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TEACHING READING CULTURE
OVERVIEW
Reading Culture is a textbook that addresses a number of issues that persistently engage those who teach
writing classes:
 What are writing courses about?
 Is there, or should there be, a “content” to writing courses?
 Does it matter what students read?
 Is literacy a set of skills that can be learned independently of what students read and write about?
 Should students write personal essays, academic prose, public discourse—or some combination?
 What do students need to know about their topics in order to write well?
 How do digital literacies figure in writing instruction?
 What is the role of visual communication in composition courses?
All writing textbooks, of course, answer these questions in one way or another, whether they are explicit or
not about their answers. We’d like to explain, as far as we are able, what the underlying assumptions of this
textbook are and how these assumptions have led us to answer the questions above.
Reading Culture takes the view that writing courses might find their proper “content” right under their own
noses—in the cultural practices students engage in to make sense of their worlds and their social
experience. Students are already participants in American culture, and because of this, they are immersed in
data. The point of a writing course, then, might be to bring this data forward for critical analysis. Such a
view takes literacy in the broadest sense to refer to the practices by which meanings are made intelligible,
whether through the cultural codes and sign systems of contemporary America—perhaps the most mass-
mediated culture in human history—or the personal utterances of individuals struggling to articulate their
sense of the world. A writing course should introduce students to the ways meaning is organized in
everyday life—how journalism and the mass media, electronic communication, the schools, the culture
industry, and popular entertainment take part in shaping public opinion and private subjectivities. The
commitment of Reading Culture, on these grounds, is toward a form of cultural analysis that asks students
to study the production of meaning within particular systems of communication, whether in the press or the
visual media, in the workplace or classroom, the immediate world of the family, the intensely mediated
world of youth culture, or the impersonal bureaucratic structures of corporate institutions.
The purpose of Reading Culture is to promote critical thinking by asking students to engage in cultural
studies of contemporary America. Critical thinking, for us, means the ability to dissect items to see how
they work and how context shapes meaning. We assume that personal experience and the tacit practical
knowledge students possess about contemporary culture are crucial but not sufficient conditions of cultural
analysis. On the one hand, we want students to think of culture as a lived experience and not just “out
there,” imposed on people by what students often refer to as “society.” We want students to think of “texts”
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as anything that can be analyzed within a cultural context and to understand how individuals and groups
make personal investments in particular styles of life and structures of feeling. We ask students to “read”
culture, to treat everyday life as if it were an intelligible text.
But we also want to make sure that these “texts” do not become solely objects of critical analysis. Critical
thinking about the products and practices of contemporary culture should lead students to think of
themselves as producers and not just critical consumers of culture. Many of the writing assignments and
activities in Reading Culture are designed so that students can draw on the available means of
communication to make their own messages and thereby participate in the public sphere of deliberation and
policy making.
We also want students to learn how to gain a critical distance on their experiences to further help the
analytic process. The range of writers gathered in Reading Culture can give students a sense of the variety
of ways writers represent the culture of contemporary America and how they find patterns of meaning in
the familiar. However, students need to read not only to understand the techniques of other writers; they
also need to understand how writers shape issues in the public discourse of their day, to see how meaning is
organized.
We have designed chapters so that they relay some of the sense of crisis and tension animating cultural
debate in America today. Some of the reading selections are paired or clustered with other readings but not
always in a head-on fashion. We hope this textbook can lead students to look in new ways at the culture
they are living in.
SYLLABUS DESIGN
Reading Culture can be used flexibly so that teachers can set a wide range of goals for their students. We
know some teachers who cover all the chapters, though most select five to seven chapters, depending on the
length of the academic term and how much emphasis they want to place on the particular themes in the
chapters. Here are some considerations to take into account in designing your syllabus.
Selecting Readings
The first chapter (“From Page to Screen: Are New Media Rewiring Us?”) uses the lens of new media to
guide students through analytical thinking about how different kinds of media impact their lives. The
chapters then move from a focus on the lived experience of growing up (“Generations” and “Schooling”)
through the three chapters that examine visuality and the spatial organization of contemporary culture
(“Images,” “Style,” and “Public Space”) to the narratives Americans tell themselves about their lives and
the lives of others (“Storytelling,” “Work,” and “History”), and, finally, to issues raised by what has come
to be known as a globalized society (“Living in a Transnational World”).
For many teachers, this sequence makes sense, but it’s not the only way to use Reading Culture. You can
also think of the textbook as a mosaic that offers a wide range of materials to combine in patterns that make
the most sense for your syllabus.
Use the chapters you’ve selected in the order that best suits your teaching goals. To emphasize the
themes you consider central to your course, you can rearrange the order of chapters in a variety of
ways. Some teachers, for example, might begin with a theme of “Living in a Postcolonial World” to
frame the issues in the course. Or to emphasize culture, others begin with “Reading the News” and

then go on to “Images,” “Style,” “Public Space,” and selected Visual Culture features in other
chapters.
Don’t feel you have to cover all the readings in a chapter you’ve selected. Depending on your
purposes, you can assign selected readings from the chapters you’re covering—anywhere from most of
the readings to just a cluster of two or three readings.
Ask your students to decide which chapters or readings they want to cover. You might, for example,
assign groups of students at the beginning of a class to survey two or three chapters each and report on
them so the class can decide which they want to work on. Or you could decide on two or three chapters
you consider crucial to begin the course and then have students determine where to go from there. Or,
consider organizing students into groups, each working on a different chapter.
Design a syllabus across chapters. There is no reason everyone who teaches Reading Culture needs to
use the chapter organization at all. Many teachers have paired or clustered readings from various
chapters to meet the goals of their course. The Alternative Tables of Contents in Reading Culture and
the Complementary Readings listed for each chapter in this Instructor’s Manual offer suggestions for
mixing and matching.
USING THE FEATURES
Each edition of Reading Culture has expanded the number of special features available for cultural analysis
and student projects. For most teachers, there is far more included in the book than can be accomplished in
one term, so you will need to think about the goals of your course and which features are the most
appropriate.
Making Connections. This feature makes the pairing of readings even more explicit for teachers who
want to emphasize how writers approach the same issue from different perspectives. These pairings
ask students to think about writers’ strategies and the lines of reasoning that led each writer to take
differing but not necessarily counterposed positions. Making Connections can be especially useful for
teachers who want to emphasize argument. These groupings are well suited to rhetorical analysis of
how writers connect their claims to the available evidence by way of the underlying assumptions they
make.
Visual Culture. There is a growing interest in visual communication and visual design among writing
teachers. The Visual Culture features in each chapter help students to analyze how the visual makes
meanings available to readers and viewers. And they also offer opportunities for students to undertake
their own projects in visual composition and design. You can use this feature in a number of ways—as
a supplement to writing assignments based on the reading selections, as the basis of a course devoted
to visual communication and design, or as cultural texts available for a course focused on
contemporary culture.
Fieldwork. For teachers who want to emphasize research, the Fieldwork features provide guidelines
for designing particular types of investigations—ethnographic interviews, observations, surveys,
audience studies, and oral histories. The Fieldwork sections offer opportunities to discuss how
researchers develop questions, the methods they use to answer them, and the reasoning they use to
interpret results. The Fieldwork assignments, of course, are somewhat time-consuming, and you will

need to consider whether you want to use them at all and, if you do, how many and in what order.
Often, too, the Fieldwork assignments are well suited to be group projects.
Research Projects. In this section, you will see some of the ideas available to your students if you are
requiring them to complete formal research assignments. Each chapter contains a section on research
projects, with most of them recalling the different readings in the chapter and the research prompts that
appear in “Writing Assignments” directly after most selections.
USING THE WEB
The eighth edition of Reading Culture has been designed to offer a number of portals to the World Wide
Web. Technological limitations, of course, make it impossible for you to click on links in the textbook and
connect directly to the Web, but this is what we have in mind through our coverage of the Web—to
develop an interface between the book and the Web. How you decide to use the various links to the Web
will depend on the technology you have available, your own experience and interest in electronic
communication, and the goals of your course. Teachers may choose to make occasional use of the Web
features as supplements to the print sources in the book, but with this edition it is now possible to use
Reading Culture more systematically to explore the Web.
Throughout the Instructor’s Manual, we’ve offered suggestions for extending Reading Culture, and many
of these suggestions connect to additional resources on the Web. As we note in the section on Syllabus
Design, your particular use of Reading Culture will hinge on the topics, themes, and pace of your syllabus;
however, we encourage you to consider the ways that supplemental materials from the Web might
strengthen the arc of your reading and writing assignments.
Beyond simply supplementing the readings with additional content, however, the Web offers opportunities
to explore genre conventions across a wider range of texts and examples. As students begin to work toward
specific writing assignments, you can help them better understand the conventions and constraints of a
given genre by situating the selections from Reading Culture within a larger selection of works from the
Web. We find this especially helpful in connection with the Visual Culture and Mining the Archive
Features. We see the same flexibility in the use of additional resources as we do with the core of Reading
Culture, and an instructor shouldn’t feel pressured to add any specific amount of supplementary material to
his or her course; instead, we encourage you to find the range of readings that works best for the pace and
progress of your course.
While much has been written about the possibilities for collaborative technologies in classrooms, it’s worth
noting that specific software can make classroom collaboration a much more manageable prospect. Google
Documents, a free, browser-based word processor, easily allows students to write collaboratively—with
only an Internet connection and a semi-modern browser. Many of these collaborative platforms also allow
the user to look backward through saved points, offering users a means of evaluating and talking about the
affordances and challenges of collaboration.
Finally, many of the writing assignments listed below can connect to digital spaces and forms of electronic
discourse. A writing assignment that focuses on public writing, for example, can easily address and
encompass the ways that text and typography work within digital environments. A rhetorical analysis might
focus on a blog and the ways in which a blog writer forms a relationship and interacts with her readership.
In this manner, it’s important to remember that the Web isn’t simply a means for extending content—it’s
also a space for the exploration of digital discourse and how that discourse affects and changes writing.

DESIGNING WRITING ASSIGNMENTS
Throughout Reading Culture we have suggested writing assignments in response to reading selections,
wired culture features, visual culture sections, fieldwork projects, and research. Not all of those
assignments ask for the same kind of writing. If anything, we encourage the broadest range of composition
imaginable. If you are using a portfolio system of evaluation, you will want to ask students to write in and
reflect on different forms and for different audiences and purposes.
Types of Writing Assignments

Here are some of the different types of writing assignments Reading Culture makes available. The exact
combination you choose, of course, depends on your goals for the course. You may find that you want to
design your own writing assignments. The best assignments typically grow out of shared reading,
discussion, and other work specific to a class.
Exploratory writing. Usually ungraded, exploratory writing asks students to engage the readings
in open-ended ways, to explore their significance, difficulties, and relevance. You can use the
Suggestions for Reading or some of the Suggestions for Discussion or Writing as prompts that ask
students to write a page or two. It is particularly helpful to class discussion if students write about
what they are reading before they come to class.
Personal essays. Some of the assignments ask students to think about their own experience in
light of others, institutions, and cultural practices. In some cases, assignments ask students to think
about how a particular writer draws on personal experience to write essays of cultural reflection—
and then to emulate what they find useful in that writer’s approach.
Cultural analysis. The critical essay of cultural analysis is perhaps the mainstay of Reading
Culture, and this edition, like earlier ones, includes many opportunities for students to practice this
type of writing. The reading selections are set up to introduce students to a range of ways to
engage in cultural analysis, from a number of perspectives. We think one of the most useful things
about assigning students to read and write critical essays is that it challenges them to clarify how
their analyses differ from and are similar to those of the “experts”—and to think about what is at
stake in these differences and similarities.
Rhetorical analysis. The readings can be used as occasions for rhetorical analysis, to examine
how writers form relationships with their readers, how they represent cultural topics and issues,
and how they develop lines of reasoning. Writing about how writers shape their arguments and
interpretations, we think, is one useful focus offered by Reading Culture.
Research reports. The Fieldwork sections often contain guidelines for representing and
interpreting findings in a research report, and the Research sections’ features also provide
opportunities for research-based writing.
Public writing. This edition of Reading Culture includes more opportunities to do the type of
writing designed to inform and persuade in public forums. We encourage you to add assignments
such as flyers, leaflets, posters, brochures, petitions, news briefs, letters of appeal, and so on.

Experimental writing. We call experimental writing those assignments that give students the
opportunity to work in genres and styles of writing that differ from the more formal writing
assignments. These are meant for students to take risks, try new things, use their creativity, and
have fun. You can find examples for use in writing dialogue (June Jordan), composite portraits
(Theodore R. Sizer), fiction (Sandra Cisneros; Tillie Olson), vignettes (Stuart Ewen and Elizabeth
Ewen), urban legends (Jan Harold Brunvand), and poetry (Khaled Mattawa), not to mention
assignments you can invent.
Visual compositions. The Visual Essay sections offer opportunities for students not only to
sharpen their analysis of visual design but also to use visual design to produce their own
compositions. These can range from visual essays, photographs, and collages to the visual display
of information in graphs, tables, and displayed lists to text/graphic combinations in flyers, leaflets,
posters, and Web pages. Many of the assignments can be done without any special technical
expertise—cutting and pasting, doing pencil and paper sketches of layout—but no doubt at least
some of your students will already know how to produce computer graphics.
Collaborative writing projects. Most of the Fieldwork and Research assignments and many of the
Visual Culture projects can be done with a group, as well as individually. Some teachers like to
include at least one co-written assignment in their syllabus to give students some experience in
working on multi-authored group projects. Such projects can also provide students with
experience to reflect on in a final portfolio, to identify the differences and similarities between
individual and collaborative writing.
Sequencing Writing Assignments
The assignments in Reading Culture can lead to sequences that link, say, exploratory writings to more
formal essays of cultural and rhetorical analysis. Some teachers assign both personal essays and critical
essays on the same topic, and ask students to take into account what each type of writing enables them to
do, as well as what it ignores, suppresses, or leaves out. Consider designing some revisions of earlier
writing later in the course, or ask students to rewrite an earlier piece taking into account selections they
have read, peer responses they have received, and any Fieldwork or Library Research they might have
completed since the earliest version of that writing.
Portfolios
Portfolios ask students to select work they have done throughout the term that demonstrates how they have
developed as writers and readers during the course. Most portfolios do not include every assignment from
the course. Instead, students are usually asked to include examples of their best work, including any draft or
peer response work they have done in preparing these final products.
You should, of course, make your own decisions about what students present to you in a portfolio, keeping
in mind that portfolio systems normally reserve actual grades until the end of the term when the portfolio is
completed. The portfolio you ask students to present to you can include several different types of writing,
examples of your students’ responses to others’ work, final reports, essays, projects, etc., and a cover letter
in which the student describes the work included and explains choices made preparing this work for final
presentation.

