Volume 8, Issue 3 — Traversing Borders, Transgressing Boundaries in Popular Culture and Pedagogy
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Item Open Access CROSSING OVER: THE MIGRANT “OTHER” IN THE MARVEL CINEMATIC UNIVERSE(Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy, 2021) Walker, Casey; Ramirez, Anthony; Soto-Vásquez, Arthur D.Two mainstream films from the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) reflect anxiety about the alien (migrant) “other” through difference and crisis. In this article, we explore how refugees and “shithole” planets form a major plot point in Captain Marvel (2019). At the most extreme, alien exclusion is articulated in Avengers: Infinity War (2018), from the villain’s perspective, as a Malthusian need for extermination of lives to preserve environmental balance. Seemingly innocuous, these narratives are symbolic of a creeping right-wing discourse that dehumanizes outsiders, refugees, and migrants in popular culture. Inspired by the call to consider how film and new media converge, and to bridge the gap between media and migration studies, we assert that the representation of and rhetoric about migrants deserve study in popular culture beyond their mere textual representation. Symbolic convergence theory (SCT) is used to do a close reading of the texts and the fandom communities around them, drawing out discourses and themes that resonate in popular discussion. We find translations of anti-immigrant narratives bleeding into fan communities, mediated through irony and internet culture. Keywords: Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), Other, Migrant, Symbolic Convergence Theory, Captain Marvel, Avengers Infinity WarItem Open Access HALFIES, HALF-WRITTEN LETTERS, AND ONE-EYED GODS: CONNECTING THE DOTS OF COMMUNICATIVE CULTURES(Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy, 2021) Stephens, GregoryThis essay distills the theory of communicative cultures as a tool for cultural analysis. Nadine Gordimer’s line about the difficulties of returning to “half-written letters” is used to frame anthropology’s critique of “bounded culture” or “container cultures,” predominat in Cultural Studies. Anthropologists Lila Abu-Lughod and Kirin Narayan have described “halfies” as in-between peoples who can help us understand fluid, processual cultures as normative. Building on this stance, and the work of rhetorical genre scholars, Stephens defines communicative cultures as “a set of shared commitments expressed through cultural means.” This approach to cultural analysis, in which literature is viewed as an “ethnographic resource,” is illustrated through an analysis of Jamaican writer Olive Senior’s story “Country of the One Eye God.” The repeating patterns in Jamaican culture which this approach reveals, it is suggested, point to the wider utility of communicative cultures as an analytical concept. Keywords: Communicative; cultural analysis; ethnography; repeating patterns; generations; structure of feeling; literature as ethnographic resourceItem Open Access IT’S DANGEROUS TO LEARN ALONE – PLAY THIS: VIDEO GAMES IN HIGHER EDUCATION, PARTICULARLY IN THE COMPOSITION CLASSROOM(Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy, 2021) Sterrantino, JoyWhen people think of educational games, they often just think of ones geared towards kids: these might include spelling and vocabulary games like Scribblenauts, creative games such as Minecraft , as well as historical games such as Carmen [Sandiego]’s Ancient Caper, but according to the Entertainment Software Association in 2019, 65% of adults play video games (almost half of which are female), the average gamer is 33 years old, and 63% of all gamers are playing with others at least one hour a week (“Essential Facts” 4, 5, 8). This means that the majority of the population plays video games of one type or another. Video games are part of most people’s discourse today, so it is odd that they are virtually ignored as a pedagogy once students enter middle or high school, and they certainly are not considered as a viable learning method in college. However, since games may be the key to how the majority of people of all ages learn best, it is a tool worth utilizing in higher education. I believe in particularly stressful classes, such as freshman composition, gamifying the classes can help reduce student stress and help achievement by couching complex and unfamiliar ideas in a fun and familiar structure. Thus, dialect is important because we often get caught up in “proper dialects,” academic language and in this case, traditional academic formats. And while these are important to learn, students can learn them better when working by adapting an already-effective language to new and often intimidating information. Gaming has been proven to be one of the most effective methods of motivation and feedback to exist which is exactly what students need. Keywords: video games, higher education, composition, writing, dialect, English, game, gaming, university, funItem Open Access MEDIA LITERACY, EDUCATION, AND A GLOBAL PANDEMIC: LESSONS LEARNED IN A GENDER AND POP CULTURE CLASSROOM(Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy, 2021) Lowell Mason, Jessica; Imobhio, EbehitaleIn Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom, bell hooks writes that “to engage in dialogue is one of the simplest ways we can begin as teachers, scholars, and critical thinkers to cross boundaries.” Hence, this paper explores, through narrative dialogue, teacher and student perspectives on the pedagogical impact of the global pandemic on the process of engaging with and learning about media literacy. By naming and narrating teacher and student experiences and perspectives from a course on gender and pop culture that took place during the Spring 2020 semester, the paper aims to demonstrate the way that crisis can both expose certain pedagogical issues as well as generate pedagogical opportunities. It narrates and reflects on the ways in which moments of crisis create opportunities for educators to think differently and more expansively about pedagogy by demonstrating its occurrence in one course, and how the combination of factors specific to the crisis required both the instructor and their students to re-situate themselves in relation to the course content. Through a teacher-student meditation, the paper argues that media literacy is a subject that leads to increased pedagogical deliberation and experimentation in the study of pop culture. It suggests that the experiences described might provide wisdom for further pedagogical development on the subject of media literacy, more broadly, positioning and inviting educators and students to engage in dialogue in order to shift paradigms according to the moment of crisis at hand. The broader aim of the article is to encourage educators to follow the example of the students in the gender and pop culture course who felt empowered to create innovative and social-justice-focused media literacy projects as a way of exercising agency, and of confronting and dealing with the harsh realities of global circumstances. Keywords: Media literacy, media, pedagogy, pop culture, pandemic, education, gender, gender studies, gender and pop culture