Educating through Popular Culture: You're Not Cool Just Because You Teach with Comics

Description

This edited volume serves as a place for teachers and scholars to begin seeking ways in which popular culture has been effectively tapped for research and teaching purposes around the country. The contents of the book came together in a way that allowed for a detailed examination of teaching with popular culture on many levels. The first part allows teachers in PreK-12 schools the opportunity to share their successful practices. The second part affords the same opportunity to teachers in community colleges and university settings. The third part shows the impact of US popular culture in classrooms around the world. The fourth part closes the loop, to some extent, showing how universities can prepare teachers to use popular culture with their future PreK-12 students. The final part of the book allows researchers to discuss the impact popular culture plays in their work. It also seeks to address a shortcoming in the field; while there are outlets to publish studies of popular culture, and outlets to publish pedagogical/practitioner pieces, there is no outlet to publish practitioner pieces on studying popular culture, in spite of the increased popularity and legitimacy of the field. Dedication and Acknowledgments Table of Contents Introduction: Educating through Popular Culture: “You’re Not Cool Just Because You Teach with Comics” • Ludovic A. Sourdot and Edward Janak Part I: Looking Behind: Teaching in the K-12 Schools with Popular Culture 1 Reclaimed Identity in Tak Toyoshima’s Secret Asian Man and Gene Luen Yang’s American Born Chinese • Tammy L. Mielke and Emily L. Brandon 2 History, Literacy, and Popular Culture: Using Graphic Novels to Teach the Struggle for Racial Justice • Richard Hughes, Meghan Hawkins, and Katie Lopez 3 Karma in Comics: Discovering Hidden Super Powers through Creating • Tonia A. Dousay Part II: Looking Around: Teaching in Postsecondary Schools with Popular Culture 4 Making Academia Cool: Serious Study of Sequential Art at the University • Pearl Chaozon Bauer and Marc Wolterbeek 5 Meditation: Mediating the Writing Process • Jillian L. Wenburg 6 Exploring Migration through Popular Media and Fieldwork • Cadey Korson and Weronika Kusek Part III: Looking Globally: Teaching US Popular Culture in Global Context 7 A Question of Relevance: Teaching with Sci-Fi and Fantasy Film in a Saudi University • Maha Al-Saati 8 Teaching Little Professors: Autism Spectrum on TV and in the Classroom • Kimberley McMahon-Coleman Part IV: Looking Ahead: Preparing Teachers with Popular Culture 9 Poking It with a Shtick: Humor as Hermeneutic in the Pre-Service Teacher Education Classroom • Sarah Hunt-Barron and Richard Hartsell 10 Orange Is the New Blackboard: Lessons for Teacher and Student Advocacy • Haley M. G. Ford and Meredith J. Tolson 11 Thinking Philosophically: The Power of Pop Culture in Developing a Personal Philosophy of Education • Chad William Timm Part V: Looking Theoretically: Research Utilizing Popular Culture 12 Using Multimodal Literacy to Teach Gender History through Comic Books, or, How “The Wonder Women of History”Became “Marriage à La Mode” • Andrew Grunzke 13 Exploring the Intersections of Social Identity, Popular Culture, and Men in Early Childhood Education • Kenya Wolff, Melissa Chapman, and Josh Thompson 14 Loyal Opposition: Conservative Student Resistance to Jazz Culture in the 1920s • Jacob Hardesty Conclusion: But I Don’t Want to Read a Graphic Novel: Truth and Nuance about Pop Culture in Education • Paul A. Crutcher and Autumn M. Dodge Index About the Contributors