Popular Culture as a Teaching Stategy

Christianity and Popular Culture

Myths of Popular Culture

The aim of this article is to explore some critical moments in the formation of ‘popular’ culture studies. This objective is not exhaustive, cannot be exhaustive in the space of a single article, since popular cultural studies have grown into an academic industry which not even five live-times of academic work by any individual can exhaust! This article is therefore, a rapid but hopefully, prov...

Is Commercial Culture Popular Culture?: A Question for Popular Communication Scholars

This essay compares commercial culture with popular culture, reviewing different conceptualizations of the terms. It posits that there are significant differences, but that commercial culture increasingly intrudes on other forms of culture. The essay argues that popular communication scholars are well positioned to develop new perspectives and techniques to understand hybrid versions of popular...

Teaching Psychology through Popular Film: A Curriculum

An undergraduate course, “Psychology and Film,” was developed as an honors elective. Each week students and the instructor viewed a feature film depicting a psychological disorder or related issue such as family dysfunction, resilience, or death and dying. Accompanying assigned readings featured first person accounts of mental health problems and psychotherapy as well as articles on using film ...

Mickey Mouse as Icon: Taking Popular Culture Seriously

tanding in front of Cinderella’s castle at Walt Disney World is a statue of two figures, one tall and one short, holding hands like parent and child. The tall figure is a representation of Walt Disney himself, evoking memories for baby boomers who watched him as the genial narrator of Disney’s Sunday evening television show. The smaller figure, the child, is Mickey Mouse, including those tradem...