American Mashup

Description

Chapter 1 — The Mashup Approach to Reading Popular Culture

The Mashup College Composition Course

Defining Popular Culture

Why Popular Culture Matters

How We Think About Popular Culture

How We “Read” Cultural Texts and Media

Reading Strategies

Understanding Signs, Signals and Symbols

Pre-reading

Reading and Commenting

Rereading

Credibility and Reliability in Sources

Other Texts

Visual Media

Film and Television

Websites

Apps

Reading People

 

Chapter 2 — The Mashup Approach to Writing About Popular Culture

The Mashup Essay

Planning Your Essay

Invention Strategies

Constructing a Thesis

Outlining

Writing Your Essay

Writing Strategies: The Mashup Essay

Opening and Supporting Paragraphs

Conclusions

Refining Your Essay

Revision

Proofreading

Finding and Citing Your Sources

Why Cite?

In-Text Citations

Creating a Works Cited

Sample Student Essay

 

Chapter 3 —Identity Construction

Making the Cultural Connection

“Citizenship” (cartoon) — David Fitzsimmons

Thinking about American Identity

“Objectif Lune” — Charles Dantzig

“America: The Multinational Society” — Ishmael Reed

“Friday Night Lights: Rural Mojo on TV” — David Masciotra

“Is the Latino Community Losing Its Identity?” — Zayda Rivera

Mashup Essay: “A More Perfect Union” — Barack Obama

MashItUp Topics

“Runaway Bride” (cartoon) — Mike Lester

Thinking about Gender and Sexual Identity

“The Problem with Boys” — Tom Chiarella

“I Won. I’m Sorry.” — Mariah Burton Nelson

“It Gets Better Project” — ItGetsBetter.org

MashItUp Topics

 

Chapter 4 — Social Media

Making the Cultural Connection

 “Social Media” (cartoon) — Bob Englehart

Thinking about Social Media

“The End of a Social Media Era?” — Emily Long

Mashup Essay:  “Virtual Friendship and the New Narcissism” — Christine Rosen

“If We Don’t Regulate the Social Web, Someone Else Will” — Manish Mehta

MashItUp Topics

“Digital Communication” (cartoon) — Andy Singer

Thinking about how we communicate                                                           

“How Twitter Will Change the Way We Live” — Steven Johnson

“A Call to End Contraband Cell Phone Use” — Alexander Fox

“Jesus 2.0” — Daniel Murphy

“Facebook vs. FTC Round 2: Facebook Responds” — Gregory Ferenstein

MashItUp Topics

 

Chapter 5 — Mass Media

Making the Cultural Connection

“Simon Cowell” (cartoon) — Taylor Jones

Thinking about Mass Media

“The Ethics of Grey’s Anatomy” — Mandy Redig

“The Gayest. Show. Ever.” — Rob Sheffield

“‘C.S.I. Effect’ Has Juries Wanting More Evidence” — Richard Willing

“Adult Situations” — Brett Fletcher Lauer

Mashup Essay: “Retching with the Stars” — James Parker

MashItUp Topics

“Award Worship” (cartoon) — Brian Fairrington

Thinking about Media Values

“Biebered! How ‘Team Edward,’ ‘Team Jacob,’ & Justin Bieber Killed the American Man” — Shana Ting Lipton

“The Notting Hill Effect: How Romantic Comedies Can Harm Your Love Life” — David Derbyshire

“Guitar Hero: More than a Game” — Christopher Palmeri

“The Video-Game Programmer Saving Our 21st-Century Souls” — Jason Fagone

MashItUp Topics

 

Chapter 6 — Sexuality and Relationships

Making the Cultural Connection

“And The Love?” (cartoon) — Angel Boligan

Thinking about Sexuality

“Is Sex Interesting?” — Wallace Shawn

“Sex at Dawn: Why Monogamy Goes Against Our Nature” — Thomas Rogers

“Alarming Sex Trends Among Teens Today” — Shannon Lane

“Three Sex Crime Arrests Among Stickam.com Users So Far This Year” — Brad Stone

MashItUp Topics

“If We’re Going to Be Friends with Benefits…” (cartoon) — William Haefeli

Thinking about Relationships

“Relationship Advice: Nice Guys Finish Last. Not With Me! Ask Chauntel!” — Ask Chauntel

Mashup Essay: “Boy Friend: Between Those Two Words a Guy Can Get Crushed” — Libby Copeland

“The Rise of the Financial Divorce” — Yaran Noti

“My Last First Date” — Augusten Burroughs

“Young Adults Delaying Marriage for Long-term Relationships” — Leah Finnegan

MashItUp Topics

 

