge. This paper uses the 2020 meeting of the Grateful Dead area of the Southwest Popular/American Culture Association to explore some of the issues and challenges that define the pedagogical and scholarly work of a conference section. The 2020 meeting offers a useful lens for discussing the area’s contributions and problems within the larger framework and history of the Southwest Popular/American Culture Association and the broader field of Grateful Dead studies. The experience of the Dead area illustrates issues in conference dynamics …

Teaching The Grateful Dead With Nietzsche’S Birth Of Tragedy, Stanley J. Spector

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

Ideally, in a teaching situation one can use parts of Nietzsche to help explain aspects of the Grateful Dead phenomenon(a) or use aspects of the Grateful Dead to help explain parts of Nietzsche; in either case, there is heuristic back and forth between the text and the phenomenon(a). Both Nietzsche and the Grateful Dead speak to the subjective experience of life affirmation, not as mere cognitive recognition, but rather as a physiological state of being. For both Nietzsche and the Grateful Dead, the Dionysian dimension of life comes to the forefront through the body, whether experiencing the unity of nature …

Teaching The Grateful Dead, Happenings, & Spontaneous Pedagogy, Ryan Slesinger

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

To teach a course on the Grateful Dead I developed a praxis I call “spontaneous pedagogy” that pairs academic rigor with flexible curriculum details to enable creativity and engagement among students in a truly studentcentered classroom. The pairing of spontaneous pedagogy with the Grateful Dead course worked well because the subject emphasizes improvisation, which initially inspired and—during the course—paralleled my praxis. I had developed this praxis previously, implementing it each semester from 2007 to2010 for one Composition II unit on definitional arguments entitled, “The Nature of Reality.” Students were asked to define what they consider as real and apply that …

Teaching The Grateful Dead Phenomenon And Cultural Communication, Natalie Dollar

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

Communication studies is particularly well-situated for teaching a course about the Grateful Dead phenomenon and using the phenomenon to teach discipline-specific content. This combination, teaching “the” Grateful Dead and teaching “with” the Grateful Dead, rather than one or the other, is what produces such an engaging course for students, guests, and instructor. I argue that musical speech communities warrant rigorous study and discuss the role of academic publications, professional organizations, and library archives in this process. Developing a pedagogy grounded in cultural communication and treating the course as a communication event allowed for collaboration with students and guest scholars, and …

Collaborative Pedagogy: Teaching (With) The Grateful Dead On Tour, On Campus, And Online, Rebecca G. Adams

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

This essay describes my experiences teaching with the Grateful Dead “on tour” in 1989, on campus in the early 2000s, and online in 2019. Using a life course framework, I discuss how my own development as a teacher, Deadhead, and Grateful Dead scholar and the changing context over time shaped these experiences and how teaching with the Grateful Dead opened a pedagogical space for experimentation that allowed the students and me to take risks and to collaborate despite status differences. Rather than unpacking these experiences entirely, my goal here is to focus on how these three experiences of teaching with …

Teaching (And Studying) The Music Of The Grateful Dead, Brian Felix

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

This article aims to provide answers to two questions: why teach about the music of the Grateful Dead, and how to do so? In an effort to engage the former, this article examines the ways that the Grateful Dead provides a rich and unique case study towards a deeper understanding of American popular music. The contributing factors are their distinct brand of eclecticism, career-long commitment to extended musical improvisations, and the depth and durability of their songbook. In order to answer the latter question (how?), I provide a framework for approaching the Grateful Dead’s voluminous output from a …

Guest Editorial: “Bound To Cover Just A Little More Ground”: Teaching And Learning With The Grateful Dead, Timothy D. Ray, Julie Delong

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

Guest editorial for Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy, Volume 9, Issue 1/2 (February 2022), Teaching and Learning with the Grateful Dead.

Editorial: Transformational Learning (And Teaching) In Popular Culture And Pedagogy, Anna S. Cohenmiller

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

Editorial for Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy, Volume 9, Issue 1/2 (February 2022), Teaching and Learning with the Grateful Dead.

