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Winter Woes: Understanding Seasonal Affective Disorder, Staff

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“No Te Voy A Dejar Nunca”: Culture And Second Language Acquisition For Survival In Fear The Walking Dead, Sharon M. Nuruddin

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

Popular culture reinforces and shapes the beliefs and values of the individual, the community, and the masses. It can also transmit hidden messages about aspects of human behavior that are reiterated in scholarly research. In the field of education, particularly in world language teacher education, film and television can be used as an effective tool for examining how we acquire a second language. Using a symbolic convergence theory perspective (SCT) (Bormann, 1972), I employ Sellnow’s (2014) three-step process for the rhetorical analyses of mediated popular culture texts to reveal “covert messages” (p. 9) within the popular American Movie Channel (AMC) …

Breaking The Rules: Playing Criminally In Video Games, James Tregonning

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

Video games have long courted controversy for their frequent valorisation of criminality. However, in this article, I consider heroic criminals in video games from a different perspective. I focus on two games – Lucas Pope’s Papers, Please (2013) and Osmotic Studio’s Orwell (2016) – that position the player as a low-level government operative in a fictional authoritarian regime. Players are expected to process information for their governments, although they are also given opportunities to undermine or subvert the regime. Thus, the trope of heroic criminal is used to comment on the function and role of the state. It becomes …

Nature Vs. Nurture In Albuquerque: What Breaking Bad And Better Call Saul Teach Us About How We Talk About Criminals, Max Romanowski

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul focus on the criminal transformation of their two main characters, Walter White (Bryan Cranston) and Jimmy McGill (Bob Odenkirk). While quite similar on the surface, Walter and Jimmy’s narratives represent two different criminal transitions, evoking the classic nature vs nurture conversation. Both of these shows bring the conversation to the idea of inevitability. The nature vs. nurture argument is a popular one because it acts as a teaching tool for how we think and talk about criminal behavior. At first, it follows that since criminality was in Walter White’s nature the whole time, his …

Studying Silence In Popular Culture, Kathy Merlock Jackson, Terry Lindvall

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

This article explains the impetus for and execution of a team-taught, interdisciplinary class in silence using popular culture materials and practices, such as silent film, music, meditation, and mime. The course identifies individuals as possessing characteristics of introversion and extraversion and explores the role of silence in the modern world, incorporating the following: (1) Foundations for the Study of Silence, (2) The History of Silence, (3) The Role of Silence in Spirituality, Creativity and Reflection, (4) Silence in Communication Study, (5) Silent Film and Silence in Film, (6) The Role of Silence in a Highly Technological, Mediated World, and (7) …

Behind The Scenes: Uncovering Violence, Gender, And Powerful Pedagogy [Dialogue: The Interdiscplinary Journal Of Popular Culture And Pedogogy, Volume 5, Issue 3 (October 2018)], Anna S. Cohenmiller

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

Behind the Scenes: Uncovering Violence, Gender, and Powerful Pedagogy [Dialogue: The Interdiscplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedogogy, Volume 5, Issue 3 (October 2018)]

Editorial

Persistent Need to Look behind the Curtain, Anna S. CohenMiller

Articles

Grounded Aesthetics: Pedagogy for a Post-Truth Era, Becca Cragin

We All Have Jobs Here: Teaching and Learning with Multiple Intelligences in The Walking Dead, Elizabeth Gartley

A Gendered Perspective on Policing Violence in Happy Valley and Fargo, T. Allen Culpepper

The Many Faces of Foley: A Journey of Discovery and Influence on Professional Wrestling, Adam Michael Nicks

The Many Faces Of Foley: A Journey Of Discovery And Influence On Professional Wrestling, Adam Michael Nicks

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

Though the academic community often looks down on professional wrestling, there are examples in which the medium allows for elaborate and complex storytelling rivaling other forms of literature. During the 1990s, due to the constant blurring of the lines between reality and fiction within the world of wrestling and the increasingly intelligent audience that consumed the product, performers were forced to adapt to a more realistic style integrating their actual life events and personality into their on-screen personas. One sports entertainer of note was Mick Foley, who crafted three splintered characters he portrayed amongst numerous promotions. Each had their own …

We All Have Jobs Here: Teaching And Learning With Multiple Intelligences In The Walking Dead, Lizabeth Gartley

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

With the rise of cultural studies, positivism and formalism fell out of favor. But in recent years, altered versions of these methodologies have been suggested as solutions to the deficiencies of the ideological approach dominating the field. Where the ideological approach looks at the content of texts to determine their meaning, the aesthetic approach adopted by media scholars in recent years returns to the close textual readings of formalism (while abandoning its assertion that meaning resides in the text alone). Similarly, where the ideological approach tends to use textual analysis devoid of sociological empiricism, the use of “big data” in …

