Professor of Psychology Elizabeth Aries agrees that popular culture can be useful in teaching. Aries uses selections from popular books along with traditional course material. "I think there is a place for popular culture in the classroom," she said. "I have assigned chapters from popular books and paired them with more scholarly readings."
Aries said she seeks to challenge students to understand classroom topics through this method. "My goal is to get students to look more critically at the claims that are being made in the popular press and the evidence on which it is based, as well as to compare the different views of 'truth' presented in the two types of works," she said.
Visiting Professor of Political Science Lorn Foster said that he uses popular culture in his classroom in part due to a change he has witnessed in his students. "Primarily I use video and film," he said. "There has been a fundamental change in students over the last 20 years. They are more visually oriented rather than oriented toward reading."
Foster noted that the subject he teaches makes it especially important for him to stay on top of popular culture. "I teach contemporary American politics, so a lot of references [concern the] real world," he said. "That forces me as an instructor to pay attention to the minds of 18 to 22-year-olds. I ask myself what is going on in popular culture with which my students are concerning themselves."
Professor of Classics Rebecca Sinos believes that the incorporation of popular culture can help connect ancient times to the present day. "I do make references in class to current TV shows, advertisements, movies and so forth, sometimes to draw a contrast with ancient Greece, but sometimes because of the apparent influence or even continuity of something first attested in antiquity."
Sinos added that the use of movies can be helpful, but sometimes the movies which focus on Greek history are not the most useful. "... [I]t is of course true that not all modern treatments of ancient themes provide a window through which the ancient world can be seen more clearly," she said. "In fact, when it comes to movies, for example, it is often not the movies which overtly draw upon Greek myth or history which provide the most useful illustrations for a Classics course."
Sinos has found more unlikely places to connect popular culture to ancient Greece. "'O Brother, Where Art Thou,' however, despite the Cohen brothers' protestations that they are not well-versed in the Odyssey, is a fine example of a clever adaptation of an ancient story, which not only draws on Homer's epic for many of its scenes and figures ... but also brings out latent aspects of the story in Homer," she said.
Professor of Jurisprudence and Political Science Austin Sarat pointed out that films also raise issues that are being covered in classes. "The films that I use raise important issues that I'm trying to raise," he said.
President Anthony Marx agrees that popular culture in the classroom is a good way to enliven material. "I think that using pop culture to make arguments [and] analyzing pop culture is a part of what we do here," he said. "Of course, we resist falling beyond that to celebrating or replacing with pop culture. We are very serious about our studying of the world around us, past, present and future, and that includes pop culture."
Kate Raddock '06 is glad that professors are including useful pop culture material in lectures and discussions. "Incorporating pop culture into teaching is vital when sparking the interests of college students," she said. "In order to engage students, the professors must attempt to show the value of the knowledge that we are gaining in a visible and tangible context. I think this works well in science classes just the same if the material, be it a movie or just references, is selected very carefully and that the correlations between the material and the class subject is clear."
Katie Duncan '06 agrees that pop culture can be useful in the classroom, if presented correctly. "I think that where appropriate, incorporating popular culture into teaching can help reinforce the concepts and thus aid in the teaching process," she said. "My Physics 17 teacher used the 'Transformers' cartoon during our discussion of transformers to make his point, which made class that much more fun and helped me remember the concepts in the future."