GRADING
If you do choose to work within a portfolio system, consider putting grades on student portfolios rather
than on individual papers. As we suggest above, such a system assumes that some writing is not ready,
some is written in preparation for later work, some is meant to work out hazy ideas, and some is carefully
crafted, rewritten, and then offered as a final draft. Because much of the work in each chapter of Reading
Culture depends on building toward taking a position or writing an analysis or memo or report, portfolios
can fit that movement best for some teachers.
If you prefer to grade each assignment individually, we hope that you will take into account that some
assignments are rather complex while others ask for more simple responses or memory pieces. Each kind of
writing task demands a different level of commitment and, perhaps, a different kind of response from a
reader or grader. Tell students, before they write, what you expect from them and how you will approach
their papers.
COLLABORATIVE LEARNING AND CLASS DISCUSSION
This section offers some guidelines on using collaborative learning to organize class discussions. Perhaps
the most obvious possibilities for collaborative learning occur in the Suggestions for Discussion following
each reading. We would also encourage teachers to use students’ responses to the Suggestions for Reading
for collaborative learning activities. It can be quite valuable for students to compare how their responses to
the reading strategies we present are similar to or different from those of their peers. When you ask students
to work collaboratively, here are some suggestions:
When possible, divide students into groups no larger than five. This size is large enough so that a
range of views can emerge but small enough so that everyone might have a chance to contribute. The
number five also helps prevent two against two or three against three deadlocks and seems to
encourage individual students to step forward as mediators when there are differences within a group.
Some teachers prefer to keep students in the same group the entire term. Our preference is to have
students circulate by reconfiguring the groups for different discussions or as projects change. In that
way, students have the opportunity to work with everyone in the class. With Fieldwork projects, we
have sometimes suggested smaller groups—usually three—because arranging schedules outside of
class can become very difficult for groups larger than that, and it is often easier to divide up Fieldwork
tasks in the smaller rather than the larger group.
Assign specific and clear tasks. Students and teachers often complain that group work too easily falls
into unrelated chatter and that nothing really gets done. If you have a specific goal in mind for
groups—something that can be accomplished in the time you’ve allotted—then students will get their
work completed. Even a discussion should have some specific outcome: a list of important points, a
recommendation for other readers, etc. You don’t have to be completely rigid about what should be
accomplished, but if the instruction is only to “discuss,” that is what will come from most groups.
Stay out of the groups. We know teachers who swear that their participation in collaborative learning
groups is invaluable. Our experience, however, is that when the teacher circulates from group to group,
the students wait until the teacher arrives to start serious discussion and/or pitch their comments to the
teacher rather than to each other. Part of the value of group work lies in students learning to listen to
and learn from, or respond to, each other, so we prefer to stay out of their conversations while they are
working.

Ask each group to appoint a recorder. The recorder is not the leader of the group but should take
notes and, working with other members of the group, prepare a report of the group’s discussion and
decisions. If students are working on a long-term collaborative project or Fieldwork assignment, the
recorder can take minutes of group meetings and submit those minutes along with progress reports so
that the entire group knows who has been assigned which tasks and what decisions have been made
about the progress of the collaboration.
Keep time—but not in an inflexible way. During in-class sessions, give students some sense of how
long you think it will take them to do the work you have assigned. But treat time as a negotiable entity.
You want to keep students on task, but you also don’t want them to feel rushed. Consult with groups as
they are working to modify your time frame if necessary.
Make sure each group reports to the class as a whole. It’s tempting to want to save time by hearing
only one or two reports. This, however, can undercut the processes of collaboration. Asking each
group to report fully is crucial to collaborative learning because it gives the entire class the benefits of
each group’s deliberations and can help students to revise, modify, or reject their original
understandings by taking into account what other groups report.
Turn small group discussions into a general class discussion. Small group discussions are only the
beginning of collaborative learning. After the groups have reported, ask students to identify differences
and similarities among the groups in order to decide what the class as a whole agrees on and what they
agree to disagree about. The whole class discussion can also open up entirely new ways to see the topic
at hand. In this sense, it’s helpful to think of collaborative learning as expanding conversation that
begins in small groups and then moves to the class as a whole—so that students can see the range of
views available on a topic and can realign their own views and positions in light of what others say.
The key issue here is to consider how groups have arrived at their views and the relative advantages
and disadvantages of the various positions offered.
Offer your own views on the issue at hand. After groups have reported and the class as a whole has
decided upon points of agreement and disagreement, you should tell students what you think. Too
often, teachers end collaborative learning activities by thanking the students for their work and then
going on to the next activity. We think teachers should enter into the conversation students have begun.
This, of course, is a tricky moment because the teacher’s response, when it is presented as the “correct”
one, can undermine collaboration. On the other hand, if teachers don’t speak their minds, students will
wonder what they think and whether they have, in fact, come up with the “right” answer. We suggest
that you explain how you arrived at your response and allow students to examine how they arrived at
their response, to compare styles of reasoning and to negotiate the advantages and disadvantages of
each style. The issue here is not who is right or wrong but how people respond variably to questions,
issues, and controversies and what assumptions underwrite those responses. In other words, teachers
can and should enter the conversation but not as the final word. The point is to resist closure and to
suggest that there is always more to say, more intellectual negotiation to take part in.
Permit—in fact, validate—difference as a source of learning and ongoing negotiation. Make sure
that the small groups report differences and disagreements. In this regard, it can help to tell students
that the work of collaborative learning is not to agree on an answer (though this will often happen) but
to explain why individuals take different positions and what assumptions are operating in those

differences. You will notice that some of the Suggestions for Discussion call for explanations of
differences rather than for a consensus. It is helpful to reinforce this point periodically.
Make time at the end of the class period for students to write a quick summary of what their groups
discussed. If you take time before students leave your class to have them think about and write a short
note to themselves on what they actually did in their groups, you will discover that most students have
a better recollection of what they actually accomplished, and you can ask them to turn to those notes in
the next class period as you return to your discussion.
Ask students periodically to evaluate the processes of group work. This can be done quite simply by
opening class, after two or three weeks of collaborative work, with this question: “You have been
doing collaborative work for the past few weeks. What has gone well? What not so well?” This is a
way to insist upon accountability for what has taken place in the small groups.
PEER RESPONSE TO WRITING
In addition to discussion and project groups, you should also encourage students to work collaboratively on
writing assignments by offering peer response. A number of the Suggestions for Reading before reading
selections offer students methods of response. You will notice that some of these suggestions ask students
to underline and annotate sections of a piece of writing—to do a kind of rhetorical reading that notes not
only what the author is saying at a given place in the selection but also how that part relates to other parts
forming (or not forming) a whole. Following this method, you might ask students to exchange essays and
then, on a separate sheet of paper, respond to their partner’s writing in the following way:
Identify the main point of the essay. What is it the writer is trying to say? If that point is stated in a
sentence or two somewhere in the essay, note those sentences. If the point is implied rather than stated
explicitly, write out what the reader understands as the main idea. If there are a number of points
competing for the reader’s attention, indicate what they are and where they appear. Some of the
following questions may help here: What is the writer asking the reader to do? Consider a new idea or
concept? Change the reader’s mind about something? Perform some action? Is the writer successful in
this endeavor? Why or why not?
Divide the essay into parts and indicate what each of the parts is saying and what function each
performs to make the essay into a whole. In short essays, these parts or units will generally be
paragraphs, but they might not be. Sometimes a few paragraphs come together to create a section. In
some cases, a paragraph may have separate parts that perform separate functions in the essay as a
whole. In other instances, the sections of an essay might not go together at all but instead pull the essay
apart.
Tell the writer what is interesting in the essay and what he or she has done well. Note that this
shouldn’t be easy praise but should indicate what points are worth pursuing and developing further.
Remember that writers don’t always know what readers will find interesting and valuable in their
writing and that sometimes the most interesting parts of a draft are submerged and need further
amplification. The most important thing here is to tell the writer what worked and why you think it
worked, or what might make it work even better.
Tell the writer what might improve the essay. The issue here is not whether the reader agrees with
what is said but how the writer can present the substance of the essay more clearly and effectively.

There are a number of ways to do this, and make sure to model different sorts of feedback. It will be
tempting for students to focus solely on grammar and spelling issues, but make sure they know how to
critically engage each other in terms of organization, clarity, readers’ needs, rhetorical strategies, and
so forth.
Tell the writer what assumptions seem to operate in the essay. Again, the point here is not to argue
but to identify the grounds on which the writer is standing to take a position. What pieces of the text
indicate these assumptions, and are the claims, form, and other aspects of the piece compatible with
these assumptions?
Note: You may want to introduce these steps in peer response point by point so that students can develop
confidence in their abilities to respond usefully to others’ essays. It is always worthwhile to ask students to
talk about their reactions to what their partners have said about their essays.
ADDITIONAL RESOURCES FOR TEACHING READING CULTURE
Several film and print resources are available for rent or purchase and can be useful in conjunction with
teaching Reading Culture. The Media Education Foundation, 26 Center Street, Northampton, MA 01060
(800-897-0089) is a nonprofit organization established by media scholar Sut Jhally to produce and
distribute educational resources for teaching media literacy. Films featuring bell hooks, Stuart Hall, Jean
Kilbourne, Sut Jhally, and others speaking on media issues are available from this resource. The film The
Strength to Resist: The Media’s Impact on Women and Girls features such experts in the field as Carol
Gilligan and Catherine Steiner-Adair discussing images of women in advertising and is available from
Cambridge Documentary Films, Inc., P.O. Box 390385, Cambridge, MA 02139. Two print resources are
also worth looking into if you would like to supplement the material in this edition: Adbusters: Journal of
Mental Environment and Media & Values: A Quarterly Resource for Media Awareness.
Finally, you might want to check out what is available on cultural studies through the Web. Several
students, teachers, and scholars have posted Web pages that link to lists of resources, issues, images, and
more. One site called Cultural Studies Central will link you to many other sites and resources. As of this
writing, the CSC home page features a reproduction of the Mona Lisa on the same page as a photograph of
Michael Jackson, as well as links to sites on graffiti, urban legends, articles and student papers on popular
culture, interactive conversations, and more.
A BIBLIOGRAPHIC NOTE
Reading Culture grew in part out of work in rhetoric and composition to bring the theory and practice of
cultural studies to the teaching of writing. For two excellent general statements on cultural studies, see
Stuart Hall, “Cultural Studies: Two Paradigms,” Media, Culture, and Society, Vol. 2 (London: The Open
University, 1980), 52–72; and Richard Johnson, “What Is Cultural Studies, Anyway?” Social Text 16
(1986-87): 38–80. Interested readers might also consult Richard Hoggart, especially The Uses of Literacy
(Boston: Beacon Press, 1961); Raymond Williams, including The Long Revolution (London: Chatto and
Windus, 1961); The Country and the City (New York: Oxford UP, 1973); Marxism and Literature (Oxford:
Oxford UP, 1977); Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society (New York: Oxford UP, 1983); and
The Politics of Modernism (London: Verso, 1989); and Richard Ohmann, English in America: A Radical
View of the Profession (New York: Oxford UP, 1976); Politics of Letters (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan UP,
1987); and Politics of Knowledge (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan UP, 2003).
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For cultural studies in the teaching of writing, see Diana George and John Trimbur’s bibliographic essay
“Cultural Studies and Composition,” in A Guide to Composition Pedagogies, ed. Gary Tate, Amy Rupiper,
and Kurt Schick (New York: Oxford UP, 2001); James Berlin, Rhetorics, Poetics, and Cultures: Refiguring
English Studies (Urbana, IL: NCTE, 1996); Lester Faigley, Fragments of Rationality: Postmodernity and
the Subject of Composition (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1992); and Bruce McComiskey,
Teaching Composition as a Social Process (Logan, UT: Utah State UP, 2000).
On visual culture, see John Berger, Ways of Seeing (New York: Penguin, 1972); Scott McCloud,
Understanding Comics (New York: HarperCollins, 1994); Gunther Kress and Theo Van Leeuwen, Reading
Images: The Grammar of Visual Design (London: Routledge, 1996); Theo Van Leeuwen and Carey Jewitt,
Handbook of Visual Analysis (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2001); and Carolyn Handa, Visual Rhetoric in a
Digital World (Boston: Bedford/St Martin’s, 2004).
On postcolonial studies, see Ania Loomba, Colonialism/Postcolonialism (London: Routledge, 1998);

Robert J.C. Young, Postcolonialism: An Historical Introduction (Oxford: Blackwell, 2001); and the
collections Colonial Discourse and Post-Colonial Theory: A Reader, ed. Patrick Williams and Laura
Chrisman (New York: Columbia UP, 1994) and The Post-Colonial Studies Reader, ed. Bill Ashcroft,
Gareth Griffiths, and Helen Tiffin (London: Routledge, 1995).
On literacy studies and composition, see Brian V. Street, Literacy in Theory and Practice (Cambridge:
Cambridge UP, 1984); Multiliteracies: Literacy Learning and the Design of Social Futures, ed. Bill Cope
and Mary Kalantzis (London: Routledge, 2000); Gunther Kress, Literacy in the New Media Age (London:
Routledge, 2003); Cynthia Selfe and Gail Hawisher, Literate Lives in the Information Age (Mahwah, NJ:
Lawrence Erlbaum, 2004); Paula Mathieu, Tactics of Hope: The Public Turn in English Composition
(Portsmouth, NH: Boynton/Cook, 2005).
In addition, we recommend the following articles and books on rhetoric, composition, and literacy:
Bartholomae, David. “Inventing the University.” When a Writer Can’t Write. Ed. Mike Rose. New York:
Guilford, 1985.
Berlin, James. Rhetorics, Poetics, and Cultures: Refiguring English Studies. Urbana, IL: National Council
of Teachers of English, 1996.
Bizzell, Patricia. Academic Discourse and Critical Consciousness. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh
Press, 1992.
Brodkey, Linda. Writing Permitted in Designated Areas Only. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press,
1996.
Catano, James. “The Rhetoric of Masculinity: Origins, Institutions, and the Myth of the Self-Made Man.”
College English 52 (1990): 421–436.
Cushman, Ellen. “The Rhetorician as an Agent of Social Change.” College Composition and
Communication 47 (1996): 7–28.
Farmer, Frank. “Dialogue and Critique: Bakhtin and the Cultural Studies Writing Classroom.” College
Composition and Communication 49 (1998): 186–207.
Finders, Margaret J. Just Girls: Hidden Literacies and Life in Junior High. New York: Teachers College P,
1997.
Fox, Tom. The Social Uses of Writing: Politics and Pedagogy. Norwood, NJ: Ablex, 1990.
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France, Alan W. “Assigning Places: The Function of Introductory Composition as Cultural Discourse.”
College English 55 (1993): 593–609.
George, Diana. “From Analysis to Design: Visual Communication in the Teaching of Writing.” College
George, Diana and Diane Shoos. “Issues of Subjectivity and Resistance: Twin Peaks in the Composition
Classroom.” Cultural Studies and Composition. Eds. James A. Berlin and Michael Vivion.
Portsmouth, NH: Boynton/Cook, 1992.
George, Diana and John Trimbur. “The ‘Communication Battle,’ or, Whatever Happened to the 4th C?”
College Composition and Communication 50 (1999): 682–698.
Gere, Anne. “Kitchen Tables and Rented Rooms: The Extracurriculum of Composition.” College
Harris, Joseph. “The Idea of Community in the Study of Writing.” College Composition and
Horner, Bruce and John Trimbur. “English Only and U.S. College Composition.” College Composition and
Communication 53 (2002): 594–630.
Hull, Glynda and Mike Rose. “‘This Wooden Shack Place’ The Logic of an Unconventional Reading.”
College Composition and Communication 41 (1990): 287–298.
Kail, Harvey. “Narratives of Knowledge: Story and Pedagogy in Four Composition Texts.” Rhetoric
Review 6 (1988): 179–189.
Kirby, Dan, Dawn Latta Kirby, and Tom Liner. Inside Out: Strategies for Teaching Writing. 3rd ed.
Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 2004.
Lynch, Dennis, Diana George, and Marilyn Cooper. “Moments of Argument: Agonistic Inquiry and
Confrontational Cooperation.” College Composition and Communication 48 (1997): 61–85.
Lu, Min-zhan. “From Silence to Words: Writing as Struggle.” College English 49 (1987): 437–448.
Miller, Susan. Assuming the Positions: Cultural Pedagogy and the Politics of Commonplace Writing.
Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1998.
New London Group. “A Pedagogy of Multiliteracies: Designing Social Futures.” Harvard Education
Review 66 (1996): 60–92.
Petroskey, Anthony R. “From Story to Essay: Reading and Writing.” College Composition and
Schor, Ira. Critical Teaching and Everyday Life. Boston: South End Press, 1980.
Street, Brian V. Literacy in Theory and Practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984.
Trimbur, John. “Consensus and Difference in Collaborative Learning.” College English 51 (1989): 602–
616.
——. “Composition and the Circulation of Writing.” College Composition and Communication 52 (2000):
188–219.
——. “Delivering the Message: Typography and the Materiality of Writing.” Gary Olson, ed. Composition
as Intellectual Work. Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 2002. 188–202.
12