Grounded Aesthetics: Pedagogy For A Post-Truth Era, Becca Cragin

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

With the rise of cultural studies, positivism and formalism fell out of favor. But in recent years, altered versions of these methodologies have been suggested as solutions to the deficiencies of the ideological approach dominating the field. Where the ideological approach looks at the content of texts to determine their meaning, the aesthetic approach adopted by media scholars in recent years returns to the close textual readings of formalism (while abandoning its assertion that meaning resides in the text alone). Similarly, where the ideological approach tends to use textual analysis devoid of sociological empiricism, the use of “big data” in …

Constraining The (Im)Possible: Improvisation And Violence In Rafi Zabor’S The Bear Comes Home, Hannah Ianniello

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

This paper will explore the role of jazz improvisation in the characterization of the protagonist in Rafi Zabor’s 1998 jazz novel, The Bear Comes Home. I suggest that Zabor represents the process of improvisation to not only enhance the enigma of The Bear’s ability as a jazz musician, but also to enhance his capacity towards violence.

Through the exploration of the actual process of improvisation in the research of Paul Berliner, Ingrid Monson and Alyn Shipton, Improvisation in a real jazz context is collaborative and exploratory. However, Zabor, like many other authors (such as Michael Ondaatje, James Baldwin and …

The Stonewall Books: Lgbtq-Themed Young Adult Novels As Semiotic Beacons, Marcos Antuna, Janis Harmon, Roxanne L. Henkin, Karen Wood, Kyle Kester

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

In a society where the LGBTQ community continues to feel the stings of prejudice and discrimination, a straightforward means of conveying accurate information about LGBTQ student lives is urgently needed. The Stonewall Awards, an annual literary prize for “exceptional merit relating to the gay/lesbian/bisexual/ transgender experience” (American Library Association, 2016), has the potential to serve as an appropriate semiotic beacon for both the acceptance of LGBTQ students as well as LGBTQ self-affirmation. This study investigated the perceptions of secondary school students and future high school teachers toward two Stonewall Award-winning novels. The findings revealed obvious similarities as well as critical …

Social Justice From The Twilight Zone: Rod Serling As Human Rights Activist, Hugh A. D. Spencer

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

Rod Serling achieved critical acclaim in the First Golden Age of Television writing realist teleplays that express a strong moral sense and social consciousness. With the decline of anthology drama at the close of the 1950s, Serling created The Twilight Zone, which would become a forum for telling relevant stories while circumventing commercial and bureaucratic interference. As a means of exploring Serling’s use of drama as a tool for social justice, this paper compares themes from The Twilight Zone and Night Gallery with charter and constitutional statements of human rights. The United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights is …

University Of Northern Iowa Graduate Studies Fourth Annual Three Minute Thesis® Competition [Program, 2024], University Of Northern Iowa. Graduate Studies.

Three Minute Thesis (3MT®) at UNI Programs

Graduate students engage with audience members regarding their research.

The Grizzly, November 7, 2024, Kate Horan, Renee Washart, Ashley Adam, Sidney Belleroche, Caitlin Cunnane, Nathaniel Nerone, Ava Possenti

Ursinus College Grizzly Newspaper, 1978 to Present

Launching the Hindu Student Association • Ethical Bears • A Grizzled Editor • Inside the Layout Room • Opinions: Trust the Science • Much More Than Wins and Losses With Bobbi • From Club Sport to Cheer-ocracy • Performance of the Week

Intersections: Belief, Pedagogy, And Politics [Dialogue, Volume 3, Issue 2 (Fall 2016)], Lynnea Chapman King, Anna S. Cohenmiller

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

Intersections: Belief, Pedagogy, and Politics [Dialogue, Volume 3, Issue 2 (Fall 2016)]

Editorial: New Horizons, Lynnea Chapman King and Anna S. CohenMiller

Articles

The Pedagogy and Politics of Racial Passing: Examining the Role of Visual Literacy in Turn-of-the-Century Activist Media, Tara Propper

Eastern Imaginaries Erika Quinn More Than Simple Plagiarism: Ligotti, Pizzolatto, and True Detective’s Terrestrial Horror, Jonathan Elmore

Hyping the Hyperreal:Postmodern Visual Dynamics in Amy Heckerling’s Clueless, Andrew Urie

Applications in the Classroom

Four Decades, Three Songs, Too Much Violence: Using Popular Culture Media Analysis to Prepare Preservice Teachers for Dealing with School Violence, Edward Janak and …

