Pop Culture and the Curriculum

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I have been following the discussions of "demanding books" and "tone" 
with a lot of interest, as a fairly new teacher of WMST (this is my 2nd 
semester in WMST, though my 4th year teaching).  I've been lurking on 
this list for months (I did post once but my post seemed to be swallowed 
in the system) but there's a couple things that have come up in the last 
couple days that I want to respond to.  At length, apparently.

First, Katha Pollitt wrote:
> I would say everything that needs to be said about survivor's 
> tribes can be said in about two minutes. i would have trouble stretching 
> it out to a whole column (1000 words). It's all pretty obvious, isn't 
> it?. 

Sure, it's obvious -- to us.  Not *all* of it -- as someone else pointed 
out, books have been and are written analyzing pop culture -- but the 
general outlines are pretty clear to those of us already steeped in 
feminist literature.  But is it obvious to our students? I start my 
classes now ("Gender, Race, and Class" in WMST, "Intro" in Anthropology; 
by the way, ask the anthros at your school about how non-time-consuming 
qualitative research is!) with my catchphrase "nothing is just", which 
refers to justice (i.e. nothing is *inherently* just) but more 
importantly to the fact that nothing is *just* what it appears to be: a 
movie isn't "just" a movie, a TV show isn't "just" entertainment, an ad 
isn't "just" a marketing device, marriage isn't "just" an expression of 
love, etc..  This seems pretty obvious after years of Foucault and 
Spivak and Althusser and Marx and de Beauvoir/Sartre and Derrida and... 
but it seems to take my students by surprise.  In a sense, I think it's 
*easier* to get students to read something like _Pride and Prejudice_ 
for it's "deeper meaning" -- after all, it's a "classic") than to get 
them to "read" something like _The Sopranos_ or _Scary Movie 8_ as 
anything other than trivial.  Yet as Katha and others have pointed out, 
our students will be exposed to pop culture that they're intended to 
swallow uncritically far, far more often than to the "demanding" works 
that they avoid precisely because they already know they are expected to 
find some deeper meaning in them, that is, that they're "work".

She also said:

 >   A number of people have said that college gives you a skill set, a set
 > of analytical tools you can use to read anything, and that teaching pop
 > culture is a good way to teach the skill set.

I actually disagree with those on the list that have argues that 
teaching the analysis of pop culture provides students with tools that 
they can apply to the "more demanding" work later; I think it's just the 
opposite.  I think that teaching "literary" work provides the skills 
students need to understand the meaning and importance of the pop 
culture that they are immersed in.  I'd much rather create a generation 
of critical _Buffy_ watchers than know my students can read and enjoy 
Shakespeare in their quiet hours.

Daphne Petai wrote:

 > If a teacher doesn't pay attention to
 > this, the classroom becomes a gab session with lots of emoting -- often
 > about readings that weren't done, as becomes obvious pretty quickly.
 > But  why should that matter once students feel encouraged to express
 > themselves, period?

I absolutely love it when my class "breaks down" like this.  Yes, 
absolutely, any expression whatsoever.  Please!

Here's why: Every semester I face a new crop of mostly 18- and 19-year 
olds, most of them fresh out of high school, almost always deeply 
traumatized by the experience.  I don't mean emotionally traumatized 
(though that may well be too) but *intellectually* traumatized. For 
years, they've been told what sort of expressions were appropriate (very 
few) and what sort of expressions were inappropriate (virtually all of 
them).  They've been hemmed in by all sorts of random, arbitrary 
regulations -- acts of power intended to pacify, control, and 
standardize them.  For example, last night my girlfriend's daughter, a 
middle-school student, told her mom that she needed a new blue pen 
because the gel pen she had was not allowed.  Huh? Her mother and I 
thought this over for a few moments and decided that *maybe* gel pens 
smear more easily, but for the daughter, it was just a random act of 
adult control.  Her son, too, can wear black shoes but only if they 
don't have laces and not with black pants, can wear navy blue shirts but 
not royal blue shirts, etc.  Again, there may well be good reasons for 
this (gang colors, etc.) but these aren't explained to these children, 
they are meant to be accepted and obeyed unquestioningly, or face 
punishment.  And add to this all the other arbitrary controls of peer 
groups  and "fitting in" -- of course it's no news that schools are 
breeding grounds for conformity.

