The Pop Culture Zone: Writing Critically about Popular Culture

Why bring pop culture into the composition classroom? It's something students know and can get passionate about, and it also functions as a bridge to academic culture and concerns. THE POP CULTURE ZONE: WRITING CRITICALLY ABOUT POPULAR CULTURE, 2nd Edition, focuses on students' relationship with pop culture - such as film, television, social networks, and advertisements - and how this relationship can help them become better critical thinkers, readers, and writers. Students learn to listen to viewpoints that differ from their own, summarize their views effectively, compare and contrast, and present their ideas in a way that creates a continuing conversation of ideas.

Allison D. Smith is professor of English and Coordinator of Graduate Teaching Assistants at Middle Tennessee State University. She received a BA in Teaching Language and Composition and an MA in Applied Linguistics from California State University, Long Beach and a Ph.D. in Applied Linguistics/Second Language Acquisition and Teacher Education from The University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Her primary teaching and research areas include writing pedagogy, writing about pop culture, writing assessment, discourse analysis, and pedagogical grammar. Recent publications include a book chapter in More Ways to Handle the Paper Load, an article on journal writing for the English Leadership Quarterly, and COMPbiblio: Leaders and Influences in Composition Theory and Practice, a book focusing on the career arcs of leaders in composition. In addition, she is one of the series editors for the Fountainhead Press X Series for Professional Development. She is the co-author of THE POP CULTURE ZONE: WRITING CRITICALLY ABOUT POPULAR CULTURE (Cengage/Wadsworth, 2009). She is an active participant in the National Council of Teachers of English, the Conference on Composition and Communication, and the Research Network Forum.

Trixie G. Smith is Director of The Writing Center and a member of the faculty in Rhetoric and Writing at Michigan State University. After earning a BA in English and Elementary Education from Mobile College, she spent several years teaching middle and high school students in southern Alabama. She then received an MA in English, an MLIS in Library and Information Science, and a Ph.D. in Composition and Rhetoric from the University of South Carolina, as well as a Graduate Certificate in Women's Studies. Her teaching and research revolve around writing center theory and practice, writing across the curriculum, writing pedagogy, and teacher training. These areas often intersect with her interests in pop culture, service learning, gender studies, and activism. Recent and upcoming publications include a book chapter in (E)merging Identities: Graduate Students in the Writing Center, several articles in Southern Discourse, and COMPbiblio: Leaders and Influences in Composition Theory and Practice, a reference book focusing on the career arcs of leaders in composition studies; she is also one of the series editors for the Fountainhead Press X Series for Professional Development. She is the co-author of THE POP CULTURE ZONE: WRITING CRITICALLY ABOUT POPULAR CULTURE. She is an active participant in the National Council of Teachers of English, the Conference on Composition and Communication, the Research Network Forum, the National Writing Project, and the International Writing Center Association.