Four Decades, Three Songs, Too Much Violence: Using Popular Culture Media Analysis To Prepare Preservice Teachers For Dealing With School Violence, Edward Janak, Lisa Pescara-Kovach

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

Since teacher education has morphed from normal schools into colleges of education, the goals of preparing teachers have expanded. While it is essential to prepare teachers to utilize scientifically proven methods as well as to read and use research in the field, there are ever-expanding other goals that must be met as well. For one example, with the increase of school violence taking place in the United States, it is imperative to include preparation for preservice teachers on how to prevent bullying and how to handle traumatic events, such as school shootings, with their future students. However, broaching such a …

Eastern Imaginaries, Erika Quinn

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

Orientalist tropes shaped Western ideas about the East in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries through travelogues and fiction, and have persisted into the twenty-first. One central set -piece of these stereotypes is the imaginary Eastern European country, “Ruritania.” The advantages and drawbacks of such an imagined place are explored more thoroughly through two recent pieces of pop culture, Wes Anderson’s film “The Grand Budapest Hotel”, and China Miéville’s novel The City and the City. While Anderson’s film entertains and sustains Orientalist stereotypes, Miéville’s novel demands the reader go deeper to empathize with characters and grapple with key issues about …

The Pedagogy And Politics Of Racial Passing: Examining Media Literacy In Turn-Of-The-Century Activist Periodicals, Tara Propper

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

This article explores how we can use African American activist media to theorize the role of pedagogy in the public sphere. Focusing on how racial passing stories expose the limiting (and often tropic) binaries through which racial identity is deciphered, this analysis further highlights the extent to which these binary constructions of identity are learned through media narration.

Using the December 1912, issue of W. E. B. Du Bois’s Crisis Magazine as a touchstone for investigation, this analysis considers how pedagogy is taken up as both a theme and project in the magazine. Foregrounding the degree to which Crisis critiques …

A Guide To Assignments For Open Pedagogy And The Seven Principles For A Culturally Responsive, Inclusive And Anti-Racist Curriculum, Gina R. Foster, Wynne Ferdinand, Michael Schoch, Bruce Shenitz, Jacob Moses, Florentina Lonati, Atharva Orpe

Open Educational Resources

As we identify and nurture the pedagogies that align our students’ understandings and our own on their learning and pre-professional needs, many of us find ourselves weaving together elements from various teaching models in place of relying on a sole framework, such as problem-based learning (PBL) or Universal Design for Learning (UDL). Our selection and application of these concepts and strategies manifests our current beliefs as well as our experiential lessons to date. These include teaching and learning and also social justice, evidence-based research, and our understandings of who we are as both human beings and instructors. At John Jay …

Adapting Our Approaches: (In)Formal Learning, Stereotypes, And Traumas [Dialogue, Volume 3, Issue 2 (Fall 2016)], Lynnea Chapman King, Anna S. Cohenmiller

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

Adapting Our Approaches: (In)Formal Learning, Stereotypes, and Traumas [Dialogue, Volume 3, Issue 2 (Fall 2016)]

Editorial, Lynnea Chapman King and A.S. CohenMiller

Guest Editorial

Binarisms, Adaptation, and Love: Albuquerque 2016, Laurence Raw

Formal and Informal Learning

The Power of Books: Teachers’ Changing Perspectives about Using Young Adult Books to Teach Social Justice, Janis M. Harmon and Roxanne Henkin

High Culture as Entertainment”: Hybrid Reading Practices in a Live Book Club, Magnus Persson

From the Vertical to the Horizontal: Introducing Mikhail Epstein’s Transculture to Perplexed Educators, Sheldon Kohn

Stereotypes and Reality

The Diyinii of Naachid: Navajo Rhetoric as Ritual, Edward …

Review Of Love Between The Covers By Laurie Kahn (Blueberry Hill Productions, 2015), Lexey A. Bartlett

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

A review of Love Between the Covers by Laurie Kahn (Blueberry Hill Productions, 2015).

Destructive Plasticity, “Surplus Of Consciousness,” And The “Monster” In True Detective, Courtney Patrick-Weber

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

The first season of HBO's cult hit True Detective introduced viewers to a southern gothic murder mystery that many will not easily forget. Since many of us focused primarily on the whodunit narrative, we may have missed the narrative of trauma simmering under the surface of the story. This narrative of trauma reveals a deeper layer to the story between Detective Rust Cohle and serial killer Errol Childress, one that also reveals our own fears regarding trauma in our lives. By applying first the nihilist philosophies of Peter Zapffe with Cohle and Catherine Malabou's concept on destructive plasticity in Childress, …