INTRODUCTION: READING CULTURE
This opening chapter provides a brief introduction to the term culture as it will be used throughout Reading
Culture. Because many people associate culture with high art or with upbringing, we want to make it clear
that the way we will be using the term has more to do with how all kinds of people live together to form
common experiences. Reading and writing about culture, as we see it, involves examining popular forms of
communication, institutional structures like school and work that are important to daily living, the stories
people tell about themselves or their generation, common cultural events like war, or popular expressions
of taste or mood like a generation’s music or a favorite film.
The Introduction includes a brief excerpt from Raymond Williams’s essay “Culture is Ordinary.” Of
course, you can assign this chapter to be read before class, but it is also short enough to be read in class as
preparation for the chapters that follow. On the day you discuss this chapter, you might wish to bring
examples of high and low art to class (reprints of classical paintings and copies of popular cartoons, for
example) to illustrate the kinds of contrasts we have set up in the opening paragraphs. Or, you can ask the
class to help you list the sorts of things they would label high or low culture. (Low culture is often equated
with popular culture.) Your reason for making such a list would be to open up the concept of culture to
include everything that surrounds us as ways we express meaning in the everyday world.
A FEW THINGS TO CONSIDER
As they read and discuss this chapter, some students are likely to object that it is impossible to “read
culture” since the U.S. and indeed the world comprise many things and represent many kinds of people, not
just one. Those students are, of course, correct and will have opportunities throughout this text to examine
cultural expressions that don’t fit into the mainstream or that aren’t often or fairly reflected in popular
media. However, it is also true, as we point out near the end of this chapter, that the mass media relies on a
much more homogeneous vision of American culture than exists in reality and that homogeneous vision is
most often what we identify as mainstream, one that gets the most play in the media and even in schools or
in the workplace. The mainstream always has an effect on the rest because we can only identify any given
expression as different or alternative if there is a mainstream expression to measure it against.
THE ASSIGNMENT
This Suggested Assignment is meant to get students actively thinking about the term culture and the many
ways it is used. The assignment should also give students an opportunity to listen to and account for
differences in the ways other groups of students address the same subject.
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A GUIDE TO VISUAL ANALYSIS
The Introduction concludes with A Guide to Visual Analysis. A section on Reading Images will be helpful
to students as they consider the many such images presented in Reading Culture. In particular, the
questions, terms, and analytical approaches in this section will give the class vocabulary and techniques
students can use in their responses to Suggestions for Discussion and Suggestions for Writing throughout
Reading Culture.
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CHAPTER 1: FROM PAGE TO SCREEN: ARE NEW MEDIA REWIRING US?
Chapter 1, “From Page to Screen: Are New Media Rewiring Us?” explains how media has shifted from
being predominantly on page to now on the screen. This chapter also introduces students to the kind of
intellectual work that they will be doing while reading culture. What changes have occurred as a result of
this shift to new forms of media? How has the meaning of literacy changed?
Gunther Kress’s excerpt “from Literacy in the New Media Age” sets the context of the idea of literacy as
moving beyond words on the printed page to the kinds of interactive visual and electronic literacies that are
required to successfully navigate the multiple layers of media present in the digital age. “I Tweet, Therefore
I Am” questions if these new forms of media are actually enriching our lives or if we are instead changing
our lives to fit this new world.
In Hayles’ essay “Hyper and Deep Attention: The Generational Divide in Cognitive Modes” the editors
have annotated the essay to help students see the writer’s purpose while also providing a summary of the
entire piece. Turkle’s essay “Always On” argues that technology, while seemingly drawing us together,
actually ends up leaving us quite isolated. Last, in Gopnik’s “Diagnosing the Digital Revolution: Why It’s
So Hard to Tell Whether It’s Really Changing Us,” Gopnik examines Turkle’s work, arguing against
several of her ideas.
Throughout the chapter are a visual essay, an example annotated essay, and a student example essay, all of
which showcase the importance and effects of new media.
READING SELECTIONS: CLASSROOM CONTEXTS
The best way to engage with “From Page to Screen” is to progress through the chapter in a linear way; that
is to say that rather than picking and choosing as you might for subsequent chapters, it’s best to go through
this chapter step-by-step. The following Classroom Contexts assume that you will proceed in a sequence.
FROM LITEARCY IN THE NEW MEDIA AGE

Gunther Kress
Divide the class into small groups and ask them to create a descriptive outline that maps the rhetorical
moves used in the excerpt. Break it down by each paragraph and try to identify the overall function of each
paragraph in relation to the essay as a whole. Once the groups have completed their task, use board work to
compile their findings and create a central map. Then, as a class, come up with concrete examples that
illustrate Kress’s reasons. For example, when he talks about the shift from page to screen, what are
examples of page and screen in the real world? Where would you find them and why would you use them?
VISUAL ESSAY: WORD, IMAGE, AND THE DESIGN OF THE PAGE
This section presents four page designs dealing with Hurricane Katrina. Have your students examine the
pages in groups; next, analyze how they read the pages differently. What, specifically, did they notice?
Where did differences in the group appear? Why might classmates read these pages differently? What does
this say about how we approach print media?
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CASE STUDY: ARE NEW MEDIA REWIRING US?
I TWEET, THEREFORE I AM
Andrew Lam
WORKING WITH TEXTS: USING LAM’S WORDS
Lam’s essay explores how technology has changed our lives. Private matters are now available for the
world to see, and events don’t seem as “real” without them being broadcast for the world to consume. In
Working with Texts, have your students work through the assignment in Writing Assignment, to have your
students become comfortable with using another’s words and ideas. This essay and assignment would be
more effective to be assigned at the beginning of the semester.
UNDERLINE/HIGHLIGHT, ANNOTATE, SUMMARIZE
HYPER AND DEEP ATTENTION: THE GENERATIONAL DIVIDE IN COGNTIVE MODES

N. Katherine Hayles
In this essay, the editors have taken the key issues and provided annotated comments. In addition, they
have provided a summary of the piece directly following it. Ask your students to carefully follow along
with the annotations and then to read the summary. Then, ask them to annotate and summarize another
essay in Chapter One, using Hayles’ essay as a template.
WORKING WITH TEXTS: FRAMING THE ISSUE
Have your students work through the Writing Assignment discussed in the section. Ask your students to
pay particular attention to how the authors construct their arguments and develop purpose in their writing.
MAKING CONNECTIONS: WHAT HAS CHANGED?
ALWAYS ON
Sherry Turkle
With Turkle’s essay, a good way to develop healthy class discussion would be to ask your students what
mobile devices they “always” have with them. Most will mention that they have iPods and mobile phones
with them constantly. Get your students to outline a typical day with their mobile devices and behaviors—
explore and analyze these behaviors. Why, for instance, do students often reach for their phones when class
has finished? What social implications does this action have? Ask your students how many of them listen to
their iPods between the intervals of classes. Again, identify how social relations are complicated by this
action. As you use these questions as a springboard for class commentary, you’ll find that you can make
interesting connections with Turkle’s ideas about real and imagined notions of social interactions.
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DIAGNOSING THE DIGITAL REVOLUTION: WHY IT’S SO HARD TO TELL WHETHER IT’S
REALLY CHANGING US
Alison Gopnik
As the Suggestions for Reading extends, it would be very useful to get your students to examine how
Gopnik frames and uses some of the key claims Sherry Turkle makes about a masked experience of
loneliness through various digitized and media interactions. While you also talk about Gopnik’s refutations
with some of Turkle’s idea and claims, you should raise the idea of how arguments are always evolving and
that when authors develop positions, there are already many ways to construct an argument from a source
text. The key point to make to your students is in how Gopnik and Turkle frame their ideas, provide
supporting claims, and generate a stance on similar topics.
LOOKING AHEAD
SAMPLE STUDENT PAPER: Adam Horowitz, “PATTERNS IN THE CONVERSATION ABOUT NEW MEDIA”
The sample student info presents a solid way for examining the paper for its rhetorical dimensions. It would
also be a good opportunity, as well, to inform your students of how Horowitz successfully and
professionally adopts MLA format in the paper. Ask your students to examine his Works Cited Page.
Review how well he synthesizes his sources and develops clear lead-in phrases for his supporting claims.
RESOURCES AVAILABLE ON MYCOMPLAB™
After your students have read Chapter 1, you may want them to review what they have learned on
MyCompLab.com. In particular, the following sections of MyCompLab™ relate closely to the topics in
Chapter 1:
 Students can review the concepts they learned in “Page to Screen: Are New Media Rewiring
Us?” by perusing the Writing and Visuals section of MyCompLab™. This section contains
additional instruction, exercises, and multimedia activities to help students analyze visual
texts. To access these resources go to the Resources section and select Writing and Visuals
from the Writing menu.
 Ask your students to review the Writing Purposes section of MyCompLab™. In this section,
students can learn about different types of writing, including writing that aims to inform,
analyze, persuade, describe, compare, discuss, extend, or reflect. To access these resources, go
to the Resources section of MyCompLab™ and select Writing Purposes from the Writing
menu.
 Students should visit the Writing to Reflect section of MyCompLab™. To access these
resources, go to the Resources section of MyCompLab™, select Writing Purposes, and then
Writing to Reflect from the Writing menu.
 Direct your students to MyCompLab™ where they will find an excellent example of a student
paper on the theme of illiteracy. “Illiteracy: America’s Secret” explores the struggle of
illiterate individuals and affirms the power of learning to read. To access this resource, go the
Composing section and select Writing Samples, Writing from Experience, from the Writer’s
Toolkit menu.
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18

CHAPTER 2: GENERATIONS
This chapter offers students a variety of perspectives on what it means to grow up in a particular place at a
particular time, as a member of a particular historical generation. Most students, of course, are intensely
interested in issues of personal identity and the social world of their peers. They sense that their experience
growing up and the values, attitudes, styles, and orientations toward American culture they share with their
peers somehow distinguish them and their generation from their parents and the authority figures (teachers,
coaches, politicians, ministers, etc.) of the older generation. The purpose of this chapter is to raise this felt
sense of difference to consciousness and to help students articulate it more fully and critically than they
may have done before.
When asked to think about their generation, students often reply that it cannot be characterized, that each
member of their generation is a unique individual. This is an understandable response. Part of growing up
in contemporary America, graduating from high school, and going to college is asserting one’s
independence from family. For this reason, students may resist seeing themselves as a type or member of
an identifiable group. But they also know they and their peers experience the world differently than their
parents do. This chapter engages students in the tension between thinking in terms of individual and
collective identities by asking them to explain their own experience, but as something that is shared with
others their age. Students may examine personal life histories as moments in the life of a generation and
consider the place of that generation in American history.
Students will need to draw on memories and personal experience, but they will also need to go beyond
anecdotal accounts of growing up. Like many composition readers, this chapter asks students to tell about
and to reflect on formative experiences in coming of age. But we have also included selections from writers
who look closely at the tensions and misunderstandings that characterize generational conflict. We want
students to consider how the meaning of a generation is in part a matter of its experience, but also in part a
matter of how the media, television, and movies portray young people.
COMPLEMENTARY READINGS
Min-Zhan Lu, “From Silence to Words: Writing as Struggle” (Chapter 3)

Dick Hebdige, “Style in Revolt: Revolting Style” (Chapter 5)
Tina McElroy Ansa, “The Center of the Universe” (Chapter 6)
John Fiske, “Shopping for Pleasure: Malls, Power, and Resistance” (Chapter 6)
Mary Gordon, “More Than Just a Shrine: Paying Homage to the Ghosts of Ellis Island”
(Chapter 9)
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The word generation carries a number of connotations, and it’s likely that your students will approach this
chapter with preconceptions regarding both others’ and their own generation. Before discussing the first
readings, take some time to develop a classroom definition of generation and explore the various contexts
in which the word is used. As you proceed through the chapter, return to the classroom definition and
reconsider the ways in which the word generation is defined and used.
GEN (FILL IN THE BLANK): COMING OF AGE, SEEKING AN IDENTITY

Arlie Russell Hochschild
Hochschild’s article appeared before 9/11, the Iraq War, and the Obama presidency—events that will likely
become generational markers. It may be new for students to think of their own lives as in some sense
shaped by historical events, as opposed to, say, family, peers, school, and community. For this reason, it is
worth pushing students to consider how prior generations (of the Great Depression, World War Two, the
Sixties) responded to historical events by articulating a sense of collective destiny. You might, for example,
ask students to interview people from other generations about the way they locate themselves and their
generation in relation to such events. How, then, can students begin to better adapt a definition of their own
generation?
MILLENNIALS: CONFIDENT. CONNECTED. OPEN TO CHANGE

The Pew Research Center Project on Social and Demographic Trends
Millennials, defined as a generation who are making their transition into adulthood at the start of a new
millennium, are the focus of this essay. Begin by asking your students if they have considered how the
millennium may have shaped them as individuals. Where do they stand on the statistics presented in this
piece, particularly relating to politics, work ethics, and race? Is there a generation gap still present?
GIANT DREAMS, MIDGET ABILITIES

David Sedaris
As the Suggestion for Reading presents, encourage your students to listen to a recording of Sedaris reading
his work as an out-of-class assignment before discussing this piece as a class. Music is the key thread
throughout this essay—ask your students if there is a link in their own families that reminds them of the
issues Sedaris raises. How does the power of music (or any other thread present in their own families) have
the power to tie generations together? If you’re teaching a personal narrative or reflection, how might this
essay serve as a model?
PATTI SMITH PISSING IN A RIVER

Nick Hornby
Begin by asking your students if they are familiar with Patti Smith’s work—a good way to start discussing
this essay is to play some of her music and/or show a video of her playing live. Then, ask your students
what importance music, particularly pop music, plays in their own lives. What musicians are important to
their generation? What musicians do they think will “stand the test of time” as future generations look
back?
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MAKING CONNECTIONS: GAMES PEOPLE PLAY
HOW “DUNGEONS AND DRAGONS” CHANGED MY LIFE