So it it any wonder that students simply do not know how to express 
themselves in class?  But surely this is at odds with our jobs, 
especially in WMST -- to get students to actively question the arbitrary 
norms that have been imposed on them, to challenge the limits on their 
expression (and by extension, their thinking) that their previous 
educational experience has drummed into them.  Daphne wants to see 
"excellence" in her students, and I agree, but how can we instill 
excellence in students that are too afraid to speak their minds, 
students that fear being exposed as wrong, students that have been 
taught that theirs is not to wonder why but only to do or die -- that 
is, to follow orders or be punished? If my students can't find their 
voice in my class, when will they find it? When their boss promotes a 
man or a white person over them, despite their superior qualifications 
or seniority? When they see an act of gendered or racial brutality being 
carried out on the street? When they are asked to vote for one of two 
candidates, neither of whom addresses the interests of their race, 
gender, or class? Is it "excellence" if students can expound on Jane 
Austen or Betty Friedan but only when they know they're right and only 
when they speak generically and avoid mixing in their own personal 
experience?

She also wrote:

 > I do not view these discussions as
 > abstract, but rather in the context of how short a time students have in
 > a university, and how important it is to provide them with the best
 > education we can.

I don't "provide" an education.  At best, I assist with one tiny part of 
the student's efforts to *build* an education.  I partner up with them, 
for a very short while, sharing the knoweldge and experience I've 
gathered in my own studies and research and helping them to understand 
what I'm sharing with them.  In the process, they share with me their 
own knowledge and experience, and they help me to understand what 
they're sharing.  If there were a way I could distill that down into a 
Matrix-style download, maybe I would, but barring that, I do nothing so 
simple as "providing an education".

Now should I.  I cannot think of a way to describe "excellence" in 
education that can accommodate the idea of students receiving an 
education that I "provide" to them.  How would that work? "Here's Judith 
Lorber's essay, and this is what it means.  You'll be expected to tell 
me what I told you it means on the exam."  I don't think so.  That's not 
to say that my presence in the classroom doesn't add value -- though 
it's not strictly necessary, is it? All of us teach and use material 
that we ourselves didn't learn in the classroom or under anyone else's 
instruction.  But I think that having us along for the ride is useful to 
students, that it accelerates and expands their ability to understand, 
that it helps students to achieve "excellence".  It's not "providing an 
education", though.

Thanks,
--Dustin

Dear WMSTL-ers,

I think the discussion about pop culture vs. high culture in college
courses is tremendously productive. I teach women's studies and media
history and theory, but I come from a literature background.

It seems to me this discussion has broken down a bit into an either/or
proposition. We EITHER teach Buffy and Survivor OR we teach
Shakespeare and Tolstoy, etc. Perhaps what we (and our students)
really need is an education that is inclusive. One that values popular
culture and high culture. I agree that students are less likely to
read classic texts on their own and that it would be a shame for
students to leave college with no foreign language experience and no
exposure to classic literature. But does that necessarily exclude
popular culture as valuable subject matter?

Just a thought.
Marnie Binfield
University of Texas at Austin
mbinfield  AT  mail.utexas.edu

I have to say that i am dumbfounded by this discussion about a shift
of tone on the list. ONe poster objects to anyone saying that "x
should not be taught," or that "x should not be taught in in such a
such a way."  But that seems dangerous to the vitality of intellectual
inquiry.  Is women's studies to stay healthy if we, inside and outside
academia, do not actively debate its content and methods? Do we not
know the difference between a healthy pluralism and relativism in the
field? The first requires debate and deliberation. THe second demands
that anything goes.  I might not agree with everything Katha says on
this issue of teaching pop culture, but I absolutely think that a
biting, even scathing critique is needed of the way that pop culture
has been centered if not valorized in academia.  THe concerns about a
"shift of tone" seems to me evidence of the kind of insularity that
other posters are concerned about, in academia.

Katha Pollit's essays do not need a defense. I'm incredulous that
folks would even think they have to defend the work of an incisive
public intellectual such as Pollit-- some of whose work stands head
and shoulders above the work of many academics today.  The content of
women's studies (and feminist academia generally) must always be
debated--always open to question-- because what is at stake is not the
acquisition of knowledge for its own sake but the relation between
women's studies and dare I say, feminism? Otherwise, what's the point?
Again, I am not against teaching pop culture- but questioning, like
Bronwyn, the frameworks through which it is typically or often taught.