Chapter 7 — Violence

Making the Cultural Connection

“School Zone” (cartoon) — Jim Day

Thinking about Violence

“Bowling for Columbine” — Michael Moore

“Teen Fight Clubs Worry Police” — WLUK Fox 11 News

Fight Club — Chuck Palahniuk

“Common Sense Makes a Comeback in Classrooms” — USA Today

“In Defense of the Fistfight” — Chris Jones

MashItUp Topics

“Jaywalker” (cartoon) — TAB (Thomas Boldt)

Thinking about Abusing Authority

Mashup Essay:  “Picture Imperfect” — Jed Perl

“Texas Manhandle” — Court Document

“No Jail Time for Cop Who Pummeled Bartender” — Matt Walberg

“The Body as Weapon, as Inspiration,” “Police Dog,” and “The Performer”  — Paul Martínez Pompa

“Losing Is for Losers” — Michael Kinahan

“Offensive Play” — Malcolm Gladwell

MashItUp Topics

 

Chapter 8 — Alcohol and Drugs

Making the Cultural Connection

“College Drinking” — Mike Keefe

Thinking about Alcohol

“The Ultimate Drunk People Compilation Video Ever” — jackginger06

“Lessons for a Young Drinker” — Tom Chiarella

“Quicker Liquor: Should We Lower the Drinking Age?” — Darshak Sanghavi

“proper credentials are needed to join” — Charles Bukowski

“Alcohol Flowchart: What Kind of Drunk Are You?” — CollegeHumor

Mashup Essay: “‘Don’t Ice Me, Bro!’ When Memes Hit the Marketplace” — Mina Kimes

MashItUp Topics

“Phelps Olympic Sponsor” — Randy Bish

Thinking about Drugs

“Is It Fair to Be Angry at Lindsay Lohan?” — Mary Elizabeth Williams

“The Parable of Prohibition” — Johann Hari

“Private Dwyer’s Last Breath” — Roxanne Patel Shepelavy

“Lessons from the Celebrity Doping Scandal” — Daniel Engber

“More Students Turning to ‘Smart’ Drugs” — Michelle Trudeau

MashItUp Topics

 

Chapter 9 — Advertising and Shopping

Making the Cultural Connection

“Consumer Product Head” — Andy Singer

Thinking about Advertising

“I’m a Mac. I’m a PC.” — Apple Inc.

“Top Ten Super Bowl Commercials 2010” — Various Companies

“High Threat Count” — JW Enterprises

“Ethnic Marketing: McDonald’s Is Lovin’ It” — Burt Helm

“Best Viral Ad Campaigns for 2010” — Time.com

Portfolio of Advertisements — Various Companies

Mashup Essay: “Kid Kustomers” — Eric Schlosser

MashItUp Topics

“Shared Sacrifice” — RJ Matson

Thinking about Shopping

“The Science of Shopping” — Malcolm Gladwell

“Should We Admire Wal-Mart? Some say it’s evil. Others insist it’s a model of all that’s right with America. Who are we to believe?” — Jerry Useem

MashItUp Topics

 

Chapter 10 — Heroes and Celebrities

Making the Cultural Connection

“Ground Hero” — J.D. Crowe

Thinking about Heroes and Heroism

“Heroes in Hard Times” — Oprah.com

“SEALs who Killed Bin Laden Remain Secret Heroes in Hometown” — William Selway 

“‘Miracle on the Hudson’: All Safe in Jet Crash” — MSNBC.com

“The Tillman Story: The Surprising Saga of a Football Star at War” — Andrew O’Hehir

 “Superhero Worship”  — Virginia Postrel

“SpongeBob Squarepants and the Terminator Are Modern Heroes” — Martin Miller

MashItUp Topics

 “Self-Destructing Celebrities” — Dave Granlund

Thinking about Celebrities

Mashup Essay: “The Airplane Thief” — Jason Kersten

“10 Celebrities Caught on Tape with Drugs” — LiquidGenerationTube

“Here We Are Now…” — Jeff Gordinier

MashItUp Topics

 

Chapter 11 — Work and Careers

Making the Cultural Connection

“Recession” — Paul Zanetti

Thinking about Working

“Factory Worker Management, 1955” — The Industry Film Archive

“The Most Praised Generation Goes to Work” — Jeffrey Zaslow

“Yes, I’m 26. And Yes, I Do the Hiring” — Jamie Pritscher

MashItUp Topics

“Happy To Be Laboring Day” — John Cole

Thinking about Careers

Mashup Essay: “Usury Country: Welcome to the Birthplace of Payday Lending”  — Daniel Brook

“Nickel-and-Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America” — Barbara Ehrenreich 

“The Tao of Plumbing: No Pipes, No Civilization” — John Richardson

MashItUp Topics

·          Organized around major themes that impact students’ lives today, including social media, mass media, sexuality and relationships, violence, heroes and celebrities, and work and careers.