Ethan Gilsdorf
“DEAD SPACE 2”: YOUR MOM DOESN’T WANT YOU TO PLAY THIS VIDEO GAME
Mary Elizabeth Williams
These two essays explore the role that gaming has played in each of the author’s lives. You might start
class by asking the students how many of them consider themselves “gamers” and the extent to which
games are important in their own lives. Are they familiar with Dungeons and Dragons? Why might this
game have had a resurgence in the past few years? How has technology shifted the way in which people
play games?
Williams then addresses how generations approach video games and how moms are now even playing
these games themselves. How does this affect how children approach these games? Are they as “attractive”
if parents seem to approve of these games? Why might the fantasy life that games provide connect people
across generations?
VISUAL ESSAY: HOLLYWOOD ICONS: BRANDO, MONROE, AND DEAN
If your students are unfamiliar with these actors, or the roles that they have played, begin class by showing
a few clips from the various films. Following the writing assignment, have your students chose a celebrity,
write a memo to you, and then present a poster to the class about why this celebrity is a generational icon.
This writing activity would also work well as a group exercise, either formally or informally.
CASA
Judith Ortiz Cofer
You could begin a discussion by asking your students about how many generations currently exist in their
own families (this may work well as an in-class writing exercise); then ask what happens when different
generations gather. What can one learn from previous generations? Moving to the other central focus of the
essay, how difficult can it be for one to not feel at home? How difficult can it be for someone to essentially
“straddle” two cultures, never truly feeling at home in either?
WE ARE ALL THIRD GENERATION

Margaret Mead
This essay explores what makes us distinguishable: a way to start this conversation is to discuss how one
stereotypes others based on appearances. How do we know where someone is from? What age they are?
What their interests are? Mead continues to discuss how people become American: aren’t we all, then,
immigrants, to a degree? Discuss how your students feel about this idea and if they have considered it
before. Mead also examines how American parents always seem to want better for their own children: is
this likely to change, in their opinion? Then, direct them to the advertisement under Classroom Activity,
following the directions for a group activity.
21

RESEARCHING GENERATIONS
Here, refer your students to the assignments that follow each reading, if you are having your students
develop research projects that stem from the essays.
FIELDWORK: MAKING SENSE OF MY MUSIC: ETHNOGRAPHIC INTERVIEWS
The ethnographic project described asks students to locate interview subjects and tape those interviews; to
transcribe the interviews so that they are readable; and to write an introduction that provides a way for a
reader to understand the interviews. Students working in groups may well find the first two tasks can be
done individually, but the third (arranging interviews and writing an introduction) will take negotiation.
Encourage students to read through the entire collection and discuss the observations and interpretations
they think best describe the collection they have assembled. Have your students carefully read Notes on
Interviewing before assigning this project.
You might consider assigning a similar My Music project as a group exercise. In groups of three, ask
students to use the My Music project as a model, interviewing individuals from different generations about
“What music is about to them.” For example, a group might interview someone who is 18, someone who is
35, and someone who is 60. Ask them to then create a presentation based on their findings, including audio
excerpts from the interview, clips from music mentioned by the interviewee, and some summary findings
about their results. After each group presents, have the entire class discuss the trends (and variations) noted
across the presentations and how this might affect the class definition and understanding of a generation.
These ethnographic interviews and presentations can also provide a frame for students’ personal narratives.
In a short paper, ask students to consider “What music is about to them.”
LOOKING THROUGH TIME: LIFE MAGAZINE
For this feature, you may want to start by explaining how general magazines such as Life, Saturday
Evening Post, and Look once defined what the family in mainstream America was all about. In
contemporary culture, where magazines are more specialized and geared to particular niches, students may
need some background information on the general mass circulation magazines that once dominated
American publishing. You might also point out the role Life played in institutionalizing the photo-essay as
a fixture in the general magazine. Depending on your own goals for your class, you can emphasize the way
text and photos work together in the photo-essays. Or you might ask students to imagine a reader’s
experience of Life, taking into account the “flow” between the photo-essays, advertisements, and other
features in the magazine. Regardless of your approach, it will be helpful to have students explore Google’s
Life magazine photo archive at http://images.google.com/hosted/life.
Chapter 2:
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 After your students have read “Gen (Fill in the Blank): Coming of Age, Seeking an Identity”
(51), ask them to peruse the “Picturing the Century” photo exhibition on MyCompLab™. This
section uses photos to examine the major events that defined generations across the century.
To access this resource, go to the Resources section and select Writing Purposes and then
Writing to Analyze. The activity is an exercise in this section.
 In addition to the “How Millennial Are You? A Pew Research Quiz” (63), you may want to
ask students to complete the “KEO: Your Letter to the Future” activity in MyCompLab™.
This exercise asks students to reflect on their generation and describe their lives to
descendants 50,000 years from now. To access this resource, go to the Resources section and
select Writing Purposes and then Writing to Reflect. “KEO: Your Letter to the Future” is an
exercise in this section.
 After reading the humor of David Sedaris in “Giant Dreams, Midget Abilities” (67), students
can complete “The Onion” exercise in MyCompLab™. This exercise asks students to explore
the satirical news outlet The Onion and write their own piece of satire. To access this activity,
go to the Resources section and select Writing Purposes and then Writing to Extend. The
activity is an exercise in this section.
 After reading Judith Ortiz Cofer’s “Casa” (90) students can complete the exercise Writing a
Description in MyCompLab™. To access this resource, go to the Resources section and select
Writing Purposes and then Writing to Describe.
 If students need more information when analyzing the English-only ad (102), direct them to
MyCompLab™ where they can watch the “Bilingual Education” video. This activity explores
the controversy surrounding bilingual education and the English-only movement. To access
this resource, go to the Resources section and select Writing Purposes and then Writing to
Discuss. The video is an exercise in this section.
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24

CHAPTER 3: SCHOOLING
The “Schooling” chapter provides students with an opportunity to participate in a discourse community
where they have authority: school. They have firsthand knowledge of the values and practices inherent
within the dominant, contemporary educational system. The progression of readings eases students into the
critical discourse on school, beginning with “What High School Is,” Theodore R. Sizer’s narrative of a day
in the life of one American high-school student. Students should be able to recognize and identify with
Sizer’s narrative, while also locating points of difference from their own experiences. The chapter then
shifts from the narrative mode to the analytic, which provides students with a model for transforming their
lived experience to academic discourse and assuming a critical perspective. In “The Myth of Charter
Schools” Diane Ravitch explores charter schools through the lens of the documentary Waiting for
“Superman.”
The next section, “Making Connections: The Value of Higher Education,” introduces two essays (Rebekah
Nathan’s “Lessons from My Year as a Freshman” and Stanley Fish’s “The Value of Higher Education
Made Literal”) that examine how we think about higher education and how our current economy has had an
even more significant impact on how we view education.
Continuing to examine the student’s own lived experience in school, the visual essay, “Analyzing
Viewbooks,” asks students to think about the visual rhetoric associated with college marketing campaigns.
Keeping in mind the ways in which class determines a student’s educational opportunities in high school,
the visual essay now asks students to identify the ways in which viewbooks are interpolating them.
In both Min-Zhan Lu’s “From Silence to Words: Writing as Struggle” and “Nobody Mean More to Me than
You and the Future Life of Willie Jordan” by June Jordan, the authors discuss the role that language plays
in one’s education. In Jordan’s remembrance of her experience teaching Black English at Stoneybrook in
the early 1980s, she complicates issues of language, representation, class, and even the varied goals of
education. Not only does the content dovetail with the themes of the preceding essays, but Jordan also
employs the various modes of rhetoric represented throughout the chapter: narrating, describing, reporting,
recording, and analyzing. Students are able to observe the surprising array of writing strategies available for
academic prose through both Lu’s and Jordan’s essays.
The chapter ends with a listing of research opportunities, along with a fieldwork exercise on classroom
observation. Anderson et al.’s “Observations and Conclusions from ‘Cross-Curricular Underlife: A
Collaborative Report on Ways with Academic Words’” provides a thorough example of fieldwork, from
which students can develop their own ideas. The chapter ends with a project involving student activism
through the lens of an illustrated essay. These guided assignments open up other genre possibilities for
students to represent their critical work regarding schooling.
Andrew Lam, “I Tweet, Therefore I Am” (Chapter 1)

Benjamin Nugent, “Who’s a Nerd, Anyway?” (Chapter 5)
Sandra Cisneros, “The First Job” (Chapter 8)
Gloria Anzaldúa, “How to Tame a Wild Tongue” (Chapter 10)
25

WHAT HIGH SCHOOL IS

Theodore R. Sizer
Prior to the class where you plan on discussing “What High School Is,” ask students to identify and bring in
an artifact of their high-school experience. Ideally this should be a tactile object like a yearbook, tee shirt,
trophy, or assignment. Prompt students to explain what the object represents about their time in high
school; that is, what it means to them. Use board work to make note of patterns of meaning that emerge
through discussion in order to identify the commonality that exists between experiences. This will help
them make sense of their own background and also see themselves as a part of a larger community of
students.
THE MYTH OF CHARTER SCHOOLS

Diane Ravitch
This piece is a critical review of the educational documentary Waiting for “Superman.” To prepare for this
essay, one possibility is watching parts of the film in class or showing the documentary in its entirety out of
class or for an extra-credit assignment. In the essay, Ravitch discusses charter schools and how American
schools are falling behind their global counterparts. Further, she shares that the film’s central premise is
that teachers are the most importance determiners of a student’s success. Therefore, students could write a
personal narrative about their own experiences with their teachers and how (or if) this affected their
feelings of educational success.
MAKING CONNECTIONS: THE VALUE OF A HIGHER EDUCATION
In this section, the question of the value of higher education is the issue: what value do we place on higher
education? How important is it? How has the value of education changed in our current economic climate?
LESSONS FROM MY YEAR AS A FRESHMAN

Rebekah Nathan
In Nathan’s essay, she details how she spent a year at a university conducting fieldwork about the lives of
undergraduates. Because many of your students will not have had much experience with being an
undergraduate at this point, this essay instead could serve as a strong example of fieldwork, if you choose
to have a formal fieldwork essay as one of your assignments. Discuss how Nathan came to her conclusions,
examining the thorough, detailed data she presents throughout the essay and how the students can develop
their own set of data through their own fieldwork.
THE VALUE OF HIGHER EDUCATION MADE LITERAL

Stanley Fish
Is higher education still a “public good”? Who benefits from higher education? These are some of the
central questions in Fish’s essay. In today’s society, is the possession of a degree of higher education a
guarantee of a good job? Should that be the only goal of higher education? Discuss, either in class or
through an informal writing assignment, what motivated your students to come to college and why they
chose (or intend to choose) their major.
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VISUAL ESSAY: ANALYZING COLLEGE VIEWBOOKS
Obtain several viewbooks from your university. Divide the class into four small groups and assign each one
a different aspect of the viewbook to analyze. What visual rhetoric does the viewbook employ? What
written rhetoric does it use? Who is the viewbook’s audience (students? parents/guardians?
administrators?) What skills does the viewbook include? Once your students have finished analyzing the
viewbooks, have them write up their conclusions in a group paper to share with the class.
FROM SILENCE TO WORDS: WRITING AS STRUGGLE

Min-Zhan Lu
Prior to discussing this piece, ask students to make a list of three readings they’ve done over the course of
the semester. These readings can have occurred inside or outside of your own classroom. Ask students to
uncover the values inherent in these readings. What patterns do they notice? What themes recur? What do
these patterns and recurrences connote about the ideology of their class texts? This exercise can be done as
a class or in small groups, but it is important that the findings of the groups are reported to the class as a
whole. Board work can be used to identify patterns.
From there, ask students to create a glossary of important terms and phrases in Lu’s narrative. Once the
class has collated its glossaries, consider posting on a class Web site, blog, or Wiki. Students can then refer
to this database when engaging the texts in writing.
NOBODY MEAN MORE TO ME THAN YOU AND THE FUTURE LIFE OF WILLIE JORDAN
June Jordan
Prior to the class in which you plan to discuss “Nobody Mean More to Me than You and the Future Life of
Willie Jordan,” ask students to bring in examples of other Englishes that they have encountered in the
world. Examples might include local dialect, i.e. Appalachian, Web speak, transnational English, English
as a Second Language, or scientific jargon. In class, students should share their examples. Use board work
to keep track of the other Englishes and how they compare to Standard English. Students should identify
not only who is using the English but who is listening to it.
RESEARCHING SCHOOLING
Please read the assignments following each essay in this section to provide research possibilities for your
students.
FIELDWORK: INVESTIGATING CLASSROOM LIFE: WORTH ANDERSON, CYNTHIA BEST,

ALYCIA BLACK, JOHN HURST, BRANDT MILLER, AND SUSAN MILLER’S,
“OBSERVATIONS AND CONCLUSIONS FROM ‘CROSS-CURRICULAR UNDERLIFE: A
COLLABORATIVE REPORT ON WAYS WITH ACADEMIC WORDS’”
In this section, please follow the prompts under “Investigating Classroom Life,” using Anderson et al.’s
example fieldwork report. Pay particular attention to the lessons in the “Keeping a Field Log,” “Field
Notes,” and “Analysis” sections. “Writing a Field Report” also gives a general outline of how to organize a
field report.
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STUDENT ACTIVISM IN THE LATE 1960S AND EARLY 1970S: COMBINING WORD AND
IMAGE IN AN ILLUSTRATED ESSAY
Here, we recommend following the sequence in The Project section, using the tips presented in “Presenting
Your Research: The Illustrated Essay.”
Chapter 3:
 The “Welcome to College” activity in MyCompLab™ relates closely to the exercises

following “Analyzing College Viewbooks” (144). In this activity, students are asked to
analyze a photo from a college brochure and then encouraged to extend this analysis to the
brochures from their own school. To access this resource, go to the Resources section and
select Writing Purposes and then Writing to Analyze. The activity is an exercise in this
section.
 After your students have read “From Silence to Words: Writing as Struggle” (147), ask them
to complete visit Writers on Writing where they can read advice from writer on such topics as
becoming a writer, writing habits, inspiration, and where ideas originate. To access this
resource, go to the Resources section and select More Writing from the Writing menu.
 After your students have read “Nobody Mean More to Me Than You and the Future Life of
Willie Jordan” (157), they can read an excellent sample paper in MyCompLab™ on the topic
of diversity in the English language. “Beyond Words: Diversity in American English”
explores the relationship between nonstandard English and identity. To access this resource,
go to the Composing section and select Writing Samples from the Writer’s Toolkit menu.
 Before your students prepare the Fieldwork Report (173), you may want to ask them to review
the standard format for reports by looking at the writing samples in MyCompLab™. To access
this resource, go to the Resources section and select Writing Samples and then Writing
Samples: Reports.
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CHAPTER 4: IMAGES
Throughout this edition of Reading Culture we have provided opportunities to teach students to read the
many and various visual messages that surround us daily in everything from photos to film representations
to advertising to graffiti to performance art. (See Visual Culture in each chapter.) This chapter, however,
focuses entirely on the visual and is meant to instruct students in reading and writing about images of all
sorts—especially images in print media.
The introduction to this chapter includes instruction on how to read visual images, so it will be helpful to
assign that introduction paying particular attention to our discussion of the images reprinted there. Our
readings of these images include both formal considerations (how an image is arranged in space, for
example) and cultural concerns (what kinds of meanings the image has picked up through familiarity,
common use, historical significance, and more). As students read visual texts reprinted throughout this
chapter and those visuals they bring to class, they can be encouraged to pay attention to both formal and
cultural concerns.
You will notice that this chapter includes a combination of written selections and visual essays. The visual
essays should be read with the same attention as any other essay. They each consist of a group of images
selected around a particular topic (images of women or cultural meanings in public health messages, for
example).
This chapter is most successfully taught with images students find and bring to class themselves.
Encourage students to collect images of all kinds to provide a range of discussion possibilities. You can
also supplement student selections by collecting images on your own and bringing those to class.
Visual Essay: Word, Image, and the Design of the Page (Chapter 1)
Mary Elizabeth Williams, “’Dead Space 2: Your Mom Doesn’t Want You To Play This Video Game”
(Chapter 2)
Visual Essay: Analyzing College Viewbooks (Chapter 3)
Student Activism in the Late 1960s and Early 1970s: Combining Word and Image in an Illustrated Essay
(Chapter 3)
Visual Essay: Hip-Hop Styles (Chapter 5)
Visual Essay: Timeline on Fitness from Jack LaLanne to Michelle Obama (Chapter 5)
Eva Sperling Cockcroft and Holly Barnet-Sánchez, “Signs from the Heart: California
Chicano Murals” (Chapter 6)
Visual Essay: Banksy — “The Most Honest Artform Available” (Chapter 6)
Visual Essay: “Cancer Alley: The Poisoning of the American South,” Jason Berry, with photographs by
Richard Misrach (Chapter 6)
Visual Culture: The Graphic Novel: Reader Participation (Chapter 7)
Visual Essay: Dulce Pinzón, “The Real Story of the Superheroes” (Chapter 8)
Visual Essay: Warren Neidich, “Contra Curtis: Early American Cover-Ups” (Chapter 9)
Alan Trachtenberg, “Reading American Photographs” (Chapter 9)
Visual Essay: M.I.A.’s Graphic Style, Amitava Kumar, “Passport Photos,” Kennedy Odede, “Slumdog
Tourism” (Chapter 10)
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Because we have composed the visual essays as “essays” rather than simply collections of sample visuals,
we suggest you treat both the written selections and the visual essays as “reading selections.” Of course,
these visuals are also useful samples to work with individually in class, and you might wish to do that as
well.
IN THE SHADOW OF THE IMAGE

