Routledge Imagining the Academy: Higher Education and Popular Culture

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. Review "Spanning both media and textual practices, Imaging the Academy offers fresh readings of the representation of higher education in popular culture. The collection contains unexpected insights into tense relations between seemingly opposing pedagogical and institutional forms, from accelerated marketing of the academic business to the assumed professional formation of the university scholar-teacher. The authors make essential contributions to the critical discussion and debate about the status, role, and privileged cultural force of the university in contemporary society." -- Warren E. Crichlow, Faculty of Education, York University "What is 'the play of the personal' in the present historical moment? Are intellectual breakthroughs rendered fads in a consumerist and careerist academic culture? Have we faculty become mere bureaucrats of the mind? To these and other key questions, this crucial collection is devoted." -- William F. Pinar, St. Bernard Parish Alumni Endowed Professor, Department of Curriculum and Instruction, Louisiana State University About the Author Susan Edgerton is Associate Professor of Education at Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts. Gunilla Holm is Professor of Educational Studies at Western Michigan University. Toby Daspit is Associate Professor of Teaching, Learning, and Leadership at Western Michigan University. Paul Farber is Professor of Educational Studies at Western Michigan University.