Welcome to Pop Academy

Welcome to Pop Academy

As an amateur blogger, professional academic and a pop culture/social media junkie, I decided to finally merge these identities online. I am an assistant professor of media studies in the Department of Communication Studies at Christopher Newport University in Newport News, Virginia. I have used learning technologies such as blogs in the classroom, blogged about community life and pop culture, and cultivated a social network via Facebook and Twitter but never combined these interests into one site.
For the next month or so posts on popacademy.org will be random as I continue to build the site in a way that will work best for my professional, personal and social goals. I will soon add links to other blogs, academic sites and social media outlets, which will have to suffice until I hit a posting rhythm. As I’m teaching three sections of upper level communication theory this fall, planning for an interest group of a major conference and presenting at two other conferences in the next few months, I’m not sure if my creative energy levels will be steady enough to sustain popacademy.org on my own.
That’s the beauty of the space. The main page will bring together my posts with those of my 30 students enrolled in COMM 326: Critical Theory and the Study of Popular Culture. Classes start Aug. 24, so soon after readers should see more thoughtful entries. I don’t include my busy schedule as a complaint but rather as a backdrop of and context for my use and interpretation of popular culture and academic life. In previous inceptions of blogs, I’ve committed the fallacy of endless rants that fell more toward the personal than the professional. Here, I have replaced the anonymity of blog world with the accountability of a named domain. (Here I have to give credit to my Instructional Technologist colleague at Old Dominion University, Michael Willits @michaelwillits on Twitter, for all the tech savvy parts of popacademy.org. I love tech but don’t know the first thing about setting up domains, plug ins and widgets.) As a non-tenured, junior faculty member, I realize the risk of such a public space. However, the reward of challenging myself to integrate my teaching and research goals with my formerly private online self makes the effort worthwhile. I look forward to being part of the Pop Academy with you and encourage your questions and feedback regarding what you’d like to see on this shared space.