Stuart Ewen and Elizabeth Ewen
In their series of fictionalized vignettes, Ewen and Ewen construct a world saturated in images, primarily
advertising images. Some students find themselves confused by the series of small stories that seem to end
abruptly or not end at all but move to another story. In your discussion of these stories, you might begin
with the authors’ comment that, viewed separately, these incidents can seem meaningless, but “viewed
together…they reveal a pattern of life, the structures of perception.” That pattern of living in and
responding to the many images that surround us is what the authors are writing about.
Once they have read and discussed this selection, students can be encouraged to write their own vignettes
that reflect just how much of their world they see as being in the shadow of the image. This kind of writing
is a good start for discussing the extent to which images convey ideas or ideals even when we aren’t paying
much attention to them.
WHEN YOU MEET ESTELLA SMART, YOU BEEN MET!

Vertamae Smart-Grosvenor
This essay presents a photograph of the author’s grandmother. Smart-Grosvenor builds her essay out from
that photograph to include defining characteristics of her grandmother, as well as related memories from
the author’s own childhood. You can follow up on the Writing Assignment that asks students to “share the
details of a story, an event, or a person you wish you had a picture of.” Ask each student to imagine (or
actually provide) a picture of him or herself. Now ask each student to list some of the details and
recollections that a future relative might include in an essay about that current student’s picture. Discussion
might conclude with the class considering the power of images to transcend time and place.
HISTORY OF MY FACE
Khaled Mattawa
Khaled Mattawa’s poem creates metaphorical images about the construction of the Face across time and
cultures. Examine how facial images have been represented historically in American advertising and visual
culture. You may want to ask your class to compare and contrast advertisements from different eras with
the same product and idea. You can ask your class, as you analyze these images, what they say about
notions of beauty, gender, class, and race through time.
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MAKING CONNECTIONS: IMAGES OF GENDER
WAYS OF SEEING
John Berger
and
THE FEMALE NUDE: SURFACES OF DESIRE
Richard Leppert
This selection from Ways of Seeing examines the ways in which women are portrayed in images. Ask
students to follow the Suggestions for Reading, collecting images of women in advertising. You can follow
up on the Exploratory Writing by asking students to find images of men in advertisements selling similar
products or in similar environments. These images can be used as prompts to initiate class discussion to
examine Berger’s assertion that “Men act. Women appear.” Ask students what details in the images support
this claim, how the images reflect what Berger states in the text, and where they differ.
In the next selection, Leppert addresses Berger’s discussion of the way women are presented in art and the
effect of the gaze. Using the Talking About The Reading prompt, students can discuss their own definitions
of nudity and nakedness by positioning themselves in relation to Berger’s and Leppert’s discussions.
Students can also discuss the ways in which an “image is defined by more than itself” by finding examples
of how images have been recycled and used in other ways. Have students bring to class examples of these
images embedded in new contexts to generate discussions on how the function of the image and where it
appears can affect the work of the gaze.
VISUAL ESSAY: READING THE GAZE: GENDER ROLES IN ADVERTISING
This visual essay focuses on advertisers’ use of gaze to establish a relationship between a model and a
viewer. Students can explore the power of gaze by playing with the image and language of advertising. Ask
students to find ads wherein a model is looking directly into the camera and where the text addresses the
reader directly. Students can create a similar ad (through sketching or collage) wherein the model is looking
away from the camera. Students should (1) keep the original ad text and determine the altered ad’s effect,
and (2) change the text so the model is no longer directly addressing the viewer but rather speaking in first
or third person. Through such manipulation of visuals and text, students can discern how they themselves
are manipulated by skillful advertisers.
VISUAL ESSAY: TURNING THE TABLES: WOMEN IN THE RING
WOMEN BOXERS: THE NEW WARRIORS

Delilah Montoya
With this essay, you may want to review the term “malacrida” that is discussed in the beginning of the text.
Once you’ve elaborated on the contexts of the word, ask your students how they feel about the term and if
they believe women are more stigmatized for being a “bad girl” than men are for being rebellious. Why are
certain rebellious images of men celebrated more than women? Why is this socially important regarding
notions of power? Once you’ve discussed these issues, further develop the conversation by examining the
photos of the female boxers. It would be useful here to contextualize this discussion by foregrounding the
analysis of the images through Berger’s notion of the “gaze.”
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VISUAL ESSAY: REWRITING THE IMAGE
With this visual essay, we suggest that students produce their own rewrites of popular images. Parody is
one way to do that, and we have included several examples of parody throughout our discussion. However,
parody is not always as easy a task as it may seem. You can use the parodies we have included as a starting
point for discussing how parodies work. You can also ask groups of students to construct parodies of
images you or they bring to class (or any of the images included in this text). To be effective, a parody has
to remind the reader of the original but give the original a new meaning, like the Guerrilla Girls’ parody
that turns the original on its head. The change that creates the Guerrilla Girls’ parody is a simple one that
results in a complex message.
We find it very effective for students to work in groups on these rewrites and present their final productions
to their classmates. Your aim with assigning parodies or rewrites is to make students very conscious of the
choices they must make for an image to convey the message they have in mind.
RESEARCHING IMAGES: PUBLIC HEALTH MESSAGES: CREATING A PUBLIC SERVICE

ANNOUNCEMENT
This visual essay asks students both to draw upon their own experience with public health messages and
consider health messages from the past to examine what cultural attitudes and lessons are being conveyed
with the images used to construct those messages.
The assignments suggested for this essay present students with possibilities for analyzing images they
collect, for responding to the campaigns directed at teenagers and college students, or for creating their own
publicity. If you ask students to create their own publicity, you may wish to have them present their
production to the class and explain why they chose the images they included, as well as where they would
recommend placing the publicity.
VISUAL ESSAY: POSTERS FROM THE PAST AND PRESENT
ADVERTISING THROUGH THE AGES
Older advertising is relatively easy to find in most university and town libraries. The key for students will
be to look for these ads in magazines aimed at general readers—especially magazines aimed at housewives
in the first half of the twentieth century. They can present their findings in oral reports by making
transparency copies of these ads and of current ads for the same or similar products. Ask students to pay
particular attention to how the language in ads functions. Does it give more technical information about a
product? Does it provoke response? Does it address the consumer directly? How, for example, does the
print in current ads for prescription drugs function? Most of the information for many drug ads is often
found on the page following the actual ad and is always in densely packed, fine print very similar to the
print information enclosed in medicines from the pharmacy. Is this different from the print in ads for
computer systems or new cars or other new technologies? Comparing older ads to current ads will reveal a
stronger emphasis on the visual but perhaps not much difference in the way consumers are hailed by
advertising in a visual age.
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The chapter ends with bulleted points outlining pertinent issues students should consider when creating a
visual presentation. For a homework assignment, you could get your students to develop slides that they
workshop in class, paying close attention to the key issues raised in the chapter. The most important things
to outline for your students are the tips, as they serve as a solid guide for developing strong purpose and
visual communication.
Chapter 4:
 After your students have read “In the Shadow of the Image” (178), ask them to complete the
“iPod Advertisement” activity in MyCompLab™. This exercise looks at how Apple carefully
crafts identity in their ad campaign for the iPod. To access this activity, go to the Resources
section and select “Analyzing Visuals” from the Writing menu. “iPod Advertisement” is a
media resource in this section (Writing and Visuals, and then Multimedia menus).
 Students can examine the role of gender in images and advertising (192) by working with the
“Boys and Girls: Understanding the Rhetoric of Audience” multimedia activity in
MyCompLab™. This activity guides students through a series of gendered images, posing
questions and providing analytical exercises along the way. To access this activity, go to the
Resources section and select Writing and Visuals from the Writing menu. “Boys and Girls” is
a media resource in this section.
 After your students have read “When You Meet Estella Smart, You Been Met!” (184), direct
them to the “All in the Family: Understanding the Rhetoric of Subject” multimedia activity in
MyCompLab™. The questions and images in this activity prompt students to explore the
importance and symbolic value of family photos. To access this activity, go to the Resources
section and select Writing and Visuals from the Writing menu. The activity is a media
resource in this section.
 Your students can learn more about reading advertising (191) by perusing the Writing and
Visuals section in MyCompLab™. This section offers tutorials, multimedia activities, and
exercises that aid students in understanding how text and image come together to create
arguments. To access this resource, go to the Resources section and select Writing and Visuals
from the Writing menu.
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34

CHAPTER 5: STYLE
Our students tend to be hyperaware of the connotations of style, whether it be music, clothing, technology,
or brand identity. The “style” helps them harness this awareness in order to take a more critical approach to
the everyday ways in which style constructs our identities. Dick Hebdige’s “Style in Revolt: Revolting
Style” introduces students to the notion of style as identity by examining how early punk style, for example
safety pins and ripped clothing, reflected punk values, for example anarchism. This helps students become
aware of the style choices they make, and how these choices reflect not only their aesthetic but their subject
position.
Other essays in this section explore the “hipster” culture, rap music and its influence on American culture,
women’s style choices in the postfeminist era, exercise and what it represents, and larger connotations
behind the terms “geek” and “nerd.” Each essay has a different conceptualization of what style is and how
it is appropriated and debated by differing elements in society. The essays challenge your students to think
about style in a new and critical manner.
Throughout the chapter are also several visual essay assignments and research opportunities. The visual
essay “Hip-Hop Styles” allows your students to examine four different hip-hop album covers and how they
represent the culture of hip-hop in different ways. In the visual essay “Reading Labels, Selling Water,” the
branding of water bottles is used in order to launch a specific discussion about target markets and how
design interpolates various demographics. In the final visual essay, “Timeline on Fitness from Jack
LaLanne to Michelle Obama,” there is a timeline for your students to explore that takes them through the
progression of fitness. At the end of the chapter, in “Race and Branding,” students are given the
opportunity to critically analyze the way that sports teams and other marketing entities use racial images to
brand their products, through writing a Wikipedia entry. Finally, in “Music Anthologies,” students can
examine style through writing liner notes and creating a mixed music anthology.
Visual Essay: Reading the Gaze: Gender Roles in Advertising (Chapter 4)

Mike Davis, “Fortress Los Angeles: The Militarization of Urban Space” (Chapter 6)
Robert Warshow, “The Gangster as Tragic Hero” (Chapter 7)
Mary Gordon, “More Than Just a Shrine: Paying Homage to the Ghosts of Ellis Island” (Chapter 9)
STYLE IN REVOLT: REVOLTING STYLE

Dick Hebdige
Prior to the class in which you plan to discuss “Style in Revolt: Revolting Style,” ask students to bring in an
object that exemplifies their own particular style. This could be a tee shirt, a poster, a CD, or twelve-sided
die. Ask students to share their object with the class and to explain what that object represents about their
lifestyle, values, or identity. Hebdige’s essay also serves as a model of an essay that follows the
conventions of academia to “read” popular culture. Direct students’ attention to the rhetorical moves that
Hebdige is making to construct his argument by incorporating his own observations, the work of others,
and critical commentary.
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HIPSTER: THE DEAD END OF WESTERN CIVILIZATION
Douglas Haddow
This essay, originally found in Adbusters, focuses on the hipster culture. A place to start with this essay is
to have your students complete an in-class writing exercise on what a hipster is. From there, in your class
discussion, focus on the many details that Haddow provides throughout his essay: does he accurately
portray, in their opinion, a hipster? Are any of his descriptions stereotypes? What cultural images come to
mind when your students think of a hipster? With technology ever-changing and evolving, where might the
hipster culture go in the future?
RAP AND THE COTTON CLUB

Bakari Kitwana
In Kitwana’s essay, he describes the progression of the rap and hip-hop culture in America. A good way to
begin this discussion is to have your students complete an in-class writing about their thoughts on hip-hop
and rap: what images come to mind? What stereotypes exist about this genre? How does race seem to be
interconnected with rap/hip-hop? One of the key aspects of the essay is how the rap audience has changed,
in some artists’ opinions, to predominantly black to now mostly white. Kitwana provides several reasons as
to why this may be occurring: have your students get into small groups and choose passages throughout the
essay that point to the possible causes, and then discuss their responses as a class.
VISUAL ESSAY: HIP-HOP STYLES
This visual essay provides four different album covers from various hip-hop artists. Have your students
follow through either the Classroom Activity or one of the Writing Assignments for this section. Another
possible group activity is to ask your students to bring in other hip-hop album covers (or album covers from
a different genre, to see if the same issues exist in, for example, the rock or country genre) and to explore
the differences in those covers.
WOMEN AND THE RISE OF RAUNCH CULTURE

