Integrating Pop Culture into the Academic Library


Book Description

From Library Journal: "A comprehensive book, providing information on the rationale for connecting pop culture to library services and offering a range of projects to get students into the library." Integrating Pop Culture into the Academic Library explores how popular culture is used in academic libraries for collections, instruction, and programming. This book describes the foundational basis for using popular culture and discusses how it ignites conversations between librarians and students, making not only the information relatable, but the library staff, as well. The use of popular culture in the library setting acknowledges the importance of students’ interests and how these interests can be used to understand their information needs in unique and interesting ways. By integrating popular culture into library collections, instruction, and programming, librarians present research and discovery in ways that connect with students and the broader community. This book demonstrates that academic libraries using popular culture find it to be an effective tool, both for instruction and programming. The editors are librarians who utilize popular culture in various ways to provide instruction and reinforce information literacy concepts in their own practice. Readers will find chapters written by a variety of authors from different types of academic libraries, including community colleges, comprehensive universities, research universities, and law schools. These unique perspectives offer readers different ways of thinking about how librarians can incorporate students’ interests in popular culture to promote the mission of the library. In addition to well-known examples such as Hamilton: The Musical, Pokémon, Harry Potter, Black Panther, and Barbie, readers will also encounter lesser-known library applications of popular culture, including cartoneras, zines, fantasy maps, gaming collectives, and paranormal walking tours. All of these examples highlight the multiple way libraries leverage popular culture to expand their reach and identity with students and the community at-large.




Twentieth-century Popular Culture in Museums and Libraries


Book Description

Although libraries and museums for many centuries have taken the lead, under one rational or another, in recovering, storing, and displaying various kinds of culture of their periods, lately, as the gap between elite and popular culture has apparently widened, these repositories of artifacts of the present for the future have tended to drift more and more to what many people call the aesthetically pleasing elements of our culture. The degree to which our libraries and museums have ignored our culture is terrifying, when one scans the documents and artifacts of our time which, if history in any wise repeats itself, will in the immediate and distant future become valuable indices of our present culture to future generations. As Professor Schroeder dramatically states it, "No doubt about it, it is the contemporary popular culture that is the endangered species." The essays in this book investigate the reasons for present-day neglect of popular culture materials and chart the various routes by which conscientious and insightful librarians and museum directors can correct this disastrous oversight.




The Pop Culture Zone


Book Description

Why bring pop culture into the composition classroom? Because it's something you know and can get passionate about. THE POP CULTURE ZONE: WRITING CRITICALLY ABOUT POPULAR CULTURE, 2nd Edition, focuses on your relationship with pop culture - such as film, television, social networks, and advertisements - and how that relationship can help you become a better critical thinker, reader, and writer. You'll learn to summarize your views effectively, listen to viewpoints that are different from your own, compare and contrast, and present ideas in a way that creates a continuing conversation of ideas. Each student text is packaged with a free Cengage Essential Reference Card to the MLA HANDBOOK, Eighth Edition.




Pop Goes the Library


Book Description




Disciplinary Literacy Connections to Popular Culture in K-12 Settings


Book Description

Literacy and popular culture are intrinsically linked as forms of communication, entertainment, and education. Students are motivated to engage with popular culture through a myriad of mediums for a variety of purposes. Utilizing popular culture to bridge literacy concepts across content areas in K-12 settings offers a level playing field across student groups and grade levels. As concepts around traditional literacy education evolve and become more culturally responsive, the connections between popular culture and disciplinary literacy must be explored. Disciplinary Literacy Connections to Popular Culture in K-12 Settings is an essential publication that explores a conceptual framework around pedagogical connections to popular culture. While highlighting a broad range of topics including academic creativity, interdisciplinary storytelling, and skill development, this book is ideally designed for educators, curriculum developers, instructional designers, administrative officials, policymakers, researchers, academicians, and students.




Popular Culture and Acquisitions


Book Description

Here is an accessible book containing strategies to help librarians expand their popular culture collections in an organized manner. Many publications explain why libraries should collect popular culture materials; this one explains how. Packed full of useful information, Popular Culture and Acquisitions provides numerous practical approaches to collecting this ever-expanding, often unwieldy mass of information. It aids both beginning and experienced librarians as they sort through the vast array of materials available to them. Discussions ranging from what to collect and how to collect it to what to do with the material once it’s obtained give librarians solid information on how to establish cohesive popular culture collections. Chapters provide first-hand advice on: the importance of collection development policies problems of budgets, storage, and preservation working with donors methods of resource sharing what to collect, for whom, and for what purposes the struggle for legitimacy competition from collectors and fans locating obscure acquisitions or review sources Popular Culture and Acquisitions also includes chapters on how to acquire specific types of popular culture materials, such as children’s series books, comic books, mystery and detective fiction, popular recordings, romance novels, and tabloids. Librarians attempting to collect such materials systematically will find this book to be an invaluable guide for their efforts.




