Digital Commons Network^™

Alabama Agricultural Producers’ Experiences With Wild Pigs (Sus Scrofa) And Their Preferences Concerning Wild Pig Management, Hailey E. Ellis, Luren M. Jaebker, Alan D. Bright, Mark D. Smith, Keith M. Carlisle

United States Department of Agriculture Wildlife Services: Staff Publications

Government agencies and landowners use a variety of lethal methods to reduce invasive wild pig populations and resulting agricultural damages. To provide decision-makers with information regarding Alabama farmers’ experiences with wild pigs and their preferences for management actions, we surveyed Alabama Farmers Federation members in 2020. We found that wild pigs were commonly present on livestock, timber, and crop production acreage, but wild pig damages and costs were much more common among crop producers. Respondents' wildlife acceptance capacity for wild pigs was low and all lethal control methods were considered aceptable by most reposndents, particularly those performed by landowners. While …

Editorial: Leveraging Multi-Omics Approaches To Understand And Manage Gastrointestinal And Hepatic Diseases, Isis Trujillo-Gonzalez, Paul G. Thomes, Isin Tuna Sakallioglu, Kusum K. Kharbanda

Department of Chemistry: Faculty Publications

The Research Topic “Leveraging multi-omics approaches to understand and manage gastrointestinal and hepatic diseases” proposed by the Frontiers in Pharmacology has attracted a total of four articles on preclinical studies that were covered in three original research manuscripts and one review article. Two research articles were on metabolic dysfunction-associated steatotic liver disease (MASLD), previously named non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD), which is now recognized as a predominant cause of chronic liver disease worldwide, affecting over 30% of the adult population (Teng et al., 2023; Miao et al., 2024). Current pharmacological treatments for MASLD are limited and, until a recent FDA-approved …

Feasibility Of Technical Solutions For The Detection Of Falsified Images In Research, Phill Jones, Hylke Koers

Copyright, Fair Use, Scholarly Communication, etc.

In this report, we discuss the findings of an investigation into the feasibility of developing a research image integrity system. The focus was primarily on immunohistochemistry blots and microscopy images, although the findings are relevant to other types of research images such as gel blots and spectroscopy, geophysical, or astronomical images, as well as to any digital data type. The investigation comprised a mix of desk research and semi-structured (anonymized) interviews with nine stakeholders representing publishers, researchers, technologists, and microscopy companies.

We found that it would be possible to implement a system to assert image integrity and that the technology …

Classics And Contemporary Popular Culture [Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal Of Popular Culture And Pedagogy, Volume 1, Issue 1 (Spring 2014)], Lynnea Chapman King, Anna S. Cohenmiller

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

Classics and Contemporary Popular Culture [Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy, Volume 1, Issue 1 (Spring 2014)] (Online only)

Editorial

Moving Popular Culture Studies Scholarship into the Future, Lynnea Chapman King and Anna S. CohenMiller

Guest Editorial

“καλὸν ἀνθρωπίνου βίου κάτοπτρον”: Popular Culture as a Pedagogical Lens on Greco-Roman Antiquity, Kirsten Day and Benjamin Haller

Part I: Epic Reconsiderations

Wounds that Will Not Heal: Heroism and Innocence in Shane and the Iliad, Carl A. Rubino

O Homer, Where Art Thou?: Teaching the Iliad and the Odyssey through Popular Culture, Mallory Young

The Odyssey and its Odyssey …

Video Game Review — Final Fantasy Xiv: Level Up Forever, Brian Cowlishaw

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

Review of the video game Final Fantasy XIV: Level Up Forever.

Experiments In Love: Longus’ Daphnis & Chloe And Henry De Vere Stacpoole’S The Blue Lagoon, L. Kirsten Day

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

Despite a chronological gulf of nearly two thousand years, the second century C. E. Greek romance writer Longus and the early twentieth century Irish novelist Henry de Vere Stacpoole were prompted to produce their best works by a similar motive: an urge to explore the world, and particularly the phenomenon of love and desire, from a standpoint of complete innocence. Although the resulting novels, Daphnis & Chloe and The Blue Lagoon respectively, have no evident direct connection, they exhibit surprising similarities not only in plot, setting, and characterization, but also in the values, perspectives, and worldviews they advance. The striking …

Ovid And Mel Gibson: Power, Vulnerability, And What Women Want, Geoff Bakewell

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

Knowledge of Ovid is invaluable for analyzing Nancy Meyers’s film What Women Want (2000). Advertising executive Nick Marshall (Mel Gibson) is a sexist, chauvinistic ladies’ man who acquires the ability to hear what women are thinking. He is in effect a second Tiresias, and this article examines him in light of the gender-bending seer from the Metamorphoses. Meyers links Nick’s miraculous transformation to his attempt to listen to women while simultaneously cross-dressing. He subsequently becomes an intermediary between the genders, especially on sexual matters. The article further examines the Nick/Tiresias parallel in light of Ovid’s treatment of other Theban …