Ariel Levy
Ask students to attempt to return to their moment of “suspended judgment” from the exploratory writing.
Divide the class into three groups and present them with a series of problematic images relating to raunch
culture. One group should serve as the advocates of raunch culture as a means of women’s empowerment,
another should oppose this paradigm, and the third will act as mediators of the debate. Prior to commencing
the debate, the advocates and opposers should evaluate their side of the argument and develop talking
points, while the mediators should prepare a series of questions that the two sides will have to address.
Students should be told that this exercise is intended to make transparent the necessity for a well-rounded
understanding of both sides of any argument before positioning themselves in the discourse.
Make sure to have students shake hands before leaving the classroom in order to demonstrate that taking a
stand does not necessarily yield alienation.
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VISUAL ESSAY: READING LABELS, SELLING WATER
Prior to the class in which you plan to discuss “Reading Labels, Selling Water,” ask students to do a free-
write in which they detail a purchase that they have recently made. What did they buy? What compelled
them to select their product? What similar items did they leave on the shelf?
Ask them to consider their own consumer experience when reading and discussing the analysis done in
“Reading Labels, Selling Water.”
AGAINST EXERCISE
Mark Greif
As the editors acknowledge in the opening remarks to the essay, this essay can be a challenging one for
students. Therefore, it would be helpful to spend quite a bit of class time helping students to “unpack” the
issues in the essay. A place to start is to ask students if they exercise, and if so, what is their motivation to
do so? Is there societal pressure to exercise, or do they get a more personal fulfillment from it? Greif
mentions that overall health is the justification for most exercise: do your students agree with this
statement? Greif then spends time specifically discussing running—is this a preferred form of exercise for
your students? Why/why not? Because of the somewhat challenging nature of this essay, some of these
questions would be helpful to have as an in-class writing exercise at the beginning of the class, to help them
feel more comfortable sharing their ideas in a larger group discussion.
VISUAL ESSAY: TIMELINE ON FITNESS FROM JACK LALANNE TO MICHELLE OBAMA
For this visual essay, have your students examine the provided timeline carefully. Find some clips of Olivia
Newton-John, Madonna, Jane Fonda, and people using Wii on YouTube before beginning this assignment,
and share (and then discuss them) with your class. Then, have your students work through the Classroom
Activity as either a formal or informal group assignment, or have your students complete one of the
Writing Assignments (one of which connects this timeline to “Against Exercise”) as a formal writing
assignment.
MAKING CONNECTIONS: GEEK CULTURE
“The Alpha Geeks”

“Who’s a Nerd, Anyway?”
“Geek Love”
Before beginning any of the readings in the geek culture section, set aside a class period for the following
preparatory exercise:
Select a scene from the film Revenge of the Nerds. The scene should feature the title characters interacting
with other social groups in some way and shouldn’t be more than a minute or two. Play the scene and ask
students to spend five minutes writing a description of what they saw. Then play the scene again. Now
students should write for five more minutes, this time about how they felt or how they responded to the
clip. Play it one more time. Have students write for five minutes about the meaning of the clip and the ways
37

in which they interpreted it. The purpose of this exercise is twofold: first, it will help students analyze the
social relations being shown on screen, and, secondly, it is an exercise in moving, through writing, from
description to analysis and seeing them as distinct moves.
After the last writing has been completed, divide students into groups and give them the following task:
Choose one person to record the group’s findings and lead the report to the class. Give each group member
a chance to share his or her interpretation of what the scene means. Discuss the places where you agree and
disagree before reaching a consensus on the meaning of the scene. Keep in mind that this consensus can
always be that you agree to disagree.
The groups should report their findings to the class. Use board work to identify patterns of interpretation
and begin to problematize whether or not nerds are a self-identified subculture.
RESEARCHING STYLE
Please refer to the research assignments listed in the textbook, which follow the readings in this chapter.
RACE AND BRANDING: WRITING A WIKIPEDIA ENTRY
Before assigning this writing project to your students, show several examples on race (using Aunt Jemima
and Uncle Ben would be a good start) from Wikipedia to your students, thoroughly discussing them,
pointing out what is effective, and perhaps not effective, in the entries. Then, have your students carefully
work through the prompts in this section.
MUSIC ANTHOLOGIES: MAKING A MIX AND WRITING LINER
Modeling is important for your students for this assignment: have a discussion on music anthologies that
they are familiar with. What defines a music anthology? How is that different than a “greatest hits” album
from an individual artist? This project would work very well as a group assignment: each group member
could provide different genres of music to include, with each student therefore having a unique perspective
on the liner notes to include. After showing your class different liner notes from albums and having them
listen to a couple of anthologies, have them follow the prompts in this section.
Chapter 5:
 The Writing about Fashion activity in MyCompLab™ presents a video that discusses the
importance of fashion in teens’ lives. Students are asked to make connections between style
choices and identity. To access this resource, go to the Resources section and select Writing to
Describe from the Writing menu. The activity is one of the exercises in this section.
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 You may want to ask your students to use the “You’re Beautiful” activity in MyCompLab™.
This activity asks students to reflect on their own style and write a short essay about what
influences their fashion choices. To access this resource, go to the Resources section and
select Writing to Reflect from the Writing menu. “You’re Beautiful” is an exercise in this
section.
 After your students have read “Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture” (245), ask them to
complete the “Preening like a Peacock” activity in MyCompLab™. This exercise deals with
the connection between sexuality and outward appearance. To access this resource, go to the
Resources section, and select Writing to Extend from the Writing menu. The resource is an
exercise in this section.
 You may want to ask your students to complete the suggested essays in the Writing
Assignments after “Rap and the Cotton Club” (239) in the online composing space available
in MyCompLab™. Not only will students find a myriad of helpful resources conveniently at
their fingertips, but after they have completed the assignment they can engage in a peer-
review process within MyCompLab™.
 If your students need additional help creating their own visual essay (243), they can review
the components of visual texts in the Writing and Visual section of MyCompLab™. This
section contains additional instruction to help students analyze a visual text and recognize
visual arguments. To access these resources, go to the Resources section and select Writing
and Visuals from the Writing menu.
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40

CHAPTER 6: PUBLIC SPACE
The reading selections and assignments for this chapter address three concerns: what a place can come to
mean to us as individuals, how public space is organized and controlled, and how groups or individuals
claim what we are calling interpretive space. The writers we have drawn together all come to their
examination of public space with the common assumption that space means something about the culture in
which it is constructed or preserved. As students read through this chapter, they will be asked to think about
how a space is used, what it says of this culture, and what it asks of the people who use it. The Fieldwork
suggested near the end of this chapter instructs students to visit a space where people congregate, record
their observations, and work with classmates to explain what the space is intended for, as well as how the
space is actually used, and then to write up their findings as a report.
In preparation for the assignments in this chapter, ask students to write a description of a public space they
know well—a fast food restaurant, a mall, a church, a ballpark, etc. You can use these descriptions to begin
a discussion of what public space means, who has access to it, how it fits into the lives of the people in the
community, and more.
Fieldwork. Investigating Classroom Life: Worth Anderson, Cynthia, Best, Alycia Black,
John Hurst, Brandt Miller, and Susan Miller, “Observations and Conclusions from ‘Cross-Curricular
Underlife: A Collaborative Report on Ways with Academic Words’” (Chapter 3)
Public Health Messages: Creating a Public Service Announcement - Visual Essay: Posters from the Past
and Present (Chapter 4)
Fieldwork. Reconstructing the Network of a Workplace (Chapter 8)
James P. Spradley and Brenda J. Mann, “The Cocktail Waitress” (Chapter 8)
Visual Essay: Mary Gordon, “The History of Labor in the State of Maine” (Chapter 9)
Mary Gordon, “More Than Just a Shrine: Paying Homage to the Ghosts of Ellis Island”
(Chapter 9)
Kristen Ann Hass, “Making a Memory of War: Building the Vietnam Veterans Memorial” (Chapter 9)
The selections in this chapter offer reports on and analyses of public space that raise issues of how space is
used and controlled and what is actually public about public space. Every student is familiar with some
public space. The classroom they are in, the stores they shop in or pass by on the streets, the local park or
playground, the library—all of these constitute public space. It is true, however, that public space in rural
areas is differently constituted than public space in urban areas. The issues in rural areas are also different
than the issues related to public space in urban areas. Spend some time before students read to ask about the
public spaces your students are familiar with, who uses them, and what (if any) issues surround their
construction, maintenance, or use.
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THE CENTER OF THE UNIVERSE
Tina McElroy Ansa
A central image of this selection is the author’s view of herself as at “the center of my universe.” Ask
students to draw a series of concentric circles. In the centermost circle, students put their name. In the first
ring out, students write the name of the place they consider their hometown, along with several hometown
physical locations they consider personally important. For Ansa, these artifacts are a fountain in Macon,
Georgia, the Ocmulgee River, and a childhood church. In the second ring out, students name their state and
one or more locations important to them within the state. Ansa specified her father’s family farm in
Wrightsville, Georgia as one such place. A third ring out can include the region in which the state is located
(for Ansa, the Southeast), a fourth ring the United States, a fifth ring the Western Hemisphere, and a sixth
ring the world. Subsequent discussion can center on which ring students see themselves inhabiting in the
future, how memories of their hometown have informed their lives, and in what ways they have idealized
(or demonized) those memories. This selection can be paired with Vertamae Smart-Grosvenor’s “When
You Meet Estella Smart, You Been Met” in Chapter 4’s “Images” to raise questions about how one
memory or one artifact can spark recollections that enrich one’s sense of identity.
CARING FOR THE WOODS

Barry Lopez
In this selection Lopez describes both his family history and the history of the 35 acres of forest he calls
home. This essay may be challenging for students due to the numerous historical allusions and naturalist
terminology with which they may not be familiar. Encourage students to annotate passages, words, and
references that confuse them. They may choose to research those passages or address them in small groups.
We encourage you to use this confusion as an opportunity to enter into discussions on Lopez’s inclusion of
these references. They may discover why he uses such a complex interweaving of family history, larger
historical contexts, and naturalist terms, and how this narrative both shapes and is influenced by Lopez’s
values. How do these values manifest themselves in the text?
You may also use this opportunity to help students to develop their own narratives of “home” and the
values associated with it. Encourage students to design maps of their homes and the local areas. What kind
of history, values, and detail can they attach to these maps, and what kind of narratives can they generate?
What do these maps and narratives say about their values?
SHOPPING FOR PLEASURE: MALLS, POWER, AND RESISTANCE

John Fiske
A crucial aspect of Fiske’s reading of the popular is that individuals always engage in some level of
resistance to the many pressures popular culture places on us to conform to mainstream values and ideals.
According to Fiske, however, we aren’t all just dupes of the system. In the selection reprinted here, Fiske
argues that young people subvert the purpose of the mall by hanging out without shopping, essentially
taking over the space for their own purposes. Seniors use the mall as an exercise place. Mall developers, for
their part, do their best to turn these nonbuyers into buyers. Sometimes their strategies are successful;
sometimes they are not.
Fiske’s is a potentially difficult essay for some students because of his references to scholarship and
research they may not be familiar with. Encourage your students to mark passages that confuse them and
bring those passages up in small-group or whole-class discussion. We suggest, as well, that students be
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encouraged to talk to classmates or roommates and friends about those passages that trouble them. In that
way, students begin to understand the value of talking through difficult readings with others who are
reading the same selections. They might discover, for example, that they understand parts of the selection
that others don’t understand, and so they can be resources for each other.
In asking students to recall and write about a public place they know is used in ways it is not intended to be
used, we are suggesting that all of us have some experience with the kind of resistance Fiske writes of. You
can prepare your students for this assignment by asking the class to brainstorm a list of public places that
might lend themselves to such resistance. Those students who have experience with the homeless, for
example, will no doubt have many suggestions for how public places are used by people who have no
permanent space. As well, students typically use libraries, lounges, parks, churches, and fast food
restaurants for their own activities. Have your students explain to you and each other what some of those
activities are and how they see themselves or others subverting the purpose of the place they are using.
FORTRESS LOS ANGELES: THE MILITARIZATION OF URBAN SPACE

Mike Davis
This selection describes the way in which public space in Los Angeles is becoming increasingly militarized
at the expense of a “service proletariat in increasingly repressive ghettos and barrios.” The writing
suggestions attached to this reading ask students to be very honest about what makes them comfortable in a
space and what makes them uncomfortable. If students make a mental map of a place, they then need to
follow that up with the second assignment in which they reflect on how others—especially those living in
the places marked out-of-bounds on that mental map—would respond to the way they see the places they
are unfamiliar or uncomfortable with. Furthermore, how would those who live in these areas respond to the
students’ decisions? What kinds of exclusion do these mental maps imply?
FROM MIDDLE EAST TO MADISION, JUSTICE DEPENDS ON PUBLIC SPACES: WHAT

HAPPENS WHEN PEOPLE HAVE NO PLACE TO GATHER AS CITIZENS?
Jay Walljasper
To develop interesting dialogue about the concepts of public space and civic expression, get your students
into groups and devise imaginary but sensible questions around a protest rally they would arrange. The
trick here is to develop sensible questions that won’t become too politically contrived distracting them from
the task at hand—choose topics that you are confident will unite them. For instance, you could ask them
where they would protest in relation to developing more paths for bicycles on campus, or you could ask
them how they would protest about the availability for tickets for events at the university more readily for
the student body. You could ask the students where and how they would develop a space of protest for a
fully organic restaurant on campus. Also, ask your students to write out how they would approach this
protest and what would be their main claims of reasoning rhetorically in this imaginary gathering.
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MAKING CONNECTIONS: FREE TO ALL—PUBLIC LIBRARIES AND THE QUESTION OF
ACCESS
D.C. LIBRARIES: HOMELESS SHELTERS NO MORE?

Marc Fisher
Fisher’s and Baer’s essays are complimentary articles, for and against respectively, on the attempt by
Washington, D.C. officials to bar the homeless from access to public libraries in the D.C. metropolitan
area. An obvious discussion your students should attempt relates to the merits and faults in their claims.
Your students should examine the tone and effectiveness of the respective authors, and they can also
develop a more philosophical conversation on Fisher’s more utilitarian argument against the homeless
using libraries as a public space against Baer’s more civil libertarian stance. Help your students with these
terms and then ask them how they influence and dictate behavior in public settings.
D.C. PUBLIC LIBRARY MOVES TO RESTRICT ACCESS BY HOMELESS PEOPLE

Kathryn Baer
In this selection, ask your students to review some of the larger claims in Baer’s essay, especially in
relation to her statement about the response of some residents feeling “discomfort” in the presence of
homeless people in the DC library. To what is Baer essentially referring to here, and why is this important?
Ask your students if they agree or disagree with the wider socio-historical implications of her statement and
to develop clear arguments as to why.
SIGNS FROM THE HEART: CALIFORNIA CHICANO MURALS

Eva Sperling Cockcroft and Holly Barnet-Sánchez
Because the authors set the California mural movement in the larger context of art history, especially the
history of public art, some students might at first have trouble following the discussion. We recommend
that you have students share the outlines they have made (see prefatory material to this selection) with
small discussion-groups and use those outlines to summarize the argument Cockcroft and Barnet-Sánchez
make when they set the Los Angeles mural movement in that larger context.
Most students have some experience with this concept of claiming interpretive space with images and
signs. You can encourage them to look first at the ways they have chosen to decorate their rooms or dorms
and then ask them to consider how such acts as graffiti work to claim interpretive space. This selection will
help prepare the class for the project suggested in the Visual Culture section of this chapter.
VISUAL ESSAY: BANKSY — “THE MOST HONEST ARTFORM AVAILABLE”
Before delving into the reading, consider going to Banksy.co.uk and showing students some of his work.
Use this as an opportunity to open discussions on who exactly owns public space and the difference
between art and graffiti. Referring back to the “Images” chapter, in what ways do Banksy’s works “hail”
the viewer? Once they are familiar with some of his images, have them read the selections in the chapter,
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and perhaps do some research on their own. This can lead to discussions regarding the reasons for Banksy’s
anonymity, the political nature of his works, and how these works reflect his own philosophy.
Students can compare Banksy’s works to those in “Signs from the Heart” and the ads from the “Images”
chapter to discuss why some images are considered acceptable in public while others are not. Use this
opportunity to have them address a central question that Banksy’s work asks: who owns the visual
landscape? Why?
VISUAL CULTURE: THE TROUBLED LANDSCAPE
CANCER ALLEY: THE POISONING OF THE AMERICAN SOUTH

