Common Culture: Reading and Writing about American Popular Culture

I'm using it with my students this semester and it appears to be a hit. Of course, some students who are loathe to engage in critical thinking will find this book useless, but for those who enjoy thinking, analyzing, and questioning, this book serves as a good segueway into deeper critical analyses. This book features readings on pop culture ranging from relatively easy-to-read articles to selections from academic articles from scholarly journals. As a result, many students are faced with difficult and complex readings, often for the first time. By focusing on critical analysis, with this text in the guise of questioning the function of pop culture, students develop their analytical skills and refrain from being passive. Thus, they're encouraged to be active and engaged with their environment. I much prefer a reader in the composition classroom instead of the boring, "how-to" compositions. For the actual writing, I make my own handouts and assignments (individual, small group, and large group), and conduct in-class writing conferences. If a professor isn't willing to do the extra work needed in order to show and model solid collegiate writing, then this book, perhaps, isn't for him or her. But if a professor likes depth to the composition classroom and likes to encourage critical thinking in the students, then this book may be for him or her.

it's good to find perceptive analyses of aspects of culture we otherwise take for granted treated with both the humor and curiosity they deserve. the scope of this book will help dispel any jaded stare your eyes might have acquired in seeing life grow increasingly routine. as anthropologists are finding westernization leaving scarcer indigenous pickings, we can be happy cultural studies questioning some of the modes becoming more "common".