Social Justice Commons^™

Queering ‘Common Sense’: Using Critical Discourse Analysis Of Lgbtq+ Book Bans In Florida Public Schools To Unmask Heteronormativity, Talia Zito, Nicole E. Morse

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

Historically, censorship of LGBTQ+ content in education has been rooted in socio-political efforts to marginalize non-heteronormative identities. However, even those who oppose censorship tend to frame their arguments around concepts like “age-appropriateness” and “protecting children.” Our Critical Discourse Analysis examines formal challenges to And Tango Makes Three in one Florida school district in 2022 to show how these concepts are deployed on both sides of the debate. The book, depicting a same-sex penguin couple raising a chick, faced objections under Florida’s HB 1557, a law designed to restrict discussions of sexual orientation and gender identity in schools. Ultimately, the picture …

The Effect Of Participation In A Place-Based Engineering Learning Experience On Engineering Career Aspiration Of Nebraska’S Rural Students: A Mixed Method Study, Samereh Soleimani Babadi

Department of Agricultural and Biological Systems Engineering: Masters Project Reports

This study investigates the influence of a place-based, hands-on engineering learning experience on rural middle school students' engineering career aspirations, using Social Cognitive Career Theory (SCCT) as a framework. Employing a mixed-methods approach, we explored how these localized learning experiences shape students' career goals through socio-cognitive factors such as self-efficacy, outcome expectations, goals, and interest. Quantitative analysis of pre- and post-activity surveys revealed significant increases in career aspiration scores, particularly among students from farming backgrounds and female students with initially lower expectations. Path analyses indicated that self-efficacy and interest were the strongest mediators between Place-based learning and engineering career aspirations. …

Reparative Research Practices: Addressing Epistemic Inequity In University Research, Gabriel Bruguier, Scout Calvert

University of Nebraska-Lincoln Libraries: Presentations

The main argument regarding the ‘repair’ in reparative practices: University research is a social good, subjects are entitled to be included in knowledge production, and subjects ought to have fair access to epistemic goods.

Therefore, a subject’s being prevented from making a contribution to the pool of resources utilized to create knowledge is an injustice. Knowledge produced by an entity that excludes community participation is perspectival and incomplete.

Our definition: Reparative research practices (RRP) are those that can intervene and replace other practices across the research life cycle to address epistemic harms and injustices, incomplete knowledge production, shared knowledge, and …

Social Determinants Of Health And Aging In Africa: Structural Inequality, Vulnerability, And The Future Of Care, Aremu Umor Lukman, Sunkanmi Folorunsho, Abdulrauf Olaitan Taofeeq

Department of Sociology: Faculty Publications

Population aging is accelerating across Africa yet remains underrepresented in research, policy, and public health planning. This review critically examines how social determinants shape aging experiences across the continent, focusing on health, care systems, and structural inequalities. While traditional African societies have historically valued older adults, modernization, migration, and economic hardship have eroded support systems, leaving many to face old age with limited resources. Older Africans, particularly women and rural residents, contend with lifelong disadvantages including low education, informal labor, poverty, and gendered caregiving roles that contribute to poor health and social vulnerability. Health systems remain poorly equipped to address …

Debbie Alicen Reclaimed Her Voice And Started The Human Rights Campaign In Lincoln, Nebraska, Morgan Grey, Debbie Alicen, Moni Usasz

Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

A story about Debbie Alicen's efforts in the early 1980s to have an amendment added to Lincoln, Nebraska's Human Rights Ordinance that would prohibit discrimination on the basis of sexual preference.

From Equitable Access To Equitable Usage: Moving Towards Data-Driven, Evidence-Based Cycling Assets Management, Kewei Ren, Yunping Liang, Chun-Hsing Ho

Durham School of Architectural Engineering and Construction: Faculty Publications

Cycling is increasingly recognized for its wide range economic, environmental, and health benefits as a mobility option. However, disparities in the provision and the quality of bicycle infrastructure persists. Ensuring fair access and usage of these benefits for all presents a significant challenge. As a result, establishing effective methodologies to evaluate cycling equity is critically important. This paper synthesizes research on infrastructure asset management with a focus on equity considerations in bicycle infrastructure. A systematic review of 19 North American studies critically examines how existing research categorizes vulnerable populations and assesses fairness. The results reveal that most existing analyses focus …

Volume 11, Issue 3, Critical Currents And Pedagogical Shifts In Popular Culture And Pedagogy, Journal Dialogue

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

Volume 11, Issue 3 of Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy: On Confronting Identity and Global Challenges through Popular Culture and Pedagogy.

