Suggests that incorporating popular culture into freshman composition classes can help students understand and engage in course content and can increase interest and motivation. Discusses the idea of discourse communities, or spaces in which meaning is negotiated. Reviews strategies for making students aware of different discourse communities when…

Addresses tendencies to force popular music into existing school music program formats, rather than include it as a form with its own musical integrity and authenticity. Urges music teachers not to dismiss popular music or turn it into elevator music. (CH)

Implores educators to help people discern between real and false paths to God as advertised in contemporary culture and mass media, and to communicate the Christian message in ways that uncover the transcendent meaning hidden in popular culture. (VWC)

In this article, the author shares how media affects her as a teenager. The author says that media has such a relationship with the world today, specifically with teenagers like her. Media gives off so much information that can be valid or invalid, positive or negative. The media can persuade anyone to do something or to think a certain way.…

This article emerges from an extensive conversation with three people of color--one Latino, one South Asian, and one African American--about their experiences of "coming out" and "being out" as gay, lesbian, and bisexual in a variety of higher education contexts. The article is divided into three parts. Part one offers a brief overview of…

Most of what the world envisions of the period of westward expansion in America has been crafted through Hollywood cinema. The myths of the West are so ingrained in America's culture that they have taken on a truth all their own. In a series of recent films, which began with the release of "Boyz N the Hood," Hollywood is at it again, presenting…

The 18th and 19th centuries saw a real tension between inductive and deductive methods of reason. Spokesperson for her era through her association with the popular "Godey's Ladies' Book," Sarah Josepha Hale addressed this tension in 1858, citing an article by Thomas Henry Buckle ascribing the method of deduction to women and that of induction to…

The goal of genre theory is to construct useful similarities between different texts. It is the meaning-making practices of a community, and particularly its system of intertextuality that determine which possible similarities will count as significant. Whether educators approach genre as a rule or a resource is a moral choice. Rules restrict,…

Michel Foucault's theories provide a way to understand the power dynamics often present in teacher-training, in which teaching assistants negotiate among various "knowledges" in order to develop a classroom teaching style that both honors and resists their training. In "The Archaeology of (Gendered) Knowledge" (by Scot…

As an extension of African-Americans' rich language and musical heritage and abilities, rap music has some value in the educational setting. Rap music started as a dance fad beginning in the mid-1970s among Blacks and Hispanics in New York's outer boroughs. It is another generational brand of Black language and musical usage and an extension of…

Although previous generations have by no means been disloyal to the popular music of their youth, the tenacious attachment of the Baby Boomers to the music of the 1960s seems unprecedented. Three main reasons account for this constantly widening musical reclamation project. First, the Baby Boomers have a clearer sense of generational identity that…

Many current models of television viewing regard viewers either as passive receptors, active participants, or addled dupes. A study proposed a more flexible model for television viewing research. The study used the television program "St. Elsewhere," an example of "meta-television" (television programming which contains hidden…

The mythical community of Lake Wobegon, created by Garrison Keillor and presented each week through the public radio show "A Prairie Home Companion," is the place to which everyone wants to return. A town devoid of newfangled technology, where life goes on pretty much as it always has, Lake Wobegon offers respite to listeners who daily…

This empirical review of the relationship between Swedish youth and music begins with a brief overview of the place of music as a communications medium in Swedish society in general, and among Swedish youth in particular. An analysis of the findings of a large-scale, longitudinal study of media use by Swedish adolescents, the Media Panel study, is…

This report is the first in a series examining television's treatment of specific issues in women's lives. This report focuses on the way in which children and families are portrayed on television and how this relates to the reality of families' lives. In particular, the report examines family interactions, income level, race relations, and child…