Traversing Borders, Transgressing Boundaries In Popular Culture And Pedagogy [Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal Of Popular Culture And Pedagogy, Volume 8, Issue 3 (November 2021)], Karina A. Vado, Anna S. Cohenmiller

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

Traversing Borders, Transgressing Boundaries in Popular Culture and Pedagogy [Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy, Volume 8, Issue 3 (November 2021)]

Editorial

Traversing Borders, Transgressing Boundaries in Popular Culture and Pedagogy, Karina Vado and Anna S. CohenMiller

Articles

Halfies, Half-Written Letters, and One-Eyed Gods: Connecting the Dots of Communicative Cultures, Gregory Stephens

Crossing Over: The Migrant “Other” in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Casey Walker, Anthony Ramirez, and Arthur D. Soto-Vásquez

Media Literacy, Education, and a Global Pandemic: Lessons Learned in a Gender and Pop Culture Classroom, Jessica Lowell Mason and Ebehitale Imobhio

It’s Dangerous to Learn Alone …

It’S Dangerous To Learn Alone – Play This: Video Games In Higher Education, Particularly In The Composition Classroom, Joy Sterrantino

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

When people think of educational games, they often just think of ones geared towards kids: these might include spelling and vocabulary games like Scribblenauts, creative games such as Minecraft, as well as historical games such as Carmen [Sandiego]’s Ancient Caper, but according to the Entertainment Software Association in 2019, 65% of adults play video games (almost half of which are female), the average gamer is 33 years old, and 63% of all gamers are playing with others at least one hour a week (“Essential Facts” 4, 5, 8). This means that the majority of …

Media Literacy, Education, And A Global Pandemic: Lessons Learned In A Gender And Pop Culture Classroom, Jessica Lowell Mason, Ebehitale Imobhio

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

In Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom, bell hooks writes that “to engage in dialogue is one of the simplest ways we can begin as teachers, scholars, and critical thinkers to cross boundaries.” Hence, this paper explores, through narrative dialogue, teacher and student perspectives on the pedagogical impact of the global pandemic on the process of engaging with and learning about media literacy. By naming and narrating teacher and student experiences and perspectives from a course on gender and pop culture that took place during the Spring 2020 semester, the paper aims to demonstrate the …

Crossing Over: The Migrant “Other” In The Marvel Cinematic Universe, Casey Joe Walker, Anthony Ramirez, Arthur D. Soto-Vásquez

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

Two mainstream films from the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) reflect anxiety about the alien (migrant) “other” through difference and crisis. In this article, we explore how refugees and “shithole” planets form a major plot point in Captain Marvel (2019). At the most extreme, alien exclusion is articulated in Avengers: Infinity War (2018), from the villain’s perspective, as a Malthusian need for extermination of lives to preserve environmental balance. Seemingly innocuous, these narratives are symbolic of a creeping right-wing discourse that dehumanizes outsiders, refugees, and migrants in popular culture. Inspired by the call to consider how film and new media …

Halfies, Half-Written Letters, And One-Eyed Gods: Connecting The Dots Of Communicative Cultures, Gregory Stephens

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

This essay distills the theory of communicative cultures as a tool for cultural analysis. Nadine Gordimer’s line about the difficulties of returning to “half-written letters” is used to frame anthropology’s critique of “bounded culture” or “container cultures,” predominat in Cultural Studies. Anthropologists Lila Abu-Lughod and Kirin Narayan have described “halfies” as in-between peoples who can help us understand fluid, processual cultures as normative. Building on this stance, and the work of rhetorical genre scholars, Stephens defines communicative cultures as “a set of shared commitments expressed through cultural means.” This approach to cultural analysis, in which literature is viewed as an …

Editorial: Traversing Borders, Transgressing Boundaries In Popular Culture And Pedagogy, Karina A. Vado, Anna S. Cohenmiller

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

Editorial for Dialogue: The The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy, Volume 8, Issue 3 (November 2021), Traversing Borders, Transgressing Boundaries in Popular Culture and Pedagogy.