Jason Berry—with photographs by Richard Misrach
In this selection, Berry traces the transformation of the Baton Rouge to New Orleans corridor from rich
agricultural land in the 1880s to a petrochemical production region today. Berry reports and Misrach
documents the placement of production facilities adjacent to such community spaces as playgrounds and
cemeteries. You can ask students to do some historical research by finding old photos of local areas that
have morphed from rural, small-town, or residential urban use to manufacturing, strip mall, or abandoned
building statuses. Local historical societies and museums can be very helpful in directing students to such
photos. Using the photos, students can discuss changes in land use, population density, and corporate-
community tensions. Easily retrievable satellite images of towns and cities can provide informative
overviews of current conditions such as urban sprawl, multiplying suburban subdivisions, or proliferating
corporate structures.
RESEARCHING PUBLIC SPACE
FIELDWORK—EXAMINING HOW PEOPLE USE PUBLIC SPACE: OBSERVATION AND

MAPPING
We have suggested that this Fieldwork assignment be done collaboratively so that students don’t have to
rely solely on what one person might see in a limited time. A group of three can vary the times they
observe the space, or the group can divide the work so that each group member takes a different focus—for
example, one mapping the space, a second noting what the space is intended for and how it fulfills that
function, and a third watching how people use the space. The project could take 2-3 weeks to complete, so
you might want to make the assignment early in the chapter so that observations are occurring throughout
the entire time you are discussing public space. Your students should know that some places (fast food
restaurants, some malls, for example) might be easier to observe if they explain their project to whoever
controls or owns the space and ask permission for their observations. (Also encourage students to share
their findings with the management of such a space if that seems appropriate.) Other places—museums,
libraries, parks, for example—probably will not require any prior notice or special permission.
Before you assign this project, decide what kind of final product you will require from your students. If the
team is writing an interpretive essay using its observation notes and drawing on the other interpretive
essays in this chapter, then each student will most likely write an individual paper. If, on the other hand,
you are asking for a report on the group’s findings (see Fieldwork in Chapter 3’s “Schooling” for a further
discussion of report writing), you are most likely asking for a collaborative writing project. In that case, we
find it useful to spend some time explaining individual responsibilities in a group project.
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WALKING TOURS: MAKING A BROCHURE AND AUDIO GUIDE
With this assignment, we extend the notion of archive from a housed collection of materials to the very
towns and cities and campuses we inhabit. Students can be encouraged to explore the archival possibilities
of place by making a walking tour, including a map and map glosses. Such an assignment will allow
students to focus on the ways place carries meaning in the buildings, monuments, streets, and signs that
accumulate throughout its history.
When you make this assignment, spend some time talking about how to focus a walking tour map. We like
to bring maps and guidebooks into class—especially those that have walking tours set up—and use those in
a workshop setting. To do that, give each group of students one or two maps or guidebooks and ask them to
notice what is included in the map, what seems to be left out, and what makes the map interesting or useful.
Then we ask the entire class to generate a list of potential walking tours. If you put the list up on the board,
students have a number of possibilities to choose from or they can come up with their own space.
You can even make a mock-up of a walking tour of the campus with the class so that they get the idea. This
is a very good assignment for oral presentations. Encourage students to put their maps on transparencies or
to create brochures for the class to look at as they discuss their walking tour.
Chapter 6:
 If your students need help completing the exploratory writing assignment that follows
“Shopping for Pleasure: Malls, Power and Resistance” (282), they can review summarizing
techniques in the Writing to Synthesize section of MyCompLab™. This section contains
additional instruction to help students develop and organize essays that are meant to
summarize information. To access this resource, go to the Resources section and select
Writing to Synthesize from the Writing menu.
 After your students have read “Signs from the Heart: California Chicano Murals” (303), you
might ask them to review the “Venezuelan Mural” in MyCompLab™. This multimedia
activity allows students to click on various images in a Venezuelan mural to analyze how each
component contributes to the artist’s overall argument. To access this resource, go to the
Resources section and select Writing and Visuals from the Writing menu. The activity is one
of the multimedia resources in this section.
 Your students can use MyCompLab™ to further explore the controversy over graffiti
presented in “Banksy—“The Most Honest Artform Available” (310). The “Graffiti: Public Art
or Public Nuisance” exercise in MyCompLab™ asks students to develop their own opinion on
the status of graffiti as art or vandalism. To access this resource, go to the Resources section
and select Writing to Argue or Persuade from the Writing menu. The resource is one of the
exercises in this section.
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 To supplement the reading of “Cancer Alley: The Poisoning of the American South” (313),
you may want to direct your students to the following images in MyCompLab™: “Oil-soaked
Cave Photograph” and “Satellite Oil Spill Photograph.” Both interactive images prompt
students to reflect on the effect of pollution on landscapes. To access these resources, go to the
Resources section and select Writing and Visuals from the Writing menu. The photographs
are multimedia resources in this section.
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48

CHAPTER 7: STORYTELLING
The Storytelling chapter presents narrative in a number of topics and mediums. Nikki Giovanni’s essay
“On the Edge of Comfort” initiates the chapter with a musing about the mythological power and need
humans have across cultures to create and comprehend stories. Giovanni’s essay stresses the value of the
imaginative mind and how it constitutes significance in how we view ourselves and histories—an important
point to foreground for your students. As the chapter develops, the selections show how storytelling (as it’s
presented here) works through personal experience, through word of mouth, and through movie and
comics.
Students often think of the stories they encounter outside literature classes as forms of entertainment—to be
read, watched, or listened to for pleasure and certainly not to be analyzed for plot, character development,
symbols, and themes. Because they are accustomed to analyzing stories in literature classes for their
“hidden meanings,” students may be resistant to thinking critically about why the stories they know provide
pleasure and entertainment. By the same token, students may not have thought of the stories in popular
culture as forms of knowledge, as well as forms of entertainment, that transmit a range of cultural
information, values, and orientations toward contemporary culture. The purpose of this chapter is to ask
students to look critically at the stories most familiar to them, to identify the themes and concerns that
animate storytelling.

Vertamae Smart-Grosvenor, “When You Meet Estella Smart, You Been Met!” (Chapter 4)
Visual Essay: Banksy, —“The Most Honest Artform Available” (Chapter 6)
Sandra Cisneros, “The First Job” (Chapter 8)
Tillie Olson, “I Stand Here Ironing” (Chapter 8)
Dulce Pinzón, “The Real Story of the Superheroes” (Chapter 8)
Bob Hicok, “Calling Him Back from Layoff” (Chapter 8)
George Orwell, “Shooting an Elephant” (Chapter 10)
To help students see how storytelling functions in contemporary culture, it can be useful to ask them to
compare the way they read in English classes to the way they read, watch, or listen to stories outside
school, for their own pleasure and purposes. You might ask students to think and to write about the last
story they heard or watched that made an impression on them and to explain why. Students, then, can
classify various types of stories and responses and compare these interactions to what happens in literature
classes.
ON THE EDGE OF COMFORT

Nikki Giovanni
This selection by Nikki Giovanni can create interesting class discussion based around an important notion
of the essay in how stories are one of the central foundations in how individuals and communities develop
imaginations to explore amazing and difficult life experiences. Ask your students why there is a need to
create stories, and why you can sometimes have a freedom of articulation and examination with stories that
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you can’t, perhaps with nonfiction. This idea could develop further conversation about the importance of
the Arts in our culture and why we should continually support the voices and opinions of artists in our
society.
AMATEUR FAMILY
Michael Chabon
Chabon’s essay describes enigmatic experiences with fandom and the community it sometimes engenders.
For this essay, you could ask your students to describe some of their more memorable experiences with a
community of fans and how these experiences were rewarding. A fieldwork context could also be
developed with this reading selection. A college campus is more often than not a vibrant place, so ask your
students to observe the various rituals on campus through the many university organizations and clubs. An
obvious point of analysis and fieldwork here could be in exploring the passion and rituals varsity teams
fans often evoke. If your campus offers a place for artistic congregation (a theater, cinema, concert hall
etc.), ask your students to observe their behavior during an event.
MAKING CONNECTIONS: URBAN LEGENDS
“THE HOOK” AND OTHER TEENAGE HORRORS

Jan Harold Brunvand
Brunvand’s collections of “urban legends” offer students an opportunity to take seriously the stories that
circulate through teen and college culture. Part of the fun in reading Brunvand’s collection is seeing stories
(or versions of them) that students—and teachers, for that matter—have already heard. You may want to
point out that Brunvand is not only a collector of “urban legends” but also a folklore scholar interested in
interpreting the tales he has gathered.
As students read these legends, you might find it helpful to draw attention to the ways academic
interpretation can help explain popular forms of storytelling. Such attention to Brunvand’s interpretations
of these legends can prepare students to write their own analyses and interpretations of the legends they
bring to the class.
I HEARD IT THROUGH THE GRAPEVINE

Patricia A. Turner
It is useful to pair Brunvand’s essay with this selection by Patricia Turner because her research suggests
that rumor or urban legend in the African American community takes on a very different function than the
urban legends Brunvand has collected. One useful way of pairing these two readings is to compare the
kinds of stories Brunvand and Turner have collected and discuss how they differ and how they appear to be
similar.
You can also connect the Turner and Brunvand essay to a fieldwork project for your students in their
respective locales. Ask students—in groups—to seek out urban legends about either parts of campus or
historic areas in the local community. After drafting a questionnaire, a research librarian—or someone
extremely knowledgeable about local history—could provide students with a starting point for the project.
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THE GANGSTER AS TRAGIC HERO
Robert Warshow
Robert Warshow’s “The Gangster as Tragic Hero” is a classic example of film criticism from the 1950s. It
is likely to present some difficulties for contemporary students, however, because its references may well
be unfamiliar. Our suggestion is to ask students to identify the main lines of argument—namely how
Warshow defines the gangster film as a tragic genre—and not to worry at first about the supporting
examples. Once students have some measure of control over Warshow’s analysis, then they can see how
they might apply it to contemporary films or television shows. Finally, they can ask what this tragic sense
might tell them about the values and beliefs Americans hold about the nature of personal success and
failure.
MAKING CONNECTIONS: FILM REVIEWS: THE CASE OF SOCIAL NETWORK
THE SOCIAL NETWORK: CALLS HIM AN ASSHOLE, MAKES HIM A BILLIONAIRE

Roger Ebert
Ask your students why films, especially, have taken over writing forms, such as the popular novel, as the
main form of entertainment for many people—what does this popular cultural reality say about us, and
what does that say about the ways in which literacy is articulated and consumed in our culture? You could
further develop the discussion by informing your students of films they have seen that they may not have
known were originally novels and books—Lord of the Rings, Fight Club, and even classic films such as
The Godfather came from an original literary source. If your students have read and seen the literature and
film version of a text, develop a conversation and discussion with your students in what they prefer and
why.
INFLUENCING PEOPLE
David Denby
The film review genre, as stated in the chapter, is one of the more popular forms of writing. Outline for
your students the main generic conventions of the film review, paying particular attention to how
abbreviated arguments of the film review are articulated—what does and doesn’t work in the film
according to the reviewer. Also identify for your students the evaluation convention of the film review
genre, where the reviewer, generally speaking, is critiquing some, or all, of the following: the motivation
for what happens in the film, the film’s entertainment value, the film’s social relevance and social value,
and the film’s aesthetic value. Denby’s and Ebert’s reviews would be an obvious point of reference and
comparison and contrast here.
VISUAL CULTURE: THE GRAPHIC NOVEL
THE VEIL
Marjane Satrapi
“The Veil” includes both the introduction to and the first chapter of Satrapi’s Persepolis—a graphic
novel/memoir. Some students might be unfamiliar with the medium of comics and thus need a bit of help
managing the text. If you have access to it, Scott McCloud’s Understanding Comics can also be a
tremendous help in terms of offering students tools and a vocabulary for reading comics.
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The Writing Sequence assignment calls on students to create their own graphic narrative. This assignment
works well by asking students to consider the decisions involved in drafting a visual narrative. Many
students will be self-conscious of their “drawing” abilities, so it might be helpful to differentiate the act of
drawing from that of visually composing. Encourage students to use stock photography, personal
photographs, and clip art as alternatives to sketching/drawing scenes. In class, students can discuss the
decisions made through the various steps of composing a visual narrative, and this conversation can help
them better understand the (sometimes unrealized) decisions made while drafting a more conventional text-
driven memoir.
RESEARCHING STORYTELLING
FIELDWORK: UNDERSTANDING FANDOM AND FAN FICTION: SEMI-STRUCTURED

INTERVIEWS AND AUDIO STORIES
This fieldwork assignment has two parts, and hence we strongly urge that you review the key components
discussed in the chapter in conducting a successful semi-structured interview and audio story. We also
recommend that students develop the interview questions in small groups for a sense of uniformity and
time in reference to the chapter recommendations. For the parts of the fieldwork assignment, it would be
useful to review the online sources that the chapter describes, directly showing your students what you feel
are good materials to use in how you foresee assignment goals and outcomes. It would be particularly
useful for your students to conduct practice interviews before they choose the group of individuals they
want to interview. As they will see, interviews can take interesting and sometimes unfocused turns with
regards to the topic of discussion. A practice interview will help them orientate the assignment interview
well. Of course, you should also underscore the importance of speaking clearly in the recording, as a
strong, clear voice and monotone are always crucial in the successfulness of an audio story.
SEARCHING FOR OTHER HEROES: PROPOSING A NEW COMIC BOOK CHARACTER AND STORYLINE
FINDING OTHER HEROES
John Jennings and Damian Duffy
For this assignment research activity, it would be useful to identify the key aspects of the chapter,
especially in relation to sketching and the drawing of comic heroes—follow the storyboarding prompts and
the like. You should also get your students to follow the proposal questions closely.
Chapter 7:
 Students can use the Composing space of MyCompLab™ to complete the Exploratory
Writing after “On the Edge of Comfort” (329). As they work on the Giovanni’s wolf
metaphor, they can reference helpful tips by selecting Writing Tips from the Writer’s Toolkit
menu.
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 After your students have read “‘The Hook’ and Other Teenage Horrors” (335), direct them to
the “Urban Legends” exercise in MyCompLab™. They can read about additional urban
legends and learn how to analyze them for authenticity. To access this resource, go to the
Resources section and select Writing to Analyze from the Writing menu. The activity is one of
the exercises in this section.
 After your students have read “I Heard It Through the Grapevine” (343), they can examine the
relationship between truth and rumor in MyCompLab™. The “Rumors and Reality” exercise
prompts students to investigate and evaluate the truth of common advice or statements about
society. To access this resource, go to the Resources section and select Writing to Inform from
the Writing menu. The activity is an exercise in this section.
 In addition to the exercises that follow “Film Reviews: The Case of The Social Network”
(353), you may also want to ask your students to complete the “Evaluate the Critics” activity
in MyCompLab™. This exercise asks students to evaluate the writings of film critics and
determine the criteria of a good movie review. To access this resource, go to the Resources
section and select Writing to Evaluate from the Writing menu. The resource is one of the
exercises in this section.
 After reading “The Veil” (361), your students can learn more about graphic novels and comic
strips in MyCompLab™. The exercise “Arts and Images: Art Spiegelman and September 11”
directs students to a series of Spiegelman’s comics and asks them to analyze how images and
words come together to craft political arguments. To access this resource, go to the Resources
section and select Writing and Visuals from the Writing menu. The activity is an exercise in
this section.
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54