Escaping The Pedagogical Cabin In The Woods, Tony Kemerly, Davis Ritenour

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

The American educational system, because of its seemingly innocuous yet ubiquitous nature, has become, to borrow a term from Roland Barthes, naturalized. By being naturalized, it has become a system that has somehow slipped beneath the radar of the American populace and operates on an autopilot of sorts that allows it to employ practices that don’t necessarily have the best interests of its constituents at heart. Murray Rothbard (1979) argued that compulsory schooling is not guided by altruism, but rather a desire to coerce the population into a mold that is desired by those possessing power in society. This need …

Building Transferable Skills In An Interdisciplinary Science And Science Fiction Capstone Course, John D. Carrell, Robert G. Weiner, Alexandria Prather

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

College graduates are entering an ever-competitive workforce. Interdisciplinary course experiences are critical for developing analytical abilities and learning and these courses can provide valuable skills that will aid students beyond the classroom. These transferable skills include communication, teamwork, analytical and critical thinking, and creativity. To provide a unique learning experience and, through it, the development of transferable skills, the Honors College at Texas Tech University created an upper-level Capstone course titled “Superheroes, Super Villains, AI, Time Travel, and Film in Science and Popular Culture.” The class is an interdisciplinary look at science and science fiction taught by an engineering faculty …

Leaps And Bounds In Popular Culture And Pedagogy Dialogue: A Note From The Editor In Chief And Associate Editor, Anna Cohenmiller, Karina Vado

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

No abstract provided.

Leaders’ Experiences Of An Organizational Journey To Inclusive Leadership, John Allan Slieter

Dissertations and Doctoral Documents, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, 2023–

The purpose of this qualitative phenomenological study was to explore the lived experiences of fourteen leaders of a large community healthcare organization while they undertook adoption of an initiative intended to create a more inclusive culture in their organization. Utilizing a Transcendental Phenomenological approach to data collection and analysis, data generation occurred through semi- structured interviews. Analysis of data provided descriptions of the sense making that explains how these leaders experienced the phenomenon contextually. Four themes emerged from this study, (a) Our mission is to serve, (b) Who is at the table? (c) Securing our future, and (d) …

A Search For Self Through Allyship And Advocacy ‘About, With, And As’ Multilingual Learners: An Autoethnographic Study, Molly Heeren

Dissertations and Doctoral Documents, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, 2023–

This autoethnographic study uses personal memoirs to explore the author’s allyship and advocacy efforts throughout the past 24 years in the language teaching profession. Through the process of self-reflexivity and introspection, “turning points” are investigated to understand more about what influences the actions and behaviors of allyship or advocacy ‘about, with, and as’ multilingual learners. As a district level instructional coach and teacher of multilingual learners in both elementary and adult settings, the author’s revelations in teaching identity, influences of Empire, misalignment of the ‘sense of language,’ and legitimate peripheral participation in communities of practice become salient issues. The dynamics …

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.

Graphic Novel Review — The Adventures Of Johnny Bunko: The Last Career Guide You’Ll Ever Need, Robert G. Weiner

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

Review of Daniel H. Pink and Rob Ten Pas's book, The Adventures of Johnny Bunko: The Last Career Guide You’ll Ever Need, New York: Penguin, 2008.

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 …

O Homer, Where Art Thou?: Teaching The Iliad And The Odyssey Through Popular Culture, Mallory Young

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

Like so many of my academic colleagues, I spend an inordinate amount of time lamenting our students’ lack of engagement, discipline, and preparation. The problems are naturally exacerbated when the subject is literature and the literature in question is, by its nature, far removed in time and place from students’ daily lives. At the same time, requirements to study literature have become compressed, if not eliminated entirely. Ancient Greek works, in particular, seem to pose special problems for unmotivated or unprepared students. As our students become less likely to have a prior context from which to approach ancient texts, the …

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 …

Guest Editorial: “Καλὸν Ἀνθρωπίνου Βίου Κάτοπτρον”: Popular Culture As A Pedagogical Lens On Greco-Roman Antiquity (Essays In Honor Of Kirsten Day), L. Kirsten Day, Benjamin Haller

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

Guest editorial for Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy, Volume 1, Issue 1 (Spring 2014), Classics and Contemporary Popular Culture.

Editorial: Moving Popular Culture Studies Scholarship Into The Future, Lynnea Chapman King, Anna S. Cohenmiller

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

Editorial for Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy, Volume 1, Issue 1 (Spring 2014), Classics and Contemporary Popular Culture.

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 …

Three Characters And Me(Me): Positioning Popular Culture To Unpack Emerging Teacher Identity, Gillian E. Mertens, Henry (Cody) C. Miller

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

In this article we narrate an instructional practice we implemented in two different teacher education courses that facilitated conversations about teacher identity through the use of fictional characters who were educators. This practice served two purposes in our course work: firstly, this activity presents students with an opportunity to demonstrate their media interests and career goals; secondly, this activity provides a quick, baseline assessment of how aspiring teachers view their profession and future practice. We detail student responses to this activity and consider how their choices of fictional educators fit into broader patterns we see in popular culture, specifically depictions …

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 …

Examining Adolescence And Agency In The Midst Of International Crisis: Pandemics, Pandemonium, And Zombie Young Adult Literature, T. Hunter Strickland

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

The COVID-19 pandemic of 2020-22 brought an abundance of changes to secondary education as students transitioned across the country to virtual and hybrid learning contexts. Teachers flexed quickly and frequently to support the learning that students acquired in these new, digital spaces even as school, district, and state demands on teaching increased. The English/Language Arts classroom pivoted along with others as teachers sought out digital reading and writing resources for students to engage in. In the midst of a national crisis, a metaphorical monster that sought to destroy, much like Beowulf ’s dragon did, adolescent readers, despite the discourses of …

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. …