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Embracing The Fiasco!: Roleplaying Games, Pedagogy And Student Success, Erik Stanley, Michelle Schmidt, David Sweeten

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

This article explores the relationship between games and pedagogy through the example of the roleplaying game Fiasco!. Fiasco! is a part of a growing genre of collaborative roleplaying games (RPGs) that have important applications in the university classroom. Fiasco! is an innovative game system that upends the traditional model of Game Master-led RPGs to create a collaborative environment for players to create their own stories. This paper explores how the unique model embedded within Fiasco! can be employed as a pedagogical tool for active student-led learning.

To showcase the pedagogical innovations of a game like Fiasco!, we present …

Tackling History In The Cultural Studies Seminar, Becca Cragin

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

While cultural theory developed in past eras was often marred by the biases of its privileged authors, we are still often required to teach the canon, so that graduate students can recognize past intellectual trends to which current critiques of the canon respond. In this article, a “History of Feminist Theory” course is employed as an example of larger principles of foundations course design that can be used in any cultural studies seminar to productively address the tension between old and new schools of thought. It provides suggestions for structuring syllabi and discussions in ways that productively engage with earlier …

Editorial: Provoking Awareness And Practical Applications In Popular Culture And Pedagogy: Syllabi, Games, And Teaching In Higher Education, Anna S. Cohenmiller, Karina A. Vado

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

Editorial for Dialogue: The The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy, Volume 9, Issue 4 (December 2022), Provoking Awareness and Practical Applications in Popular Culture and Pedagogy: Syllabi, Games, and Teaching in Higher Education.

Critique And “Controversy” In Pedagogy And Pop Culture [Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal Of Popular Culture And Pedagogy, Volume 9, Issue 3 (August 2022)], Miriam Sciala

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

Critique and “Controversy” in Pedagogy and Pop Culture [Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy, Volume 9, Issue 3 (August 2022)]

Editorial

Teaching for Change, Miriam Sciala

Articles

Peril and Promise: Student Experiences of Virtual Reality and Implications for Inclusive Social Justice Pedagogy, Michelle VanNatta

Will the Odds Ever Be in Her Favor? Katniss Everdeen and the Female Athlete, Tony Kemerly

Don’t Sweat the Technique: Rhetoric, Coded Social Critique, and Conspiracy Theories in Hip-Hop, Josh Chase

Cake and Conclusions: Rhetorical Roots in “Sheetcaking” and Fallacious Community Responses, Marissa Lammon

Musings (Online Only)

Teaching and Learning Popular Media Cultures: …

Cake And Conclusions: Rhetorical Roots In “Sheetcaking” And Fallacious Community Responses, Marissa Lammon

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

The convergence of politics and comedy within political entertainment has created a new environment, dissemination of information, and formation of public opinion. In response to white nationalist rallies, comedian Tina Fey utilized her political comedy platform to satirically comment on the inaction of several privileged consumers. Community response to the satirical skit reflected the complexity of satire as rhetorical strategy, notably when present online and within popular culture discourse, and the cognitive demands that result in fallacious tendencies. The following examines the fallacies that arise in response to Fey’s satirical message and the implications for political entertainment media.

Don’T Sweat The Technique: Rhetoric, Coded Social Critique, And Conspiracy Theories In Hip-Hop, Josh Chase

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

Conspiracy theories are once again a topic of heated debate in both popular and scholarly media. Critics on one side of this debate often take for granted an “underlying assumption that conspiracy theories should be subdued if not eliminated” (Uscinski 444). Other scholars have expressed concern over the ways the “conspiracy theorist” pejorative stifles dissent and regulates political rationality (Rankin; deHaven-Smith). Bratich argues that social anxieties about issues like emerging technology and race “get managed” through the public debate about conspiracy theories as an “object of concern” (160–61). This paper asks, what are the consequences when “conspiracy panic” spreads beyond …

Will The Odds Ever Be In Her Favor? Katniss Everdeen And The Female Athlete, Tony Kemerly

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

Autoethnography is a qualitative research method that allows the author to write in a highly personalized style, drawing on his or her experience to extend understanding about a specific issue. One subset of autoethnography, critical autoethnography, combines the narrative or storytelling aspect of autoethnography with critical theory approaches in order to gain illustrate for the reader a specific site of oppression within one’s culture. Through an examination of the books and films of The Hunger Games’ saga, this paper will examine the interaction between students and professor in regard to the journey of the female athlete through the power …

Peril And Promise: Student Experiences Of Virtual Reality And Implications For Inclusive Social Justice Pedagogy, Michelle Vannatta

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

Virtual reality (VR) is a fast-evolving technology rapidly being integrated into education and training in multiple sectors of society. As the use of VR spreads, it is important to critically analyze both its role in effective pedagogies and how students experience it. Virtual reality has extraordinary promise for deeply engaging students, and it also poses particular challenges for equitable and effective teaching of diverse students. This paper discusses students’ responses to a VR exercise and examines some of the complexities VR presents around racial justice, gender equity, and economic fairness. Virtual reality technology may be less effective and less comfortable …

Editorial: Teaching For Change, Miriam Sciala

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

Editorial for Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy, Volume 9, Issue 3 (August 2022), Critique and “Controversy” in Pedagogy and Pop Culture.

Teaching And Learning With The Grateful Dead [Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal Of Popular Culture And Pedagogy, Volume 9, Issue 1/2 (February 2022)], Anna S. Cohenmiller

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

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

Editorial

Transformational Learning (and Teaching) in Popular Culture and Pedagogy, Anna CohenMiller

Guest Editorial

“Bound to Cover Just a Little More Ground”: Teaching and Learning with the Grateful Dead, Timothy D. Ray and Julie DeLong

Articles

Teaching (and Studying) the Music of the Grateful Dead, Brian Felix

Collaborative Pedagogy: Teaching (with) the Grateful Dead On Tour, On Campus, and Online, Rebecca G. Adams

Teaching Cultural Communication and the Grateful Dead Phenomenon, Natalie Dollar

Teaching the Grateful Dead and …

Review Of The Tragic Odes Of Jerry Garcia And The Grateful Dead: Mystery Dances In The Magic Theater, By Brent Wood, Routledge, 2020, Christopher K. Coffman

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

Review of The Tragic Odes of Jerry Garcia and the Grateful Dead: Mystery Dances in the Magic Theater, by Brent Wood, Routledge, 2020.

A Touch Of Grey: Personal Reflections On Teaching The Grateful Dead To Seniors, Robert Trudeau

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

This essay reflects on several occasions in which I was a facilitator introducing the music of the Grateful Dead to groups of senior citizens. Several themes emerge: First, there is the need to separate the facilitator’s feelings as a convinced Deadhead from the inclinations of older individuals who know little about the Grateful Dead. Second, an indirect approach that emphasizes lyrics and accessible songs seems to have the best impact, if the goal is to encourage individuals to want to learn more about, and listen to, the Grateful Dead’s music. Third, one should let students construct the framework of the …

Teaching With The Dead: A Short Personal Remembrance, Robert G. Weiner

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

This essay is a personal remembrance of teaching an Honors course related to the Grateful Dead, the Beat Generation, and the Counterculture at Texas Tech University during the Spring of 2019. It describes the readings, assignments, techniques, and overall class response to the material. The goals of the course are explained and the syllabus is added as an appendix.

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 …