Pop culture and the classroom collide in this lesson when students go behind the scenes to analyze a television series for characterization to use in an original television show proposal.

This class provides an introduction to modern art and theories of modernism and postmodernism. It focuses on the way artists use the tension between fine art and mass culture to mobilize a critique of both. We will examine objects of visual art, including painting, sculpture, architecture, photography, prints, performance and video. These objects will be viewed in their interaction with advertising, caricature, comics, graffiti, television, fashion, folk art, and “primitive” art.

This Arabic-only website is an effort to record and preserve information on the culture and history of modern Egypt from the reign of Muhammad 'Ali starting in 1805 to the end of Sadat's presidency in 1981. Materials on this site include pictures of coins from this era, maps, stamps, medals, books, documents, photos, recordings, information on movies, speeches, newspaper articles, magazine covers, and more.

Invite students to share and discuss a song of their choice with lyrics that contain a social, political or cultural message relevant to a contemporary social justice issue. Students will lead their peers through a close reading and discussion of the song’s lyrics, and create a written analysis of the song, its lyrics, and its message. To help anchor their analysis, teachers may use the Critical Literacy Text-Dependent Question Stems template in the lesson. Students can organize their writing along the eight areas, while choosing from the list of prompts in each area. (Note: Teacher discretion will be necessary for handling lyrics that use explicit language.) Use the suggested activity and strategies below to empower students to lead the lesson with their peers as the students.

This website is a collection of resources concerning learning Arabic as a second language as well as information about Arab culture, Islam, and various Arab countries. There are links to videos from YouTube on the site relating to Arabic study, including songs and lessons, as well as a host of other more unrelated things, such as tornadoes. Links to opportunities to study Arabic, teacher resources, and Arabic newspapers are available.

This is a module framework. It can be viewed online or downloaded as a zip file.

As taught in Autumn/Spring Semesters 2009/2010

This resource presents material from four different courses taught across the School of American and Canadian Studies and Film and Television Studies. It addresses various aspects of nineteenth and early twentieth century American entertainment culture.

You can view module outlines for 4 modules taught within the school:

* American Drama (undergraduate year 3 level)
* American Sensations (undergraduate year 3 level)
* Film History (undergraduate year 1 level)
* Emergence of Mass Culture (undergraduate year 2 level)

The information contained within the module outlines includes: module objectives, lecture schedules, reading lists, teaching and learning methods, module resources, modes of assessment and essay questions.

This resource also presents examples of materials from each of the modules listed above. The materials available address:

* The Sensational Novels of the 1850's (from the American Sensations module)
* Mass Market Magazines around 1900 (from the Emergence of Mass Culture module)
* The movie Palaces of the 1920's (from the Film History module)
* The Depression-Era Theatre of the 1930's (from the American Drama module)

Suitable for: undergraduate study years one to three depending upon topic selected (see individual module titles above for more information)

Dr Matthew Pethers, Dr Graham Thompson, Dr Paul Grainge, Dr John Fagg, School of American and Canadian Studies.

Matthew Pethers is a Lecturer in American Intellectual and Cultural History in the School of American Studies. His research largely focuses on the American Enlightenment and early 19th century print culture, but he also has an ongoing interest in the history of the American stage.

Graham Thompson is the author of Male Sexuality under Surveillance: The Office in American Literature (2003), The Business of America: The Cultural Construction of a Post-War Nation (2004) and American Culture in the 1980s (2007). He is currently working on a new research project on Herman Melville's magazine fiction which re-locates Melville within the print culture industry of the 1850s and explores in more detail how magazine publishing developed and operated in order to better understand how cultural products like Melville's fiction were formed and circulated within it.

Paul Grainge is Associate Professor of Film Studies at the University of Nottingham. His teaching and research focuses on Hollywood and contemporary media culture. He is the author of Brand Hollywood: Selling Entertainment in a Global Media Age (Routledge, 2008), Monochrome Memories: Nostalgia and Style in Retro America (Praeger, 2002), Memory and Popular Film (as editor) (Manchester UP, 2003), and Film Histories: An Introduction and Reader (as co-editor) (Edinburgh UP, 2007). Within the Institute of Film and Television Studies at Nottingham, he teaches modules on film history, the cultural industries, the New Hollywood, and media memories.

Dr John Fagg is a lecturer in the School of American and Canadian Studies at the University of Nottingham. His research focuses on literature and painting around 1900 and the representation of everyday life. He teaches courses on American Literature, The Emergence of Mass Culture and the art and literature of New York City.

Cooperation and critical thinking are the name of the game as students use baseball facts they find online to create trivia questions for a class Jeopardy game.