Infusing Pedogogy With Empathy, Social Action And Value Through Popular Culture [Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal Of Popular Culture And Pedagogy, Volume 8, Issue 2 (September 2021)], Karina A. Vado, Anna S. Cohenmiller

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

Infusing Pedogogy with Empathy, Social Action and Value through Popular Culture [Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy, Volume 8, Issue 2 (September 2021)]

Editorial

Teaching Wicked Problems: Critical Pedagogy, Personal Transformation, and Social Action through Popular Culture, Karina A. Vado and Anna S. CohenMiller

Articles

Conceptualizing Empathy and Prosocial Action: Teaching Film within the Literature Classroom, Mayuri Deka

What We Owe Our Students: The Good Place, Pedagogy, and the Architecture of Engaged Learning, Shala Mills and Darrell Hamlin

Experimental Forms and Identity Politics in 21st Century American Poetry, Ronnie Stephens

Reviews (Online only)

Review of The …

Experimental Forms And Identity Politics In 21st Century American Poetry, Ronnie Stephens

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

“Experimental Forms and Identity Politics in 21st Century American Poetry” explores the function of form in American poetry and its proximity to whiteness. Through an analysis of experimental and nontraditional forms I argue that poets Fatimah Asghar, Jericho Brown, Franny Choi, Natalie Diaz, Ilya Kaminsky, and Danez Smith challenge traditional notions of what a poem is; these authors use graphics and co-opt familiar text objects to challenge larger assumptions about gender identity, ableism, and the immigrant experience. These experimental forms are grounded in a larger poetic tradition that alters traditional forms, such as the sonnet, to disrupt and further dialogue …

What We Owe Our Students: The Good Place, Pedagogy, And The Architecture Of Engaged Learning, Shala A. Mills, Darrell Hamlin

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

Pedagogy is the architecture of a learning environment. The discipline of philosophy has often operated according to a pedagogy of conversation, clarity, and reflection, certainly since the era of Socratic dialogue in the streets of Athens. We argue that The Good Place occupies that space, re-setting this pedagogy as an architecture of learning through entertainment associated with ultimate matters of eternal disposition. A critical character driving conversation, clarity, and reflection across four seasons of the story’s arc is a philosopher – doomed by their own indecisive flaws – who teaches deep understanding of ethical development through a variety of relevant …

Conceptualizing Empathy And Prosocial Action: Teaching Film Within The Literature Classroom, Mayuri Deka

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

The experience of viewing a movie in the global era is multi-faceted. A viewer’s response to a cinematic experience as Carl Plantinga explains in Moving Viewers: American Film and the Spectator’s Experience is not only admiration for the aesthetics and techniques employed in the movie but also in the emotions aroused by the storyline. Audiences react to the story and characters presented with directed emotions by imagining either their mental lives and feelings or their situations. Empathy occurs within this framework of imagination where the audience engages with the story and character based on these directed emotions. The audience …

Editorial: Teaching Wicked Problems: Critical Pedagogy, Personal Transformation, And Social Action Through Popular Culture, Karina A. Vado, Anna S. Cohenmiller

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

Editorial for Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy, Volume 8, Issue 2 (September 2021), Infusing Pedagogy with Empathy, Social Action and Value through Popular Culture .

Evolving Awareness In Popular Culture And Pedagogy [Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal Of Popular Culture And Pedagogy, Volume 8, Issue 1 (February 2021)], Miriam Sciala, Anna S. Cohenmiller

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

Evolving Awareness in Popular Culture and Pedagogy [Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy, Volume 8, Issue 1 (February 2021)]

Editorial

Evolving Awareness of Popular Culture and Pedagogy: A View into Celebrity, Song, Narrative, and Superheroes, Miriam Sciala and Anna S. CohenMiller

Articles

The Power of Cool: Celebrity Influence in Higher Education, Jena Hawk

Society Doesn’t Owe You Anything: Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas & Video Games as Speculative Fiction, Marc A. Ouellette

The Many Ways of Wakanda: Viewpoint Diversity in Black Panther and Its Implications for Civics Education, Justin Frank Martin

Guiding Students Down that “Old …