EDU 3900 Studies in Popular Culture

This course explores issues in popular culture, cultural studies, and education, critically examining how popular culture texts rhetorically position young people today, mediate our identities and our aspirations, and function to narrate our our lives, worlds, and social possibilities.  We will critically situate popular culture within its social, political, economic and educational contexts – and within the everyday lived worlds of students. You will also participate in the production of critical counter-narratives that speak back to problematic or limiting mainstream media representations.

Film, television, music, graphic novels, zines, video games, toys, and other forms of media and culture will be critically examined for their potential use in or impact on education. Some of our themes include:

• Situating Popular Culture (Historically): Popular Culture and New Literacy Practices
• Representations and Resistance:  Critique and Post-Colonial Theory
• Understanding Consumption and the ‘Public Pedagogies’ of Media Culture
• Critical Pedagogy, Popular Culture, and Participation
• Cultural Studies and (Disney) Worlds: Toys and Media Texts, Gender and Identity Construction
• Graphic Texts, Serious Comics, (e)Zines & Video Games: Sites of Engagement, Production and Democratic Design
• Remix Culture: Creativity and Culture Jamming
• Connected Learning: Models for Connecting Education to Everyday Passions and Creative Communities
  

Readings & Creative Projects have two interwoven strands: 1) A critical analysis of media culture and systems of ‘popular’ mis/representation and 2) Identifying media tools, creative practices, and informal communities (affinity groups) so as to support deep learning through design/critical production – and in ways that  ‘connect’ in-and-out-of-school literacy practices to amplify the creative capacities of anyone and everyone.