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The Batman Comes To Class: Popular Culture As A Tool For Addressing Reflexive Pain, Kyle A. Hammonds, Karen Anderson-Lain

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

In this essay, a case study approach is used to examine ways in which comics and graphic narratives can be used to provide a context within which undergraduate students may theorize about culture. The authors employed Batman: Year One as an organizing narrative for students to theorize about culture and communication. Specifically, students were challenged to (1) understand applications of communication theory in the context of graphic narrative, (2) use graphic narrative as a space for theorizing about communication and culture outside of comics, (3) utilize narrative theory to extrapolate meaning from complex, multi-modal forms of communication. While this …

The Tin Woodman, Captain Fyter, And Chopfyt: L. Frank Baum’S Portrayal Of Body Image And Prostheses In The Wake Of World War I, Marie Gethins

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

Nineteenth and early twentieth-century children’s literature frequently depicts characters with disabilities as flat stereotypes — villains or saintly invalids. L. Frank Baum’s The Tin Woodman of Oz (1918) provides a sharp contrast to these typical portrayals, as well as contemporary “socio-cultural” beliefs on physical normalcy and sense of self. Written as the U.S. entered World War I and details of trench warfare reached the home-front, it presents an interesting exploration of society’s response to physical disability and prostheses. In addition, it highlights the psychological devastation associated with body changes.

During Baum’s formative years, disabled Civil War veterans returned to New …

Resistance, Race, And Myth: A Critical Survey Of American Popular Music Culture In The 20th Century, Scott Haden Church

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

The topic of popular music in the United States has garnered much analysis from scholars, particularly how popular music has created or reflected American myths, collective memory, and racial politics. This essay is a review of select research on the interface between 20th century American popular music, culture, and power. The essay reveals that pop music scholarship is rooted in paradox. Hence, it focuses on three chiastic or antithetical themes permeating scholarship on the topic: Popular music as either cultural hegemony or resistance to that cultural hegemony; Popular music as fundamental to the American myth, or the American myth as …

Zombie Literature: Analyzing The Fear Of The Unknown Through Popular Culture, T. Hnter Strickland

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

This paper will focus on how the rise in popularity of zombie literature in the 21st century is reflective of a western cultural need to address the fear of the unknown through popular culture. Through the flesh-eating zombie, we enter a parallel world where everything familiar in our communities becomes evil. The genre reflects the fear in Western society of the neighbor who has turned against you, survival in the midst of government collapse, and the monster within. Zombie fantasy literature allows society a venue to deconstruct what is known while dealing with these fears and the unbridled hate of …

Consider The Dementor: Discipline, Punishment, And Magical Citizenship In Harry Potter, Tracy Bealer

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

In his 2004 essay “Consider the Lobster”, David Foster Wallace investigated the ethics of boiling alive an aesthetically unappealing, yet sentient and perceiving, creature to augment the pleasure of a human consumer. In the Potterverse, dementors are described by our human heroes as “terrible things” with “rotting” bodies, “unseen” mouths, and characterized as “among the foulest creatures that walk this earth” . Their occupation as guards of Azkaban Prison does little to improve their reputation among wizard-kind. However, how much of the dementors’ evil is ontological? Is it possible that these beings have been actively constructed as villains by wizarding …

“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 …

Reinterpretation: Situating Culture From Pedagogy To Politics [Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal Of Popular Culture And Pedagogy, Volume 6, Issue 1 (February 2019)], Anna S. Cohenmiller

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

Reinterpretation: Situating Culture from Pedagogy to Politics [Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy, Volume 6, Issue 1 (February 2019)]

Editorial

Reinterpretations of Popular Culture and Pedagogy, Anna S. CohenMiller

Articles

Scarlett O’Hara, Solomon Northrup, and Ta-Nehisi Coates: Helping Students Grasp the Relationship between Popular Culture and Contemporary Racial Politics, Allison Rank

“Every Time I Write a Rhyme / These People Think It’s a Crime”: Persona Problems in Catullus and Eminem, Jesse Weiner

Making the Case for Teaching Character Change in Complex TV: The Closer and Major Crimes, Emily Hoffman

Human Sacrifice and Propaganda in Popular Discourse: More …

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) …

Human Sacrifice And Propaganda In Popular Media: More Than Morbid Curiosity, Jason Tatlock

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

Representations of human sacrifice, whether based upon real or fictitious events, powerfully demonstrate societal norms and fascinations related to the acceptability of slaying humans for religious or national interests, particularly given the divisive and bloody nature of the topic. Readers of eye-witness accounts, newspaper reports, and historical narratives, and viewers of cinematic productions, war posters, and political cartoons come face to face with the beliefs and agendas of the creators of popular media. Such sources represent the slaying of victims in sacred rituals, as individuals attempt to demarcate societal boundaries along the etic/ emic spectrum, be they commentaries on their …

“Every Time I Write A Rhyme / These People Think It’S A Crime”: Persona Problems In Catullus And Eminem, Jesse Weiner

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

This essay interprets Eminem’s song, “Criminal” (2000, The Marshall Mathers LP, Track 18), as a Catullan project in establishing distance between the poet and poetic persona, accomplished through Catullan invective. Drawing upon pedagogical experience, I argue that Catullus (a Roman poet of the 1st Century BCE) and Eminem use analogous rhetorical tactics and structures to challenge accusations (real or imagined) of poor character stemming from their poetry. Catullus and Eminem vociferously articulate a separation of art from artist, using common transgressive poetics. Each poet disavows his own self-constructed stance of authenticity with similar threats of violence and postures of …