Moreover, I continue to find this list to be a great resource for
exchanging teaching ideas, so I am unclear as to why some folks thing
the list has changed so much.

Kathy Miriam
kmim  AT  earthlink.net

The discussion about pop culture has taken place in a textual vacuum
as we have only talked about the text being analyzed, not the tools
used to do the analysis. Many of the methods for textual analysis were
developed by scholars in literature (for example semiotics) who were
figuring out how to understand a text as a coherent, integrated whole
where parts derived meaning from their location in the wider system
(both textual and non-textual). Stuart Hall, one of the key founders
of cultural studies, took many of these insights and applied them to
pop culture. Also what about the papers we require? While my students
are deconstructing "low culture" (MTV or Reality TV being as low as
you can get), they are using "high theory" to make sense of the
meaning. They have to struggle their way through Gramsci, Marx, De
Bevoir, Hall et al (by no means easy or gut) and apply these insights
to locate the text within a political economy of contemporary
capitalist media. I have found that the literature classes in my
school actually require less rigorous deconstruction so here we have
"high culture" but "low theory" where students wax eloquent about
their feelings but fail to harness the powerful insights of literary
criticism. The issue is not what we study, but how we study it.

Gail

Gail Dines
Professor of Sociology and Women's Studies
Chair of American Studies
Wheelock College
35 Pilgrim Road
Boston, MA 02215
gdines  AT  wheelock.edu

<snip>

On the pop culture/high culture divide: understanding pop culture is
critical to an understanding of our society.  No disagreement here.
Also, I can see introducing some popular novels into literature
courses to raise issues of what constitutes literature, who decides
what is worthy of inclusion in the canon etc. etc.

But when Nancy drew takes over the literature course I think we are
doing students a real disservice for all the reasons Katha and others
have cited.

Finally, I was taken aback by Janell's post expressing her confidence
that her students have all learned what she intended to teach them:
Janell writes:

Well, as a college professor teaching Women's Studies, I can assure all of
you who are concerned about what your children are learning in college
that I am teaching students - through the materials of popular culture,
high art, literature, sociology et al - to be critical thinkers. Period.

Furthermore, you can also be confidant that they will be able to watch ALL
of the politically-driven news coverage and TV specials ad infinitum
that's occurring today as we speak and SEE THROUGH the propaganda
masquerading as memoriam.  Meaning: they will be able to vote with an
informed opinion, write letters to congress or media stations or business
corporations and eloquently express their concerns, and make informed
choices as they go about their daily lives.  What's more, your children
will be able to share their knowledge with others beyond the "esteemed
halls of academe."

Can we be so certain we have achieved our pedagogical goals????

Karen Bojar
Professor of English
Coordinator of Women's Studies Program 
Community College of Philadelphia
1700 Spring Garden Street       
Philadelphia, PA 19130
kbojar  AT  ccp.edu

Gail Dines writes that the issue is not what we study but how we study it. 
But surely it's both.  Our students are often so ignorant of . . . of so 
much that it's hard to see how we can justify n ot addressing that.  Hence 
it seems to me our task is to study the what as well as the how (and other 
items too).  In addition, the same argument Gail makes can be turned on its 
head:  if it's how we study something that counts, then why not, while we're 
at it, take advantage of the brief time students have at a university to 
introduce them to significant cultural items (I cannot even phrase the 
thought without drawing distinctions, of course).   Why not hone their 
analytical skills on material they're not likely to run into outside the 
classroom -- unless they first gain some awareness of it inside the 
classroom?

DP
daphne.patai  AT  spanport.umass.edu

Monica Body wrote:
"How is one to better understand the thinking behind views that differ" by
stating those views are worthless? The question (or statement) needs to be
reframed."

I believe that is what Jessica Nathanson had in mind in her criticism of
the shift in tone, as was my concern.

No one is asking for non-academics to leave this list, but we are asking
that we at least start from the perspective that feminist practitioners
have a "method" to their "madness," so to speak.

For example, when Katha Pollitt dismisses an NYU course titled "Buffy the
Vampire Slayer," it's done without any consideration for WHY the professor
thought it was a good idea to choose such a title and WHAT the professor
intends to teach around the subject.  There was no consideration of course
description, goals and objectives.  In short, there was a complete
dismissal of pedagogy and strategic approaches to culture.

