CFP: Teaching Popular Culture

Apologies for cross posting!

The Northeast Popular Culture Association (NEPCA) will be having its annual
conference in Portsmouth, New Hampshire this year
<https://nepca.blog/conference/>.  And I'm looking for interesting and
unique proposals around teaching and popular culture.

This area focuses on how to teach popular culture, which may include
sharing unique approaches to:

   - Teaching courses focused specifically on “popular culture”
   - Teaching courses on an area within popular culture (e.g. courses that
   focus on the content and cultural aspects–not necessarily the “how-to”
   aspects of comics, video games, horror, Harry Potter, baseball, The
   Beatles, etc).
   - Teaching mainstream courses using popular culture (e.g. baseball
   statistics for explaining, statistics, Buffy the Vampire Slayer for
   explaining political theory, Star Trek for exploring biology).

*This particular area is focused more on sharing successful and interesting
teaching practices for other scholars and educators to learn or borrow from*
.

Hopefully, this description clarifies that I tend to look at the Teaching
Popular Culture area as a bit different than the other areas which are
research focused.  I see this area more along the lines of providing some
professional development, feedback, and reflection around how we employ
popular culture in the classroom.  I feel like this is an often
under-attended element of popular culture studies: how we meaningfully
engage with it with our students.

In the last few years, this area has picked up a lot more participants both
presenting and in attendance as all of us are interested in applying our
scholarship and research of popular culture into learning opportunities for
our students.

Therefore, I'm quite interested in hearing from people and encourage anyone
who may teach a popular culture focused course or use popular culture in
interesting and useful ways to put in a proposal.  Here are a few of the
formats that I'm interested in seeing and/or participating in.  If you have
questions or thoughts about these, please don't hesitate to contact me:
[email protected].

The following are some ideas about how you might think about proposals.
Round-Table of Popular Culture and Teaching

Those who teach a popular-culture-focused course (specifically about
popular culture or thematically structured around popular culture) can
discuss some of the challenges, benefits, and experiences in teaching such
a course.  I imagine this format entailing a list of questions that the
participants can go through followed up with questions by attendees.  I
would also think we could capture the comments and produce some kind of
interesting resource for the NEPCA website.
Panel on Teaching

If you and other faculty teach a similar topic, area of popular culture, or
have different strategies and approaches that you want to illustrate, a
proposed full panel about teaching on popular culture is of great
interest.
Panel on Teaching Popular Culture Online

I'll throw my hat into the ring with this one.  I'm really interested in
working with and presenting with other faculty who have or regularly teach
popular culture (or focus in some ways on popular culture) in an online
environment.  I think there is a lot to discuss and explore with regards to
this topic and would encourage anyone else in this vein to reach out to
me.
Panel of Students

In the last few years, we've seen some really great panels that include
students and their experiences in learning and studying about popular
culture.  I think this is a great area for collaboration between faculty
and students and if you have an idea, you should definitely consider
submitting.
Individual Presentations on Strategies, Approaches, Resources

Honestly, if you've got something related to teaching and popular culture,
please submit a proposal.  Every year that I've done this, we get some
really fantastic presentations on a range of great topics relating to
teaching and popular culture.  If you're stuck on the fence or need someone
to brainstorm and flesh out your proposal a bit more, feel free to reach
out to me and we'll see what we can come up with.

Some of our previous presentations have included titles such as:

   - Compare and Contrast in Sakai Lessons
   - Teaching Hip-Hop: Boosting Student Agency
   - Wanna Play? Creative Strategies for Teaching Pop Culture
   - Teaching Sociology through TV: An Update
   - Teaching Professional Ethics through Superhero Comic Books
   - Course Design in the Age of Trump
   - "Heroes and Superheroes: Pop Lit and Writing Studies
   - Challenges of Media Representation in the Media Classroom

So if you are interested, please check out *the conference page
<https://nepca.blog/conference/>* before going and filling out *the
proposal form <https://goo.gl/forms/QdMp1Ov9bUKYTSin1>*.  If you're
interested in putting in a proposal that isn't Teaching and Popular
Culture, then *check out the other areas*
<https://nepca.blog/short-summary-of-nepca-areas/>to determine which is the
right area to submit.

The deadline for applications is June 1, 2019. Proposals must be submitted
to an online Google Form that can be found on *NEPCA's Website
<https://nepca.blog/conference/>.  *This page also includes a link to area
chairs who can assist with any questions you have about your proposal.
Good tidings,
Lance

Lance Eaton
*he/him/his* <https://www.mypronouns.org/>
@leaton01 <https://twitter.com/leaton01>
htttp://www.ByAnyOtherNerd.com
http://www.LanceEaton.com <http://www.lanceeaton.com/>
_______________________________
I wish I had all the answers; better yet, I wish I knew all the questions
to ask.

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