popular culture

"Don't Feel So Down": When Your Students Don't Understand Your References

I recently had a teaching experience I could only compare to being on a sinking ship—like the band on the Titanic, I played my song dutifully as I sunk into the murky waters. With every word I spoke, attempting to explain the material I prepared, I could sense the students’ disinterest, disengagement, and utter confusion. This wasn’t the first time I experienced this sinking feeling of a total misfire while teaching, nor do I expect it to be the last time. And do you know whose fault it was? Julian Casablancas. 

The Chicken In the Egg: Theme and Comp in the Truthy Classroom, Revisted

Three people on the street in egg costumes with legs

I want to revisit my post from last semester today, because it dealt with the lessons of grading the first major assignment in my first advanced composition course, and this week I found myself doing the last class meetings before this semester’s first major assignment deadline.

Why Teach Popular Culture?

Photo of South Austin Museum of Popular Culture

This semester, I have taken great pleasure in teaching The Rhetoric of Celebrity to a group of enthusiastic and talented students.  In my office hours a few weeks ago, a student who came in to discuss a recent assignment with me began our conversation by asking if “all rhetoric teachers had to be so young.”  

“Well,” I answered, “most of us are graduate students, so we don’t have our PhDs yet.  We’re generally in our twenties and thirties.”  

Incorporating Pop Culture Texts in the Classroom

Screenshot from music video for Destiny Child's Independent Women

In order to improve my course design and teaching, I ask my students at each semester’s end for feedback on the assignments and course texts. When I reviewed their responses for last semester’s class, in which I taught an E314L class on Women’s Popular Genres, one text emerged as a favorite: the Destiny’s Child song “Independent Women Part I.” I used the music video during the first and second class days to introduce students to formal, historical, and cultural reading practices.

Theorizing Social Media in Pop Culture Contexts

Screenshot from class blog

Social media has long stood out to me as something rhetoric instructors should discuss in the classroom. Aside from email, it is perhaps the most commonly used technology by our students and ourselves. Increasingly, it’s the medium through which we access news stories and forms of information and promotion. Yet, because it raises questions about the overlap between public and private and what’s acceptable or desired in terms of pedagogy, I’ve often hesitated to use it.

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