For all we know, that professor probably included materials beyond the TV
program, perhaps even providing a historical overview or lit review of
vampire tales (including the classic Bram Stoker's Dracula) or
dragon-slaying heroes (including the canonical Beowulf) that contextualize
the contemporary pop-culture tale of Buffy.

And if said professor is on this listserv, I hope s/he feels empowered
enough to speak up and offer her/his own thoughts on the use of popular
culture to address these issues.

This complete dismissal of the "worth" of such a course is on par with
undergrad students who might show up on the first day for such a course,
thinking how much "fun" the course will be, and how "easy" (then finding
that they have to drop the class because there is actual "work" that is
required of them).  Assumptions are made of course (I would add, even on
the part of the professor who titled the course with the hopes of
attracting certain students who just might be in for a surprise).

We can raise these discussions, I'm not saying that we shouldn't (believe
me, this debate has been extremely helpful: it's allowed me to recognize
how the strategies and styles of academics don't always "make sense"
beyond the academic context) but can we please engage in debate without
immediately calling those of us who push different boundaries "worthless
intellectuals who're wasting students' tuition dollars"?  Let's "reframe"
our questions, as Monica requested.

Speaking of reframing, in response to someone who had asked how I could be
so "confident" that my students are learning, I guess my comments did not
reflect the sarcasm in which I was writing.  I was merely trying to take
the tone of an instructor, who had been called to the office (because her
teaching had come into question) and she usually does the "you can be
assured that my students are learning..." (yes, trying to invoke some Jean
Brodie/John Keating "persecuted teacher" bravado...) Sorry that did not
translate...

However, if we're going to talk "empirical evidence," I have received
some, both in student evaluations and various correspondence from former
students who tell me that my courses made a difference in preparing them
as informed citizens.

So, take that how you will.

Best,
Janell Hobson
jhobson  AT  albany.edu

As somebody who has just returned to the list after a year or two
away, I can't address the question of a shift in tone.  But I think
that a discussion of teaching Buffy vs. TS Eliot is quite important to
what we do.  First off, I, too, was excited and even a bit starstruck
to see Katha Pollitt on the list, so I'm completely happy that you're
here.  I read your work and often teach it, so it's nice to think you
might be reading something that I have to say, too.
 
The course that your friend's child took on Buffy was probably an
elective and most students get to take many of those.  Whether it was
academically valuable (or not)would depend on the purpose of the
course, the student's major, etc.  Regardless of these, I can imagine
it was much more productive intellectually than the required courses
in Personal Hygiene that my uncles took in the 1960s at public
institutions in Arizona.
 
As for your suggestions that the pervasiveness of pop culture is "not
why we're in iraq, or why people are poor," if you look at our popular
culture you might not find why Bush and company sent soldiers to Iraq,
but I would argue that you *will* find why many, many Americans think
we should be in Iraq (or initially thought we should).  If our pop
culture did not suggest that people in the Middle East are uncivilized
and need us to read our Kipling and take up "The White Man's Burden"
to help them, then more Americans would be demanding an end to this
war and would not blindly accept whichever war is about to come next.
 
And you're right, pop culture does not explain why people are poor,
either. But, again, if you look at the portrayal of poor people, you
can see why many Americans think they are lazy, have brought poverty
upon themselves, and deserve no help.
 
Then there's the fact that institutions of higher education have
become businesses that serve customers who are always right.  As an
adjunct instructor, if I get a bad set of reviews on "rate my
professor.com" and students stop signing up for courses that I'm
teaching, I'm out of work (I will lose the whopping $20,800 per year
and no benefits that I get for teaching full time).  And finally,
students will admit to me freely that they do not read/do not like to
read.  If, under those circumstances, I *do* assign a difficult read
such as Faulkner or Woolf, I can be assured that they will not read
it, they'll go to sparknotes.com or some other such website and read
the summary.  If I want students to *actually* read something (or fail
the class for not doing so), I know I'll do best to keep away from
"the classics."
 
