Routledge Popular Culture and Critical Pedagogy: Reading, Constructing, Connecting: 02 (Pedagogy and Popular Culture)

This collection attempts to incorporate cultural studies into the understanding of schooling, not simply addressing how students read themselves as "members" of a distinct culture, but how they, along with teachers and administrators, read popular texts in general. The purpose of this book is to suggest some alternative directions critical pedagogy can take in its critique of popular culture by inviting multiple reading of popular texts into its analysis of schooling and seeing many forms of popular culture as critical pedagogical texts. Review "From film to cartoons, cyborgs to pedagogues, rap to reading and teaching, this collection is smart, savvy, and essential to those students and scholars finding their way through cultural studies." -- William F. Pinar, St. Bernard Parish Alumni Endowed Professor, Louisiana State University "Astonishing! This collection of essays will be of interest to scholars and students who grapple with the complicated intersections of curriculum studies, popular cultural texts, critical pedagogy, hermeneutics, postmodernity and identity formation." -- Marla Morris, The Journal of Curriculum Theorizing (JCT) About the Author Toby Daspit, the Assistant Professor Formerly Known as "Sparky," teaches secondary education and curriculum courses in the Department of Teaching, Learning, and Leadership at Western Michigan University. He is the co-author, with Pamela Dean and Petra Munro, of Talking Gumbo: A Teacher's Guide to Using Oral History in the Classroom. Although transforming Buffy the Vampire Slayer, rap/rock music, and collage art into educational theories is a full-time job, he still finds the energy to write essays on popular cultural studies and alternative forms of curriculum theorizing, and to fish in the swamps of Louisiana Educated at the University of Pittsburgh and in the wasteland of TV land, John A. Weaver is the author of (Re-) Thinking Academic Politics in (Re-)unified Germany and the United States (RoutledgeFalmer) and co-edited with Marla Morris and Peter Appelbaum (Post) Modern Science (Education) and Difficulty Memories: Talk in a Post-Holocaust Era. He also has written on Rap, The Simpsons, information technology, the Post-Human condition, and Higher Educational reform. When he is not writing and reading, he is furthering his education at the movies or in front of the television.