The Labyrinth Of Memory: Iphigeneia, Simonides, And Classical Models Of Architecture As Mind In Chris Nolan’S Inception (2010), Benjamin Haller

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

Chris Nolan’s 2010 film Inception uses architecture as a language whereby to comment upon the relationship of the protagonist, Dom Cobb, with his deceased wife, Mal. This paper argues that three classical models – Homer’s tomb of Myrhine described in the Iliad, Iphigeneia’s dream of the collapse of the house of Agamemnon in Euripides’s Iphigeneia Among the Taurians, and Simonides’ Memory Palace mnemonic technique – manifest parallel uses of architecture as a metaphor for mind.

The film identifies each of its main characters – Dom, Mal, and Ariadne – with different architectures and with different modes of cognition. The …

300 And Fellini-Satyricon: Film Theory In The Tertiary Classroom, Leanne Glass

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

Pedagogical practices in Reception-based courses on ancient Greece and Rome in film often focus on an individual film’s connections to its historical themes and meta-narrative. In contrast, courses based on Film Studies often focus pedagogical discourses on filmic techniques or the filmmaking process per se. Regularly, the two approaches remain discrete and discipline-based.

In view of this disjuncture in teaching approaches and foci, the intention of this paper is to explore the benefits of film theory, including its consideration of film technique, within Classical Reception courses. Therefore, the suggestion offered herein is that more emphasis on the pedagogies of Film …

Theseus Loses His Way: Viktor Pelevin’S Helmet Of Horror And The Old Labyrinth For The New World, Alison Traweek

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

This article explores the relationship between the myth of Theseus and the Minotaur, and Viktor Pelevin’s 2006 adaptation of it, The Helmet of Horror, particularly how it can serve as a case study for the nature and significance of adaptation. It examines the idea of memory, a central theme of the novel, and considers how three aspects of the original myth – the Minotaur, Ariadne’s thread, and the labyrinth itself – shape and inform Pelevin’s retelling. Each of these is unique to this myth in antiquity, and together, they structure the story. Each is also fundamentally connected to the …

The Odyssey And Its Odyssey In Contemporary Texts: Re-Visions In Star Trek, The Time Traveler’S Wife, And The Penelopiad, Mary Economou Bailey Green

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

Homer’s The Odyssey is the archetypal quest story. The dialogue began with Homer, and contemporary texts and popular culture media have continued the tradition of deconstructing and recreating stories, addressing issues related to the human psyche. As Hardwick and Stray note, the relationship between ancient and modern is “not merely inherited but constantly made and remade,” one that we see in the following varied genres and versions that retell the Odyssean myth, relating re-visions of characters, relationships, structures, and themes. The original Star Trek episode “Who Mourns for Adonais” is an allegory of the Odyssean quest for human knowledge, while …

Wounds That Will Not Heal: Heroism And Innocence In Shane And The Iliad, Carl A. Rubino

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

George Stevens’ film Shane, which dates from 1953, remains an especially successful version of the heroic paradigm that is established in Homer’s Iliad. Just as Achilles, the hero of Homer’s poem, considers abandoning the war at Troy in favor of a long and uneventful life at home, the film’s mysterious hero makes a futile attempt to abandon his violent past for a “normal life” as an ordinary farmer in the American west. In the end, however, the threatened status of the domestic world Shane is trying to enter makes it impossible for him to renounce his heroic nature and violent …

On Confronting Identity And Global Challenges Through Popular Culture And Pedagogy [Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal Of Popular Culture And Pedagogy, Volume 11, Issue 2 (August 2024)], Tyler Robert Sheldon, Anna S. Cohenmiller

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

On Confronting Identity And Global Challenges through Popular Culture and Pedagogy [Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy, Volume 11, Issue 2 (August 2024)]

Editorial

On Confronting Identity and Global Challenges through Popular Culture and Pedagogy, Tyler Robert Sheldon and Anna CohenMiller

Articles

Revisiting Paradise Lost through K-Pop: A Global Approach to Teaching Writing, Nayoung Bishoff

Examining Adolescence and Agency in the Midst of International Crisis: Pandemics, Pandemonium, and Zombie Young Adult Literature, T. Hunter Strickland

Ways of Decoloniality by the Painted Lady: Avatar: The Last Airbender’s Katara Demonstrates How to Revive a Community in Ecological …

Ways Of Decoloniality By The Painted Lady: Avatar: The Last Airbender’S Katara Demonstrates How To Revive A Community In Ecological Distress Brought By The Colonial Expansion Of The Fire Nation, Jose Santos P. Ardivilla