Discuss the roles of both high culture and pop culture within societyDifferentiate between subculture and countercultureExplain the role of innovation, invention, and discovery in cultureUnderstand the role of cultural lag and globalization in cultural change

This edited collection brings together cutting edge insights from a range of key thinkers working in the area of popular culture and world politics (PCWP). Offering a holistic approach to this exciting field of research, it contributes to the establishment of PCWP as a sub-discipline of International Relations. Canvassing issues such as geopolitics, political identities, the War on Terror and political communication – and drawing from sources such as film, videogames, art and music – this collection is an invaluable reader for anyone interested in popular culture and world politics.

Our purpose is to consider some of the most elaborate and thoughtful efforts to define and delineate “all-mastering,” and to consider some of the delineations of “all-mastering the intellect” in various guises - from magicians to master spies to detectives to scientists (mad and otherwise). The major written work of the term will be an ongoing reading journal, which you will circulate to your classmates using an e-mail mailing list. The use of that list is fundamental - it is my intention to generate a sort of ongoing cyberconversation.

Mumkin offers practice materials for learners who are at a beginning, intermediate, and advanced level. Materials are grouped by difficulty level, and consists of videos in Arabic daily life followed by comprehension questions in the form of multiple choice or fill in the blank questions. Users also have the ability to read an Arabic transcription of each video. The site also provides a series of songs in Arabic that depict some aspect of contemporary Arab life along with the lyrics to the songs.

Students watch video clips from October Sky and Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone to learn about projectile motion. They explore the relationships between displacement, velocity and acceleration and calculate simple projectile motion. The objective of this activity is to articulate concepts related to force and motion through direct immersive interaction based on the theme, The Science Behind Harry Potter. Students' interest is piqued by the use of popular culture in the classroom.

This article describes how the 2007 film The Golden Compass portrays the polar regions.

Using film and related popular media as our texts, this course will examine how screen “embodiments” of the woman visualize ideologies of discipline and desire in a culture in which her body has become a representation of the ability to control appetites, size and shape while investing personal and social capital in its rehabilitation as a project of endless reconstruction, redesign and maintenance. Throughout the course we will draw from feminist film theory, clinical psychology, as well as women’s, gender, and cultural studies, to better understand how filmic representations of the woman’s body first emerge from contemporary psychosocial contexts and then in turn shape the body ideals and internalizations, as well as the behavioral practices of the film spectator.
The Graduate Consortium in Women’s Studies (GCWS)
This course is part of the Graduate Consortium in Women’s Studies. The GCWS at MIT brings together scholars and teachers at nine degree-granting institutions in the Boston area who are devoted to graduate teaching and research in Women’s Studies and to advancing interdisciplinary Women’s Studies scholarship. Learn more about the GCWS.

This is a book of readings discussing how social media and its related technologies shape individual and collective identities.

Innovation in expression, as realized in media, tangible objects, performance and more,  generates new questions and new potentials for human engagement. When and how does expression engage us deeply? Many personal stories confirm the hypothesis that once we experience deep engagement, it is a state we long for, remember, and want to repeat. This class will explore what underlying principles and innovative methods can ensure the development of higher-quality “deep engagement” products (artifacts, experiences, environments, performances, etc.) that appeal to a broad audience and that have lasting value over the long term.

This course will consider the ways in which technology, broadly defined, has contributed to the building of American society from colonial times to the present. This course has three primary goals: to train students to ask critical questions of both technology and the broader American culture of which it is a part; to provide an historical perspective with which to frame and address such questions; and to encourage students to be neither blind critics of new technologies, nor blind advocates for technologies in general, but thoughtful and educated participants in the democratic process.

Transmedia storytelling is the practice of designing, sharing, and participating in a cohesive story experience across multiple traditional and digital delivery platforms - for entertainment, advertising and marketing, or social change.

This course will help you to design a strategy for developing and telling your own transmedia story. You will learn about what it takes to:
• Shape your ideas into compelling and well structured narratives and complex story worlds
• Identify, understand, and engage different audiences in your stories
• Create cohesive user experiences across different platforms
• Evaluate existing and emerging technologies to share your story with the world, and help your audience participate in the larger storyworld you create

The course provides you with a unique, authentic, and industry relevant learning opportunity. You will have access to current theory, industry examples and advice and undertake learning activities that will equip you with the tools you need to start developing your own ideas.

This subpage of the Virtual Arabic blog offers realia material (realia is real life material meant to be used to aid language study in classroom situations) regarding culture and social material. The material listed on this subpage include social movement campaigns, aspects of everyday Arabic culture, and political cartoons. Material is available in picture, video, and text format.