Common Culture : Reading and Writing about American Popular Culture

Common Culture, Fourth Edition, is a diverse, pop culture reader with varied cultural topics such as television, movies, sports, and computers. The text encourages you to read, think, and write about pop culture in order to help you develop critical and analytical thinking skills. Additionally, Common Culture hopes to engage you with the profound effect of popular culture on everyday life. The Fourth Edition features: bull; bull;Updated readings on advertising, popular music, television, cyberculture, sports, and movies bull;Discussions on hot topics in popular culture, including virtual reality television, sports and violence, and the cyber community bull;Focus on Reading Images-questions in every chapter help you make connections between the new color visuals and the articles bull;All new material on Writing Research in Popular Culture, including updated MLA documentation The new Common Culture, Fourth Edition, Companion Website trade; expands on the text by mirroring each of its chapters and provides an interactive environment with additional exercises and links to related Websites. Visit www.prenhall.com/petracca to view the list of new features.

When we started teaching composition courses that examined television, pop music, movies, and other media-generated artifacts, we looked for a text that would cover a full range of topics in the field of popular culture from a variety of theoretical perspectives. We discovered that no satisfactory text existed, and therefore we began putting together assignments and reading materials to meet our needs. From this compilationCommon Cultureemerged. The more we've taught writing courses based on popular culture, the more convinced we've become that such courses are especially appealing for students and effective in improving their critical thinking, reading, and writing skills. Students come into the writing classroom already immersed in the culture of Britney, Benetton, Beastie Boys, and Barry Bonds. The advantage, then, is that we don't have to "sell" the subject matter of the course and can concentrate on the task at hand--namely, teaching students to think critically and to write clear and effective prose. Obviously, a course that panders to the lowest common denominator of students' taste would be a mindless, unproductive enterprise for all concerned. However, the underlying philosophy of a pop culture-based writing course is this: By reading, thinking, and writing about material they find inherently interesting, students develop their critical and analytical skills--skills which are, of course, crucial to their success in college. Although students are already familiar with the many aspects of popular culture, few have directed sustained, critical thought to its influence or implications--that is, to what shopping malls might tell them about contemporary culture or to what they've actually learned from watching "The Jerry Springer Show." Because television shows, advertisements, and music videos, for example, are highly crafted artifacts, they are particularly susceptible to analysis; and because so much in contemporary culture is open to interpretation and controversy, students enjoy the opportunity to articulate and argue for their own interpretations of objects and institutions in the world around them. Although popular culture is undeniably a sexy (or, at least, lively) subject, it has also, in the past decade, become accepted as a legitimate object of academic discourse. While some may contend that it's frivolous to write a dissertation on "Buffy the Vampire Slayer," most scholars recognize the importance of studying the artifacts and institutions of contemporary life. Popular culture is a rich field of study, drawing in researchers from a variety of disciplines. Because it is also a very inviting field of study for students, a textbook that addresses this subject in a comprehensive and challenging way will be especially appealing both to them and to their writing teachers. Common Culture,fourth edition, contains an introductory chapter that walks students through one assignment--in this case, focusing on the Barbie doll--with step-by-step instruction in reading carefully and writing effectively. The chapters that follow open with a relevant and catchy cultural artifact (for example, a cartoon, an ad, an album cover) that leads into a reader-friendly, informative introduction; a selection of engaging essays on an issue of current interest in the field of pop culture; carefully constructed reading and discussion questions; and writing assignments after each reading and at the end of the chapter. This fourth edition also contains new sections on visual literacy and conducting research on popular culture, along with a selection of color and black & white images that students can analyze and enjoy. Common Cultureapproaches the field of popular culture by dividing it into its constituent parts. The book contains chapters on advertising, television, music, cyberculture, sports, and movies. Most of the chapters are divided into tw