The Roots Of Authoritarianism In Amc’S The Walking Dead, Adam M. Crowley

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

AMC’s The Walking Dead (2010- ) is a unique artifact in the twenty-first century’s expansive catalogue of undead-themed entertainments. To date, the show’s producers, commentators, and critics have noted the relevance of psychological trauma to the series. If the experience of realistic psychological trauma is relevant to The Walking Dead, then it should be possible for critics to articulate detailed assessments of the particular kinds of traumatic experiences that are foregrounded in the program. Trauma is, after all, an extremely nuanced and highly theorized facet of the human condition. This paper provides one such assessment and considers the significance …

The Diyinii Of Naachid: Diné Rhetoric As Ritual, Edward L. Karshner

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

Rhetoric is far more than a theory of communication or the antiquated ancestor of freshman composition courses. As a system, rhetoric is the process that directs, on the one hand, individual experiences with the world and structures, and on the other, the stories cultures tell about themselves. These foundational narratives (myths) reveal a culture’s metaphysical understanding of the nature of reality, the psychological understanding of human nature, and the epistemological notion of what can be known. Using the Diné Bahané, this paper will explore Diné rhetoric as naachid, an inclusive, outward-directed communication model of problem solving which functions …

From The Vertical To The Horizontal: Introducing Mikhail Epstein’S Transculture To Perplexed Educators, Sheldon S. Kohn

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

A shift in focus from supporting or opposing vertical, grand narratives to the horizontal, the ordinary and the everyday, can lead educators to transformative developments. Educators find themselves in a false dichotomy of being restricted to supporting or opposing competing vertical utopian visions of education. Mikhail Epstein’s ideas about transculture can help perplexed educators make a shift from the vertical to the horizontal, focusing their praxis and pedagogy on the ordinary and the everyday, including objects and artifacts of popular culture. In a radical move, Epstein argues that commodification represents resistance to totalitarian controls and impulses; he urges educators to …

The Power Of Books: Teachers’ Changing Perspectives About Using Young Adult Books To Teach Social Justice, Janis Harmon, Roxanne L. Henkin

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

This study examined teachers’ knowledge about social justice and their perspectives and understandings about the use of young adult books to teach social justice. The participants were 14 graduate students in a graduate literacy course. The course provided learning experiences about social justice, including the use of young adult books. These learning experiences were designed to deepen students’ understanding of how to address social justice issues with students in the elementary, middle and high school classrooms. Using qualitative measures, the researchers found changes in participants’ understanding of social justice and the use of young adult books as a powerful resource …

Binarisms, Adaptation, And Love: Albuquerque 2016, Laurence Raw

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

I was fortunate enough recently to attend the Southwest Popular Culture Association meeting in Albuquerque, New Mexico in February 2016. This was the third time I had attended the conference; I find it rather unique in its capacity to embrace academics and graduate learners in a non-threatening ambiance, where participants genuinely try to help each other rather than to try and score cheap scholarly methodological points for their own personal self-gratification.

Editorial, Lynnea Chapman King, Anna S. Cohenmiller

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

Editorial for Adapting Our Approaches: (In)Formal Learning, Stereotypes, and Traumas, Volume 3, Issue 2 of Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy (Fall 2016).

Popular Culture Pedagogy: Theory And Application In Academia [Dialogue, Volume 3, Issue 1 (Spring 2016)], Lynnea Chapman King, Anna S. Cohenmiller

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

Popular Culture Pedagogy: Theory and Application in Academia [Dialogue, Volume 3, Issue 1 (Spring 2016)]

Editorial, Lynnea Chapman King and A. S. CohenMiller

Articles

(Re)learning about Learning: Using Cases from Popular Media to Extend and Complicate our Understandings of What It Means to Learn and Teach, Kelli Bippert, Dennis Davis, Margaret Rose Hilburn, Jennifer D. Hooper, Deepti Kharod, Cinthia Rodriguez, and Rebecca Stortz

Building a Popular Writing Course, Emily Howson, Chris Massenburg, and Cecilia Shelton

Lady Gaga Meets Ritzer: Using Music to Teach Sociological Theory, Kenneth Culton and José A. Muñoz

A Framework for Using Popular Music Videos to Teach …

Applications In The Classroom: Pop Culture And Ed Psychology: What I Learned From Larry David, Rick Grimes, And Hank Hill, Melissa Vosen Callens

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

In teacher education courses, it is common to teach educational psychology concepts using case studies. Many publishers provide these case studies in textbooks and/or in ancillary materials, and there are many advantages to using them. For example, an instructor does not have to spend extra time finding or writing the case studies, both of which can be very time consuming. In addition, if students have the textbook, they have immediate access. One major disadvantage, however, is that students may find themselves uninterested and disengaged with the cases, depending on the students’ interests and the cases. This paper argues that studying …