·          Encompasses a wide variety of genres in addition to the essay, including visual texts, video texts, fiction, memoirs, book excerpts, poetry, legal documents, speeches, research reports, cartoons, advertisements, and blogs, among others. 

·          The Mashup Essay in each chapter provides a model for students to use when writing their own Mashup essays using various writing strategies, texts and media. The essay’s introduction describes the ways in which each Mashup Essay author employs various writing techniques, as well as how the author incorporates a wide variety of texts and media into the essay itself. Each Mashup Essay is also annotated so that students can see specifically how the different texts and writing styles are used in the essay.

·          The two sets of MashItUp discussion and writing prompts featured in each chapter enable students and instructors to respond to multiple selections within the chapter and across multiple chapters, enabling a more critical, comparative, and textual analysis approach. Students are given the opportunity to write from multiple strategic approaches, thereby elevating their critical thinking/arguing skills beyond the simpler single-strategy approach. These prompts will also encourage students’ creativity, allowing for them to put the idea of different texts into practice themselves by potentially incorporating media beyond just the ink and page of a traditional college composition essay.

·          Each chapter introduction situates the selections within the context of the chapter’s topic. It explains why, for example, violence is a topic worth discussion, and allows students to look at our popular obsessions as Americans and find meaning where there might not appear to be any.

·          The Let’s Start Here section prefacing each selection is gives students a lens with which to view the piece that follows. They do not manipulate the students’ viewpoint on the text, but give them an entry point into reading the text. The Let’s Start Here situates the text in terms of the chapter topic and how it can be read in order to find meaning in the text.

·          The Let’s Pause Here after each reading enables classroom discussion. Working off of students’ immediate reaction focuses their thoughts on various important elements of each selection.

·          The Let’s Take It Further assignments following each selection generate discussion beyond the classroom, whether in the form of an essay or a continued dialogue in groups or online. These questions primarily focus on the main points of the text, allowing for yet another method of dissecting the text’s meaning while encouraging students to synthesize chapter selections with outside sources. Additionally, these questions can easily be used as writing prompts that will directly address the text, as well as the most common writing strategies used in college composition classrooms.

·          Let’s Connect at the end of each chapter directs students to the Facebook site for the text (www.facebook.com/theamericanmashup), where students will be presented with newer, more current readings that have come into print since the textbook’s production. Every semester, each chapter will be supplemented with a new thematic selection that will be accompanied by the “Let’s Start Here,” “Let’s Pause Here,” and “Let’s Take It Further” features offered in the print textbook.

·          A Pop-out glossary defines difficult or unfamiliar words in the margins of the readings where the word is used. 

The American Mashup is a popular culture reader for the Facebook/Twitter generation with cutting-edge themes and reading selections designed to encourage critical thinking and writing by analyzing diverse genres, disciplines and strategies.

 

In touch with today’s generation of  students, for whom trends and styles change more rapidly than any other generation, The American Mashup teaches to read texts, and then it sets them free to make complex connections on their own. The book builds upon the textual readings students do on a daily basis, unaware of the fact that they are judging, critiquing, and evaluating texts without consciously thinking about the process.  Using texts from blogs, videos, magazines, advertisers, journalists, researchers, and pop culture gurus, The American Mashup incorporates current trends in music, fashion, advertising, entertainment, and technology.  

The American Mashup is a first-year popular culture reader for the Facebook/Twitter generation with cutting-edge themes and reading selections designed to encourage critical thinking and writing by analyzing diverse genres, disciplines and strategies.

 

In touch with today’s generation of college students, for whom trends and styles change more rapidly than any other generation, The American Mashup teaches students to read texts, and then it sets them free to make complex connections on their own. The book builds upon the textual readings students do on a daily basis, unaware of the fact that they are judging, critiquing, and evaluating texts without consciously thinking about the process.  Using texts from blogs, videos, magazines, advertisers, journalists, researchers, and pop culture gurus, The American Mashup incorporates current trends in music, fashion, advertising, entertainment, and technology to provide students with a springboard for essay assignments and in-class discussions. The American Mashup also introduces a number of new topics of interest to students by virtue of their subject matter: social media, sexuality and relationships, work and careers, violence, drugs and alcohol, and heroes and celebrities.  Most importantly, The American Mashup simultaneously prepares students for college writing across a wide variety of disciplines, as well as exposing them to writing styles and practices that they will both encounter and create beyond their college experience.