Discusses the ways that middle school English teachers can use popular teen culture within the context of general English instruction. Suggests bringing television, film, comics, advice columns, and teen magazines into the English classroom. (HB)

Part-time social studies instructor at two community colleges set out to disprove weekly news magazine's claim that large percentage of American students could not properly identify our enemy in World War II. Majority of his class thought Russia was our enemy, when asked to choose among Mexico, Vietnam, Russia, Germany. Furthermore, students…

Provides support for using computer games in the English curriculum, as texts of the new technologies, to strengthen links between students' in-school and out-of-school worlds. Claims that far from presenting a threat to accepted literacy practices, the games help students gain an awareness of how texts work and become more reflexive about the…

Throughout history, certain members of nearly all cultures have deliberately altered their body's natural appearance. Today, people live in a time when medicine can cure the body and also reshape it. Hence, many people use biomedical means, such as steroids and hormones to alter their bodies. Additionally, cosmetic surgery is becoming increasingly…

This article discusses the benefits as well as the important considerations that should be taken into account in integrating popular films in health education classes. Use of popular films in the classroom, termed "cinema education," is becoming increasingly popular in teaching health education. As a matter of convenience, popular films are easy…

Hip hop is the most multicultural of popular musical forms--all races and ethnicities are involved. Simultaneously hip hop is also the most racialized, and indeed the most blackened, musical form of individuals' times. How did this happen and why should it be of interests to music scholars? In this short essay, the author attempts to suggest that…

This report describes the process used by the Arts Midwest task force on freedom of artistic expression along with their findings and recommendations as they examined issues surrounding freedom of expression at the beginning of the decade. At a time when the National Endowment for the Arts was struggling through rigorous congressional…

This discussion of the movie "Field of Dreams" analyzes the film's structuring of individual perceptual response to its visual messages, as well as its contribution to our cultural myths using baseball as visual metaphor. The central premises of the film revolve around seeing and reading the visual messages correctly according to the…

If sexism, inherent in the fabric of the culture of human society, produced sexist language, then sexist language no doubt helps reinforce and teach sexism to the users of that language. Language feeds back the sexism, sexism feeds back through language. Treating symptoms of disease alone will not eliminate the disease, but may help, while…

An historical overview of African and Afro-American music, from the foundations in sub-Saharan African music to the music of the 1980s, is presented in this paper as evidence that Afro-American music is closely intertwined with ethnic identification and follows the direction of Afro-American sociopolitical change. Slave and folk music, minstrel…

The ascendance of Menudo, the Puerto Rican rock group, was the most significant cultural event in the Hispanic community in the last eight years. As a phenomenon of popular culture, Menudo is worthy of study because of its main audience (Hispanic) and because it illustrates the dialectical interplay of gender, class, Hispanic ethnicity, and…

The first publication in the Viewpoint Series of the Center for the Book, this booklet contains the first lecture commemorating Luise Sillcox. The booklet includes a preface by John Y. Cole, Executive Director of the Center for the Book, and an introduction by John Hersey, President of the Authors League of America. The lecture presented in the…

Continues an examination of the Nancy Drew series, finding in the character of the young female detective Nancy evidence of autonomy and of a profound but covert feminism that is not present in the many imitations of the series that appeared later. (NKA)

Discusses and evaluates issues raised in E. D. Hirsch's "Cultural Literacy." Argues that investigation is still needed on the nature of curriculum, ideologies implicit in teaching, the ends of education, and motives for learning. (MM)

Proposes a study of "Citizen Kane" in high school using a somewhat simplified version of post-modern literary critical theory. Chooses this film because of its familiarity and accessibility and because the ambiguity and indeterminacy of its text allow room for exploration by students. (NKA)