Pop Academy

Another semester already?!

Dr. Stern — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 13:54:20 +0000

Today is the first day of the two new sections of Pop Academy. I’m looking forward to how the two groups of students interact via the blogs and Twitter, since previously I have only taught one section at a time. The next 16 weeks should also be interesting since we’ll be doing some Twitter collaboration with honors students in the “Law, Ethics & American Pop Culture” course. With so much going on in celebrity, sport, reality TV and other pop cultural modes related to legal and ethical issues, there shouldn’t be a boring moment. From Lindsey to overpaid athletes and Undercover Boss to the Jersey Shore, we’ll have plenty of critical concepts to explore. I’m keeping this first post of the semester short since I should be reviewing my syllabus and getting ready for class!

Summer Blogfest 2010

Dr. Stern — Sat, 22 May 2010 18:40:11 +0000

While it’s not an official event, the above title helps me prepare my mental game for the summer pop culture course. Beginning Monday, 25 students should have registered a Pop Academy blog, which means more #commnerd content aggregating on this site until the end of June. I’ve been guilty of not posting regularly, however my Twitter game is still in full force, and I hope these new Pop Academy inductees will inspire me to keep the blog momentum for the fall class in August. Two sections of more than 50 students total will take over the site. However, the fall classes will be hybrid, meaning we’ll mostly meet in person with supplemental blogs. I’m stoked for the summer section, though, since it’s the first time Pop Academy will be online only. I challenged myself to craft (hopefully) helpful instructional posts and complementary video introductions to the material. I’m fortunate that a few of the students created blogs from WordPress.com for my previous gender courses, but that still means I have about 20 students new to the tech. I hope I’ve channeled my geeky WordPress mentors (you know who you are) enough to help my students get started.

It should be an interesting first week since I’ll be spending the first week of class away from my home office. I’m in the middle of a two-week “working vacation” visiting family in the St. Louis area. My mom’s place doesn’t have reliable wifi, so I’ve hacked my Droid and MacBookPro with PDANet to get secure https access and also plan to escape to coffee shops for afternoon grading. The course is divided into types of critical theory (Marxism, Feminism, Post-structuralism, etc.), of which I’ve paired with discussion topics related to current pop culture products and processes. I’ve got posts scheduled to go live a couple days prior to deadline and will occasionally post random pop culture musings depending on the headlines. We’ll also be using Twitter, but I have yet to schedule time-released Tweets via HootSuite , my latest Twitter obsession. It’s going to be a total nerdfest, or commnerdfest I should say.

I’ll have to post more later regarding my latest pop culture addictions and reflections, but for now I’m going to enjoy this beautiful sunshine some.

For all you emerging feminist pop culture scholars

Dr. Stern — Fri, 14 May 2010 19:34:52 +0000

Click here to view the embedded video.

The folks from University of Cincinnati interviewed me at the Central States Communication Association conference in April. Shame on me for forgetting my mentor Laura Perkins’ name momentarily.