Questions what students should know about music and claims that they need an increased awareness of the value of U.S. music, both as music and as representative of U.S. culture. Suggests that teachers can use ready made lists as starting points, but encourages them to compile their own. (KM)

Examines how postwar women's magazines introduced television to the American housewife. Reveals the way television was imbricated in the gendered division of labor and leisure at home by exploring how the magazines deliberated on the problems television posed for women's domestic chores and the efficient functioning of the household. (KEH)

Provides an up-to-date bibliography of resources available for teaching media literacy. Groups resources into the areas of media education methodology, mass media texts, general background, television, film, the news and medium of print, advertising, gender and the media, popular culture, popular music and rock video, periodicals, and…

Traces the barrel in history through language, literature, poetry, music, art, and architecture. Includes examples and anecdotes of barrels in movies, television, and recreation. Illustrates the impact of the barrel on U.S. culture. Emphasizes that the importance of such an example of technology cannot be adequately measured. (DK)

Provides ideas and resources for using popular music to teach geography. Discusses social values, conservation and land issues, and developmental issues in Latin America. Concludes that popular music reflects the character of a place as well as the perspective and values of the musician. (DK)

It is proposed that the college core curriculum should provide students with the background to understand magazines and books read by culturally literate, college graduates. As an example, Allan Bloom's "The Closing of the American Mind" is examined for important themes, language, and historical and cultural figures. (MSE)

Examines rap music's origins as street music and poetry in the early 1970s and as an expression of Black youth experience. Discusses rap groups, women and Whites in rap, Christian rap, copyright disputes, and distribution difficulties. Rap is an informal educational medium that affects adolescents' values and attitudes. (JB)

Explores the exercise of institutional and ideological power over rap music and fans, how artists and fans respond to that context, and the complex relationships between rap's political economy and the sociologically based crime discourse that frames it. Rap's poetic voice is a political expression of the Black experience. (JB)

Two films, the fictional "Thunderheart" and the documentary "Incident at Oglala," demonstrate that Hollywood can sometimes portray the ethnic conflicts of Native Americans accurately. Both explain the ambivalent relationship with the dominant society that Native Americans have chosen through their refusal to be patronized. (SLD)

Discusses materials that can be used to create an interdisciplinary course that aims to provide students with a greater understanding of contemporary corporate-centered mass culture and its impact on their lives. Offers detailed reviews of literary and media sources illustrating the major shifts in cultural perception since World War II. (DSK)

Discusses the use of popular music to illustrate key concepts and topics in a course on ethnic minorities in the United States. Demonstrates that the lyrics of contemporary music can be used to illustrate concepts, theories, and general topics in sociology. Includes analysis of students' responses to the use of music. (DSK)

Examines global perspective of university students studying Russian regarding the country of Russia and its people, while also investigating the development of cultural consciousness of high school students who had been exposed to information about Russia and the former Soviet Union through social studies courses. (CMK)

Offers three public policy perspectives on the issue of juvenile violence: (1) kids need a nonviolent popular culture; (2) kids at risk need more help; and (3) kids need more moral discipline. Presents a way to approach each of the perspectives. (Contains references.) (CMK)

Provides citations with abstracts from the ERIC database focusing on the Great Depression. Includes both background information and teaching materials on such topics as an overview of the New Deal, the arts and the Great Depression, and information on the Civilian Conservation Corps. Offers directions for accessing the materials. (CMK)

Describes a collective case study of 12 high school juniors who identified themselves as avid readers of popular fiction. Finds strong reading relationships between parents and high school students. Describes the different roles that parents played in their adolescent children's reading lives. Looks at implications for secondary English classrooms…