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

In the third episode of Avatar: The Last Airbender’s Book 3: The Book Of Fire, the “Gaang” consisting of Avatar Aang, Toph, Sokka, and Katara chanced upon a fishing village on stilts,ravaged by the pollution of its waterways. The pollution comes from the industrial activity of the Colonial Masters’ Fire Nation which greatly affected the village. This animation is from Nickelodeon, a channel geared for children’s entertainment, thus implicates humorous asides in what purports to be a serious epicurean reclaiming of a lost balance through indigenous visual culture, solidarity, media studies, and ecocriticism. Katara disguises herself as …

Revisiting Paradise Lost Through K-Pop: A Global Approach To Teaching Writing, Nayoung Bishoff

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

The short film series Wings (2016) by the Korean musical group BTS (Beyond the Scene) revisits John Milton’s Paradise Lost. BTS reinterprets Adam and Eve’s leaving of Eden as youths’ self-discovery process, overcoming a binary mindset. BTS emphasizes how experiences—trials, pains, and the struggle of youths to walk out of black-and-white perspectives—turn out to be “all so beautiful” as resources to grow. Wings demonstrates how the themes and elements in Paradise Lost can be used as a tool not only to explore Biblical concepts, but also to understand what pedagogical environments youths need to fully express themselves as writers. …

The Art Of Inclusion: Theatre’S Contribution To Popular Culture Literacy For Students With Intellectual Disabilities, Catherine R. P. King

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

This essay explores the transformative role of theatre in special education, focusing on its capacity to foster social skills and life navigation abilities in students with disabilities. In light of the fundamental importance of these skills for social inclusion and quality of life, the article highlights the innovative and effective approach to integrating theatre into special education classrooms. It discusses how theatre can empower students with disabilities by enhancing their social interaction, communication, and life navigation skills. In addition, the article delves into the intersection of theatre and popular culture, showcasing how theatre can serve as a valuable tool for …

Gender, Age, Class And Racial Stereotypes, And Power Relations In Television Ads: 2011-13 Vs 2021-22, Thomas D. Clark, Julie Stewart

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

This article demonstrates how faculty and DEI experts can use resources included in this paper to highlight how a range of stereotypes are created and reinforced in television ads, and it identifies several topics for future analysis. To understand how depictions of gender, class, age, and race intersect in 8 television ads featuring the relationship between the race of individuals depicted in romantic and platonic relationships this article examines 4 pairs of commercials from 2011-2013 and 2021-2022. Drawing on concepts of intercategorical complexity, it describes product, setting, characters and relationships to help gain a deeper understanding of how various stereotypes …

Three Years Of Misinformation: A Case Study Of Information Literacy Methods, Elizabeth Zak

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

Misinformation is an ever-evolving digital issue. As the internet evolves, so too does misinformation and the ways in which it is propagated. Information literacy methods, such as the CRAAP test, the RADAR framework and the SIFT method, can help information users discern between real and fake information, and prevent the spread of misinformation. Unfortunately, the speed with which misinformation evolves often makes information literacy methods obsolete when they are designed and implemented. Furthermore, when people trust misinformation, they struggle with identifying correct information. Visual misinformation presents another concern: people trust what they see, and new misinformative developments such as deepfakes …

Cultivating The Futures Of Popular Culture And Pedagogy [Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal Of Popular Culture And Pedagogy, Volume 10, Issue 1 (February 2023)], Anna S. Cohenmiller, Karina A. Vado, Kelli Bippert

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

Cultivating the Futures of Popular Culture and Pedagogy [Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy, Volume 10, Issue 1 (February 2023)]

A Note from SWPACA Executive Director, and Dialogue Founding Co-Editor Lynnea Chapman-King

Editorial

Cultivating the Futures of Popular Culture and Pedagogy: A Celebration and Critical Examination of 10 Years of Dialogue, Anna S. CohenMiller, Karina A. Vado, and Kelli Bippert

Articles

The Rhetorical Interlude in Alfonso Cuarón’s Gravity: Suggesting a Model for Examining Rhetorical Discourse in Film, Brent Yergensen and Scott Church

Mixedness Comes of Age: Learning from Multiracial Portrayals in Young Adult TV Series, …

The Rhetorical Interlude In Alfonso Cuarón’S Gravity: Suggesting A Model For Examining Rhetorical Discourse In Film, Brent Yergensen, Scott Church

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

This essay advances the concept of the “rhetorical interlude,” a means by which scholars and teachers may examine how rhetorical messages are embedded in films. To illustrate, this study includes an examination of the rhetorical interlude in the film Gravity (Cuarón, 2013) as the film’s protagonist, Ryan Stone, is visited by the apparition of her dead colleague, Matt Kowalski, who instructs her on survival in space and on the significance of moving on from personal tragedy. In a pattern of ghostly apparitions appearing in perplexing outer space situations, Gravity situates scientific complexity as capable of being transcended with the help …

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 …

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: …

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 …

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 …

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 …