Teaching with the Brain in Mind


Book Description

When the first edition of Teaching with the Brain in Mind was published in 1998, it quickly became an ASCD best-seller, and it has gone on to inspire thousands of educators to apply brain research in their classroom teaching. Now, author Eric Jensen is back with a completely revised and updated edition of his classic work, featuring new research and practical strategies to enhance student comprehension and improve student achievement. In easy to understand, engaging language, Jensen provides a basic orientation to the brain and its various systems and explains how they affect learning. After discussing what parents and educators can do to get children's brains in good shape for school, Jensen goes on to explore topics such as motivation, critical thinking skills, optimal educational environments, emotions, and memory. He offers fascinating insights on a number of specific issues, including * How to tap into the brain's natural reward system. * The value of feedback. * The importance of prior knowledge and mental models. * The vital link between movement and cognition. * Why stress impedes learning. * How social interaction affects the brain. * How to boost students' ability to encode, maintain, and retrieve learning. * Ways to connect brain research to curriculum, assessment, and staff development. Jensen's repeated message to educators is simple: You have far more influence on students' brains than you realize . . . and you have an obligation to take advantage of the incredible revelations that science is providing. The revised and updated edition of Teaching with the Brain in Mind helps you do just that.




Pop-Culture Pedagogy in the Music Classroom


Book Description

Teachers the world over are discovering the importance and benefits of incorporating popular culture into the music classroom. The cultural prevalence and the students' familiarity with recorded music, videos, games, and other increasingly accessible multimedia materials help enliven course content and foster interactive learning and participation. Pop-Culture Pedagogy in the Music Classroom: Teaching Tools from American Idol to YouTube provides ideas and techniques for teaching music classes using elements of popular culture that resonate with students' everyday lives. From popular songs and genres to covers, mixes, and mashups; from video games such as Dance Dance Revolution and Guitar Hero to television shows like American Idol, this exciting collection offers pedagogical models for incorporating pop culture and its associated technologies into a wide variety of music courses. Biamonte has collected well-rounded essays that consider a variety of applications. After an introduction, the essays are organized in 3 sections. The first addresses general tools and technology that can be incorporated into almost any music class: sound-mixing techniques and the benefits of using iPods and YouTube. The middle section uses popular songs, video games, or other aspects of pop culture to demonstrate music-theory topics or to develop ear-training and rhythmic skills. The final section examines the musical, lyrical, or visual content in popular songs, genres, or videos as a point of departure for addressing broader issues and contexts. Each chapter contains notes and a bibliography, and two comprehensive appendixes list popular song examples for teaching harmony, melody, and rhythm. Two indexes cross-reference the material by title and by general subject. While written with college and secondary-school teachers in mind, the methods and materials presented here can be adapted to any educational level.




Literacy and Popular Culture


Book Description

Most children engage with a range of popular cultural forms outside of school. Their experiences with film, television, computer games and other cultural texts are very motivating, but often find no place within the official curriculum, where children are usually restricted to conventional forms of literacy. This book demonstrates how to use children′s interests in popular culture to develop literacy in the primary classroom. The authors provide a theoretical basis for such work through an exploration of related theory and research, drawing from the fields of education, sociology and cultural studies. Teachers are often concerned about issues of sexism, racism, violence and commercialism within the discourse of children′s media texts. The authors address each of these areas and show how such issues can be explored directly with children. They present classroom examples of the use of popular culture to develop literacy in schools and include interviews with children and teachers regarding this work. This book is relevant to all teachers and students who want to develop their understanding of the nature and potential role of popular culture within the curriculum. It will also be useful to language co-ordinators, advisers, teacher educators and anyone interested in media education in the 5-12 age-range.




Against Academia


Book Description

The history of the study of popular culture in American academia since its (re)introduction in 1967 is filled with misunderstanding and opposition. From the first, proponents of the study of this major portion of American culture made clear that they were interested in making popular culture a supplement to the usual courses in such fields as literature, sociology, history, philosophy, and the other humanities and social sciences; nobody proposed that study of popular culture replace the other disciplines, but many suggested that it was time to reexamine the accepted courses and see if they were still viable. Opposition to the status quo always causes anxiety and opposition, but when the issues are clarified, often opposition and anxiety melt away, as they now are doing. Anxiety and opposition were generated on another level when people in academic and curricular power felt that voices were being raised that questioned their credentials and control. They flailed out with every argument at their command, generally thinking only of their self interest and not that of the students and the future of academic education. Generally this wall of opposition has also been breached. The Popular Culture Association and its many friends and backers in academia, in the United States and abroad, has demonstrated that the study of our everyday and dominant culure should be taken seriously, understandingly and analytically, just as all other aspects of culture should be. Taken that way the study can be useful in developing better educated and responsible citizens from the cradle to the grave. The humanities and social sciences are too important for any portion--especially the majority portion--to be ignored or downplayed. The study of popular culture constitutes a significant and important element, one that can be ignored only at peril.