Common Culture: Reading and Writing About American Popular Culture

This composition reader offers accessible and thought-provoking readings on a full range of topics in the field of popular culture. Following a general introduction that discusses and illustrates approaches to reading and writing about popular culture, chapters focus on advertising, television, journalism, sports, movies, leisure, and the Future of Popular Culture.
Combined with the readings are clear and informative discussions of issues of current interest in popular culture, comprehensive instruction on thinking critically and writing persuasively about these issues, and carefully constructed questions and writing assignments.

From Barbie to the internet, this inherently interesting book spans a full range of pop culture topics from a variety of theoretical perspectives, and helps users develop their critical and analytical skills and write clear and effective prose while reading, thinking, and writing about television, pop music, movies, and other media-generated articfacts. Provides key reading and writing strategies, and detailed instruction in thinking critically and writing persuasively about pop-cultural issues. Features 'casebooks' on certain pop-cultural phenomena, such as the Barbie Doll, rap and hip-hop music, horror movies and virtual communities. Explores cyberculture, the internet, and the information revolution, and includes new essays on the 'pro-advertising' perspective, the pop/hip-hop group Rage Against the Machine, the popular sitcom 'Seinfeld', and more.For educators in English and Composition.