Academia And Higher Learning In Popular Culture

This edited volume focuses on the cultural production of knowledge in the academy as mediated or presented through film and television. This focus invites scrutiny of how the academy itself is viewed in popular culture from The Chair to Terry Pratchett's ‘Unseen University’ and Doctor Who's Time Lord Academy among others. Spanning a number of genres and key film and television series, the volume is also inherently interdisciplinary with perspectives from History, Cultural Studies, Gender Studies, STEM, and more. This collection brings together leading experts in different disciplines and from different national backgrounds. It emphasises that even at a point of mass, global participation in higher education, the academy is still largely mediated by popular culture and understood through the tropes perpetuated via a multimedia landscape.

This book explores how pop culture is used in academic libraries for collections, instruction, and programming. It also describes the foundational basis for implementing pop culture and discusses how it promotes conversations between librarians and the students, making not only the information relatable, but the library staff, as well.

The essays in this book examine various forms of popular culture and the ways in which they represent, shape, and are constrained by notions about and issues within higher education. From an exploration of rap music to an analysis of how the academy presents and markets itself on the World Wide Web, the essays focus attention on higher education issues that are bound up in the workings and effects of popular culture.

Academic curricula are being strengthened and enriched through the enlightened realization that no discipline is complete unto itself. In the interdisciplinary studies that result, the one theme that remains universal is popular culture. Academia throughout the disciplines is rapidly coming to understand that it should be used in courses campus-wide and on all levels. All in the world of education benefit from the use of the cultures around them. This work emphasizes the need for interdisciplinary mingling and explores the ways in which instructors can utilize popular culture studies in order to deepen both their own areas of specialization and their students' appreciation of education. The collection of 18 essays spans campus curricula, including the humanities (English literature, American studies, folklore and popular culture), the social sciences (anthropology, history, sociology and communications), religion and philosophy, geography, women's studies, economics and sports. Also addressed is the importance of popular culture courses in both community colleges and high school settings.

From the magazines and newspapers of the mid-1800s to movies and apps of the twenty-first century, popular culture and media in the United States provide prolific representations of higher education. This report positions artifacts of popular culture as pedagogic texts able to (mis)educate viewers and consumers regarding the purpose, values, and people of higher education. It: Discusses scholarly literature across disciplines Examines a diverse array of cross-media artifacts Reveals pedagogical messages embedded in popular culture texts to prompt thinking about the multiple ways higher education isrepresented to society through the media. Informative and engaging, higher education professionals can use the findings to intentionally challenge the (mis)educating messages about higher education through programs, policies, and perspectives. This is the 4th issue of the 40th volume of the Jossey-Bass series ASHE Higher Education Report. Each monograph is the definitive analysis of a tough higher education issue, based on thorough research of pertinent literature and institutional experiences. Topics are identified by a national survey. Noted practitioners and scholars are then commissioned to write the reports, with experts providing critical reviews of each manuscript before publication.

Education in Popular Culture explores what makes schools, colleges, teachers and students an enduring focus for a wide range of contemporary media. What is it about the school experience that makes us wish to relive it again and again? The book provides an overview of education as it is represented in popular culture, together with a framework through which educators can interpret these representations in relation to their own professional values and development. The analyses are contextualised within contemporary, historical and ideological frameworks, and make connections between popular representations and professional and political discourses about education. Through its examination of film, television, popular lyrics and fiction, this book tackles educational themes that recur in popular culture, and demonstrates how they intersect with debates concerning teacher performance, the curriculum and young people’s behaviour and morality. Chapters explore how experiences of education are both reflected and constructed in ways that sometimes reinforce official and professional educational perspectives, and sometimes resist and oppose them. Education in Popular Culture will stimulate critical reflection on the popular myths and professional discourses that surround teachers and teaching. It will serve to deepen analyses of teaching and learning and their associated institutional and societal contexts in a creative and challenging way.

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.

The essays in this book examine various forms of popular culture and the ways in which they represent, shape, and are constrained by notions about and issues within higher education. From an exploration of rap music to an analysis of how the academy presents and markets itself on the World Wide Web, the essays focus attention on higher education issues that are bound up in the workings and effects of popular culture.