Michele Ren
English/Women's Studies
Radford University
mren2  AT  radford.edu

<snip>

I'd like to say a bit more about the pop culture discussion.  Some
people seem to regard that discussion as putting Women's Studies on
the defensive.  I don't agree.  The debate over "high culture" vs.
"pop culture" has been raging for many years in most Humanities
fields.  As an English professor, I've been wrestling with these
issues throughout my entire career, and not just in Women's Studies
classes.  And in earlier centuries, disputes over whether
literature written in modern languages (as opposed to Latin and
Greek) should be taught, and whether American literature was worth
teaching at all, are earlier versions of the debate.

Plus ça change....

	Joan

	Joan Korenman, WMST-L's Official Nag
	jskor AT umbc.edu

<snip>
   
  One of the things that drew me to women's and gender studies is that
  by focusing on women's lives and focusing on the social mechanisms
  that rendered those lives invisible in the "canon," feminism didn't
  just "transcend" those artificial boundaries between elite and
  popular culture, between pedagogy and politics, between academic
  study and participation in a political movement.  It obliterated
  them, rendered them nonsensical.  It showed they weren't boundaries
  at all.
   
  And that's sort of how I feel reading this current debate.  The
  choice isn't about whether we read Shakespeare or watch Buffy.
  Feminism offers a lens through which to read both, to extract the
  stories of the disempowered Ophelia or the really empowered Buffy.
   
  Besides, this whole debate is ahistorical: Shakespeare was popular
  culture in his time.  Dickens was serialized in a newspaper, he
  wrote the "24" of his era.  Many canonical writers wrote for popular
  presses -- and, gasp, for money.  Feminism taught us to interrogate
  that canon, to see the power dynamics involved in who gets in and
  who gets left out.  And to search among the "ephemera" of popular
  culture to see where women's "contributions" often got relegated.
   
  (In my own field for example, who the hell decided that Charlotte
  Perkins Gilman, Mary Wollstonecraft, and Margaret Fuller weren't the
  intellectual equals of Auguste bloody Comte?!?)
   
  The genius of women's studies, for me anyway, was that it made women
  visible -- in what we teach, in who teaches, and in who our students
  are.  That's political.  It made it clear that women's absence was a
  choice, and that was political.  And for me, it was like that V8
  commercial, where you hit yourself upside the head and say, "Holy
  cow!  I could be studying gender!  And I have it too!  How did I
  miss that?"  (I've spent the better part of my career writing about
  that invisibility.)
   
  So for me the question isn't what we teach - whether elite or
  popular -- but how rigorously we can push our students to
  interrogate those ideas, their self-satisfied assumptions, their
  reflexive Mars and Venus worldview.  It's about method, not choice
  of text.
   
  Let me give you an example: I used to commute to my university with
  a colleague who was trained as a Classics professor, and he teaches
  the courses on Greek and early Roman poetry.  In Latin and Greek,
  mind you.  Heady stuff, eh?  Yet he also teaches courses on gender
  and film, and spent a good number of car rides trying to convince me
  that Buffy was legitimate object of serious scrutiny.
   
  I resisted, but I think he was right.  He described his students'
  complaints about forcing them to look at popular culture in new
  ways.  They resisted.  How many of us analyze the gender dynamics in
  a film or TV show, or some set of advertisements only to get the
  other side of resistance: "You're going too far!  It's only a movie!
  Stop ruining it!" and my current favorite: "You've made it
  impossible to go to the movies anymore without seeing gender
  dynamics" -- which sort of makes me know that I've done my job.
   
  Using popular culture allows us to disrupt the conventional, and if
  we discuss it rigorously, read it intertextually, we can reveal
  issues that are important and challenging with a common cultural
  currency.  It is not the only way to go, but it is an important and
  vital way to connect with students where they live, and thus suggest
  to them that the issues that are most pressing are expressed at
  every single level of our culture.  I find engagement the issue --
  they ahve the rest of their lives to make things more complicated,
  but first they have to find themselves engaged in the conversation.
   
  Of course it's political.  To name what has been silenced, to name
  what has not been named, reveals the power that has silenced it,
  challenges its legitimacy, and suggests there may be alternatives.
  Reading critically is often about resistance to conventional
  understandings.  I'm less concerned with what I ask them to read
  than in forgetting the politics of engaging with a text in the first
  place.
   
  (Sorry to be longwinded.)
  Michael
   
Michael Kimmel
Department of Sociology
SUNY at Stony Brook
Stony Brook, NY 11794
michael_kimmel  AT  yahoo.com

www.michaelkimmel.com