Scarlett O’Hara, Solomon Northrup, And Ta-Nehisi Coates: Helping Students Grasp The Relationship Between Popular Culture And Contemporary Racial Politics, Allison D. Rank

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

The post-racial perspective of many millennial college students can make it challenging for faculty to engage students in serious conversations about race in America and the relationships among popular culture, political culture, and race-conscious policies. This article outlines a three-week unit from a course entitled Popular Culture and Politics that uses Gone with the Wind (1939) and 12 Years a Slave (2013) along with academic and popular articles to walk students through three interconnected concepts: (1) the conflicting images of slavery as a system in American political history; (2) the role of popular culture in constructing and disseminating those images; …

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

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 …

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 …

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 …

Hyping The Hyperreal: Postmodern Visual Dynamics In Amy Heckerling’S Clueless, Andrew Urie

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

An iconic staple of 1990s Hollywood cinema, director-screenwriter Amy Heckerling’s Clueless (1995) is a cult classic. This article examines the film’s postmodern visual dynamics, which parody hyperreal media culture and its connection to feminine teen consumerism amidst the image-saturated society of mid-’90s era Los Angeles.

“If You Want To Be The Man, You’Ve Got To Beat The Man”: Masculinity And The Rise Of Professional Wrestling In The 1990s, Marc A. Ouellette

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

This paper traces the relationship between the shifting representations of masculinity in professional wrestling programs of the 1990s and the contemporaneous shifts in conceptions of masculinity, examining the ways each of these shifts impacted the other. Most important among these was a growing sense that the biggest enemy in wrestling and in day-to-day life is one’s boss. Moreover, the corporate corruption theme continues to underscore the WWE's on-screen and off-screen coverage, well into the second decade of the twenty-first century. Thus, the paper provides a template for considering a widely consumed popular cultural form in ways that challenge the determinism …

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 …

“High Culture As Entertainment”: Hybrid Reading Practices In A Live Book Club, Magnus Persson

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

The Bushwick Book Club (BBC) is a live book club in which invited pop musicians perform musical interpretations of a predetermined literary work in a nightclub environment. What can a typical BBC show, with its strong emphasis on popular music and performance, teach readers about the uses of literature? This case study will investigate which reading practices are at work and in what ways they challenge traditional ideas of the forms, functions, and values of reading. Another important aspect concerns how the borders between high and popular culture, and between the printed word and other media are renegotiated. Based on …

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 …

Connecting The Disconnected: Pedagogy Goes Digital Native, Kurt Depner

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

We must redefine online pedagogy as here to stay. Is it any wonder that popular culture pedagogy is moving more from a focus on liberation pedagogy to a commodity based one? While traditional “brick and mortar” course enrollment has flattened or even dropped recently, online courses continue to see increased enrollments. In the case of the university system I’m in, we’ve seen an overall drop in enrollment of 10-15% since 2010 but an increase in online sections of over 30%, and we know the reason, in most cases: as tuition increases and salaries remain flat, more students are forced into …

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

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

This paper presents methods for instructors to deal with student anxiety over theory courses. The method is an interactive class exercise that provides instructors with direction as to using popular music. The paper accomplishes this through the use of several cases for including music in order to spark discussion and suggestions for helping students to interpret the theory presented. Additionally, suggestions for incorporating writing assignments with the exercise are provided here. A table linking music to a theorist is also provided.

Editorial, Lynnea Chapman King, Anna S. Cohenmiller

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

Editorial for Dialogue, Volume 3, Issue 1 (Spring 2016).

With this first special issue on popular culture and pedagogy, we bring together insights into classroom practices in academia, providing a peek into the ways in which learning and teaching can be enhanced. We look forward to the continued expansion and discussion of the multifaceted ways in which education and popular culture interrelate.

“Can You Imagine, A Real, Live Indian Right Here In Walnut Grove?”: American Indians In Television Adaptations Of Little House On The Prairie, Amy S. Fatzinger

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House novels have been adapted into two major television series: Michael Landon’s well-known series, which aired from 1974-1983, and a more recent Disney adaptation, which aired as a miniseries in 2005. The premier movie, which preceded Landon’s series, and the Disney miniseries both focus on the events in Wilder’s 1935 novel, Little House on the Prairie, which covered the period from 1869-1871 during which the Ingalls family lived among the Osage in Kansas Indian Territory. Wilder’s portrayal of the Osage in her novel is controversial, but she does also include some literary devices that allow …

Girls, Guns, And Zombies: Five Dimensions Of Teaching And Learning In The Walking Dead, Anthony Neely

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

Rooted in sociocultural theory, this article utilizes a conceptual framework derived from Alexander, Schallert, and Reynolds’ four topographical dimensions of learning: who of learning, what of learning, where of learning, and when of learning. Situated learning (Lave and Wenger) is presented as a fifth dimension to address how learning occurs in communities of practice absent of formal schooling. Content analysis (Elo and Kyngass) is used to analyze a teaching and learning event from an episode of The Walking Dead based on the five topographical dimensions of learning listed above. Findings provide insights for pedagogical application for …

Survivor Skills: Authenticity, Representation And Why I Want To Teach Reality Tv, May Friedman

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

This paper will consider the pedagogical potential in constructing a class on the phenomenon of reality television by exploring the possibilities and pitfalls of a shared viewing of these “texts” as a site of critical engagement with popular culture. A course on reality TV would require a deep analysis of the topics of representation, authenticity, and audience reactions. The course I would like to teach would also consider the ways that reality TV is simultaneously emblematic of, and contributes to, the foregrounding of neoliberal discourses. This paper addresses some of the pedagogical implications of an analysis of reality TV by …