Picking up where we left off in Part I of this post, exploring Sean Paul’s long (and successful!) history working with other artists across genre lines is a great way to understand the differences between a research question and a research hypothesis. Seriously, it is!
Read MoreNBD, but I think that I might have given one of the best lectures of my post-secondary teaching career last week in my Introduction to Research Methods course. And, not surprisingly, it involved Sean Paul.
This is Part I of II, and an example of how incorporating popular culture into classrooms makes complex topics easier to understand and discuss.
Read MoreAs you might remember from my post in April about A Virtual Pop Culture Art Exhibit, one of the assignments in my Popular Culture and Communication class asks students to think about how popular culture - broadly or narrowly defined - has shaped their identity, perceptions and behaviour. This is something that we consider over the course of the semester through readings about the CSI Effect (which influence can behaviour) , counter- and sub-cultures (which can influence identity) , and monsters (which can influence perceptions) - among other topics.
In addition to the above, during the semester I also share how popular culture has influenced my life by wearing popular culture inspired clothing, including photos of myself participating in subcultures like punk culture, travelling and engaging in tourism, and posing with life-sized cardboard cut-outs of the Rock in my slides, and talking about how my doctoral research was inspired by my favourite book series.
One of the assignments in the course asks students to do the same…
Read MorePicking up where we previously left off… using the concepts of racialization, dehumanization and affect, Sandlin and Snaza (2018) argue that Disney’s Zootopia shapes the identities, desire and subjectivities of its viewers “by policing ‘negative’ emotions such as anger, which (re)produces social forms by perpetuating white heteropatriarchal privilege” (p.1197).
Let’s take a look at how the authors argue Zootopia does this.
Read MoreDuring the final weeks of the Popular Culture and Communication course that I teach, we focus our attention on (1) different topics or areas of research that are undertaken in the field of popular culture studies and (2) the effects of popular culture. In particular, we examine how popular culture - and the repeated exposure to certain messages or themes in the media - influences our perceptions of ourselves and of others, and therefore our identities and behaviour.
When building the syllabus for this course, I try to take into account emerging research and trends in the field of popular culture, what’s happening in the world, and what students are interested in learning about. One of the topics that we look at is race, racialization and the representation of the police (the police state and police violence). This is explored through a reading called “It’s Called a Hustle, Sweetheart”: Black Lives Matter, the Police State, and the Politics of Colonizing Anger in Zootopia” written by Jennifer Sandlin and Nathan Snaza and published in 2018 in the Journal of Popular Culture.
Read MoreWOW! Is it almost the middle of September already? I can’t believe how quickly the summer went by. Before diving into some substantial content - I’ve been quiet for a while because I’ve been working on some big projects - I thought I’d take the time to give a bit of an update on what’s new and exciting.
Read on to hear about what’s been happening on the academic, professional and personal front, and to see what I have planned for the coming academic year!
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