CHAPTER 8: WORK
The selections and assignments for this chapter all, in one way or another, address the question of what
work means to workers or to the communities where jobs are located or lost. Reading selections include
narratives or personal stories of what work means to individual workers and analysis and satire of how we
describe working conditions in corporate America. Visual Essay and Fieldwork projects challenge students
to see these as both historical and contemporary concerns.
Before assigning any readings from this chapter, you might open discussions of this chapter by asking
students what jobs they have held, what work they hope to do in the future, and how work fits into their
own lives or the lives of the people they know. Some will not have held a paying job but instead will talk of
volunteer work or work for parents or very early jobs like babysitting or mowing neighbors’ lawns. Others,
of course, will have extensive work experience.
The reading selections and assignments in this chapter don’t necessarily rely on students having held jobs,
but you will probably discover that most of your students have had some kind of even minimal experience
working for others, and they can be encouraged to draw upon that experience especially as they read and
respond to the selections in this chapter.
Barry Lopez, “Caring for the Woods” (Chapter 6)

Jason Berry—with photographs by Richard Misrach, “Cancer Alley: The Poisoning of
the American South” (Chapter 6)
Visual Essay: Mary Gordon, “The History of Labor in the State of Maine” (Chapter 9)
THE FIRST JOB

Sandra Cisneros
For many of us, our first introduction to the adult world was in our first job, so this narrative by Sandra
Cisneros will likely ring true even for those who have had only limited experience. In it, Cisneros talks of
her first encounter with adulthood and work and the shock of not knowing how to respond to her coworker,
an adult who takes advantage of a new girl on the job.
Because this story ends so abruptly, some students will want more closure; they’ll want to know why
Cisneros stops where she does. You can encourage students to go back through the events of the narrative
to identify those incidents that indicate that our narrator is still very much a child with little experience of
the adult world. Those incidents culminate in the final moment of the narrative.
I STAND HERE IRONING

Tillie Olson
An interior monologue like this one is always a bit difficult for some students to catch onto at first. Once
they have the setting and the fact that the narrator is essentially thinking through a conversation she has had
about her daughter, the story will be fairly easy for them to follow. But you will want to make sure they
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know who is speaking, what she is doing, what she is talking about, and what bothers her so much. Some
younger students might not be as in tune with the narrator’s doubts about her abilities as a mother, the
things she had to give up to be a working mother, and the guilt she feels about the way she raised her
daughter. Others will understand it quite well, so let students talk about what they recognize and leave
plenty of opportunity for them to question what they are reading. We find this an especially good story to
use as our classic reading for the work chapter. Written in the early sixties, Tillie Olson’s story has spoken
for millions of working mothers, especially single mothers.
Our suggestion to have your students tell this story from the daughter’s point of view allows students to
consider both characters and the information we have about both characters as they think through what
Olson is saying about working mothers, about mothers and daughters, and about the demands of society
outside the home.
ALABANZA: IN PRAISE OF LOCAL 100

Martín Espada
In this poetry selection, Espada not only eulogizes the workers who died in Windows on the World but also
praises heritage, work, and human empathy. To engender comparative discussion, ask students to read
other poems centering on work and workers. Walt Whitman’s “I Hear America Singing” is a classic of the
type. Langston Hughes’s “Florida Road Worker” offers a wonderfully compact opportunity for students to
glimpse reality from a worker’s perspective. Carmen Tafolla’s “Alli Por La Calle San Luis” introduces
cultural themes of generations and heritage in the context of women making and selling tortillas. Ask
students to list similarities and differences between the Espada poem and another poem referencing work.
Students might consider issues of race, gender, ethnicity, and class as they make their lists.
VISUAL ESSAY: WORKING-CLASS HEROES
THE REAL STORY OF THE SUPERHEROES

Dulce Pinzon
Before assigning this reading, ask students to write about or discuss their own feelings regarding the role of
immigrant workers in America. In what ways does Pinzon’s work ask them to reevaluate those feelings?
What does presenting her argument as a series of color photographs do that a textual argument could not?
You can also combine this piece with Steven Greenhouse’s “Worked and Overworked” from this chapter to
examine the ways students perceive not just immigrant workers but American workers in general. What
kinds of preconceptions do these pieces together dispel or reinforce?
CALLING HIM BACK FROM LAYOFF

Bob Hicok
As the Suggestion for Reading mentions, play for your students Hicok reading his poem on Poetry
Everywhere. Once everyone has listened to the poem, begin your discussion: how might the poem be
different if it were from the worker’s perspective? How does having the poem from the employer’s
viewpoint affect the tone? What are the implications of the final two stanzas of the poem?
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MAKING CONNECTIONS: COLLECTIVE BARGAINING IN THE PUBLIC SECTOR
WISCONSIN POWER PLAY

Paul Krugman
MAKE EVERYBODY HURT

David Brooks
As the editors mention, the topic of unions is one that is often hotly debated. Krugman’s and Brooks’
accounts are op-eds; after reading the two pieces, have your students summarize both in a paragraph, as
some students will not have much experience reading op-eds. Then, for a formal writing assignment, ask
your students to find two op-eds on the same issue (related to working in some manner) from a newspaper
in their hometown: how do the opinions in the pieces differ? Where do they possibly converge? How do the
authors explain and support their positions? Use Krugman’s and Brooks’ pieces as examples, reminding
them that op-eds are time-sensitive and that they may need to do a bit of research to understand all of the
issues in the op-eds that they find.
WORKED AND OVERWORKED

Steven Greenhouse
Greenhouse discusses labor and the issue of fair compensation. His article is somewhat different from
many of the other selections in this volume due to its emphasis on research and relaying that research
through footnotes. A number of discussion opportunities can present themselves based on the form he uses.
Weave discussion into the first Writing Assignment so that students can examine the rhetorical function of
the footnotes and the data he uses and how he uses those facts. They can also trace his sources to examine
how the sources were used. Finally, draw from Writing Assignments Two and Three to have students
discuss their own expectations about working conditions and pay, and what sort of American myths
Greenhouse’s arguments ask the reader to reconsider.
RESEARCHING WORK
Please refer to the short research assignments that follow the readings in this chapter.
FIELDWORK: RECONSTRUCTING THE NETWORK OF A WORKPLACE
THE COCKTAIL WAITRESS

James P. Spradley and Brenda J. Mann
Use Spradley and Mann’s report as a starting place for your discussion of the social network of a
workplace. Your students can easily do this project from recall if you don’t have the time to begin a long
Fieldwork project at this point in the term.
Their aim in the report is to bring to the surface the part of the job that is usually invisible to outsiders or to
new workers. In fact, one way of preparing students for this task might be to ask them to think about what
they wish they had known about a place where they work (or have worked) when they began the job. Or,
you might ask what they would tell a new worker about the social network of the place they have chosen to
analyze.
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DESIGNING A WEBSITE: THE TRIANGLE FACTORY FIRE
This project refers to the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in 1911, which took the lives of 146 workers. In
this project, direct your students to the Cornell site listed in the textbook; after they examine the Cornell
site, they will prepare to design their own site related to labor history. Once your students have designed a
website on labor history, they will also need to write a summary/description of the site; please direct them
to the list of questions provided in the assignment. The students should also follow the thorough, two-step
process provided in the textbook. To help support the success of this assignment, make sure to do a lot of
modeling for them, showing them the Cornell site and discussing what is effective (and possibly even
ineffective or what may need improvement) to help them compose their own websites and descriptions.
Chapter 8:
 After your students have read “I Stand Here Ironing” (385), they can learn more about gender
roles in MyCompLab™. The sample paper “Here Comes the Bride, All Dressed in Purple?
The Inherent Dual Reality of American Women” discusses the contradictions of female
identity and explores how women balance professional aspirations with familial expectations.
To access this resource, go to the Composing space of MyCompLab™ and select Writing
Samples from the Writer’s Toolkit menu.
 If your students need additional help writing the essay that compares Krugman’s and Brooks’s
arguments on unions (399 and 401), they can review the components of comparison in
MyCompLab™. The Writing to Compare or Contrast section explains common patterns
employed in comparison essays and offers tips and exercises to help students write effectively.
To access this resource, go to the Resources section and select Writing Purposes and then
Writing to Compare and Contrast.
 If your students need additional help analyzing the poem “Alabanza: In praise of Local 100”
(391), they can review the key elements of literary analysis in MyCompLab™. The Writing
About Literature section reviews the basics of tackling literary assignments and offers sample
papers for reference. To access this resource, go to the Composing space and select Writing
Samples from the Writer’s Toolkit menu.
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CHAPTER 9: HISTORY
The History chapter allows students to situate themselves in a larger context than the here and now. By
examining multiple perspectives about and from the past, students can gain a greater understanding of the
present and even their future. In Mary Gordon’s “More Than Just a Shrine: Paying Homage to the Ghosts
of Ellis Island,” she recounts the history of Ellis Island in order to come to terms with the way in which
other, more traditional American monuments gloss over the immigrant experience.
The Visual Essay in the beginning of the chapter is based upon Judy Taylor’s murals “The History of Labor
in the State of Maine.” The recent controversy regarding the murals further underscores the importance of
artists to document historical forces regarding labor issues. This essay will certainly heed research and
background information to do with the recently elected Republican Governor Paul LePage’s March 2011
decision to have the murals removed due to what he inferred as unfair representation.
Alan Trachtenberg’s brief tract, “Reading American Photographs,” provides students with the tools to then
“read” the photographs in the following selection, “Visual Essay: American Photographs.” As a collection,
the images in this visual essay comment on how history is constructed through images and by extension the
artists behind the lens.
“‘Indians’: Textualism, Morality, and the Problem of History” by Jane Tompkins explores an array of
narrative and critical accounts of the interactions between Native Americans and Puritans in colonial
America in order to convey how subjective truths are built. This allows students to experience history not
just as an infallible grand narrative but as a collection of many smaller narratives in myriad voices.
Building on Tompkins’s work with historical tellings and retellings, Christopher Phillips’s essay,
“Necessary Fictions: Warren Neidich’s Early American Cover-Ups,” serves as an introduction to Warren
Neidich’s photographs in the following visual essay, “Contra Curtis: Early American Cover-Ups.” Phillips
contends that Neidich’s revisions of Edward Sheriff Curtis’s iconic photographs of Native Americans are
necessary in order to undo the silencing of the actual, and often brutal, truth of the Native American
experience in the American West.
Within the “Making Connections: Two Speeches on Race and Racism in the United States,” students are
introduced to rhetorical stances, which serve as a built-in reading lens for Frederick Douglass’s “What to
the Slave is the Fourth of July?” and Barack Obama’s “A More Perfect Union.” Both of these speeches
comment on race relations in their respective historical moments and make explicit the ways in which the
past, or historical precedents, can be of use to the present and future.
The chapter concludes with possibilities for a museum photo project in relation to the viewing principles of
photographs around Gunther Kress and Theo Van Leeuwen’s book Reading Images: The Grammar of
Visual.
59

Arlie Russell Hochschild, “Gen (Fill in the Blank): Coming of Age, Seeking an Identity” (Chapter 2)
Margaret Mead, “We Are All Third Generation” (Chapter 2)
Visual Essay: Public Health Messages (Chapter 4)
Patricia A. Turner, “I Heard It Through the Grapevine” (Chapter 7)
George Orwell, “Shooting an Elephant” (Chapter 10)
MORE THAN JUST A SHRINE: PAYING HOMAGE TO THE GHOSTS OF ELLIS ISLAND
Mary Gordon
Prior to the class in which you plan to discuss “More Than Just a Shrine: Paying Homage to the Ghosts of
Ellis Island,” ask students to bring in a snapshot or a memento from an important historical landmark that
they have visited. Ask students to describe the landmark. Did they feel a connection to it? And finally, how
do they incorporate their experience into their own sense of history? Emphasize what it means to connect to
history on a personal level.
VISUAL ESSAY: THE HISTORY OF LABOR IN THE STATE OF MAINE

Judy Tarlor
For this selection, it is imperative that you get your students to research the controversy over the removal of
the murals by the Maine Governor Paul LePage. Ask your students to discuss the reasons as to why this
decision caused controversy. Also, this essay brings up great opportunities for group work and the
development of murals surrounding a historical issue. You could ask your students to research their
respective locales and develop murals around a historical representation of an issue, place, event, etc.
“INDIANS”: TEXTUALISM, MORALITY, AND THE PROBLEM OF HISTORY

Jane Tompkins
Much of Tompkins’s essay is concerned not only with history but with the complications of telling and
compiling disparate voices to manufacture a cohesive narrative. Begin class by having students use a quick-
write to reflect on past assignments where they were asked to also compile disparate voices, either in a
history or literature class, as necessary to understand Tompkins’s dilemma in a more concrete way. Then
ask students to share their findings in small groups and create yet another collaborative narrative that draws
together their thinking on what it means to synthesize myriad experiences. They should present their
findings to the class and also comment on their process: what challenges did they face?
NECESSARY FICTIONS: WARREN NEIDICH’S EARLY AMERICAN COVER-UPS

Christopher Phillips
and
VISUAL ESSAY: Contra Curtis: Early American Cover-Ups
Prior to discussing “Necessary Fictions: Warren Neidich’s Early American Cover-Ups,” ask a few student
volunteers to bring a digital camera to class. Then bring in several copies of your campus’s latest student
newspaper. In groups, students should select a story that they find interesting, compelling, or problematic
and stage an image recreating an aspect of the event. Depending on the technology available in your
classroom, either project the images or distribute prints.
60

As a class, you can discuss the choices each group made and compare the layers of representation, from the
actual to the staged, and ask whether the students consider their work an act of “visual sedition.”
MAKING CONNECTIONS: TWO SPEECHES ON RACE AND RACISM

IN THE UNITED STATES
WHAT TO THE SLAVE IS THE FOURTH OF JULY?

Frederick Douglas
and
A MORE PERFECT UNION
Barack Obama
Once you have worked through the content of “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?” and “A More
Perfect Union,” break the class into six groups. Each group will be assigned one of the speeches and a
rhetorical stance. They should then go through their assigned speech and identify and comment on
instances where the speaker is utilizing their particular strategy. Is it effective? Why or why not? What
would another strategy have looked like?
FIELDWORK. WRITING HISTORY FROM BELOW: ORAL HISTORY

THE GOOD WAR
Studs Turkel
For this selection and project, direct your students to the fact that interviewers always need to be prepared
when they conduct an interview. Outline for your students clearly the suggestions for conducting a
successful interview in the project articulation part of the chapter. When your students choose the subject of
their project, remind them to develop rigorous research around their topic of choice, too, to develop this
preparedness. Practice interviews would be recommended for this project.
READING AMERICAN
Alan Tratchenberg’s
And
VISUAL ESSAY: AMERICAN PHOTOGRAPHS
Investigate the way in which Alan Trachtenberg constructs his argument—it very much resembles the type
of intellectual work students are often called upon to do. Divide the class into small groups and ask them to
create a descriptive outline that identifies familiar strategies Trachtenberg is using. Break it down by
paragraph and try to identify the overall function of each paragraph in relation to the essay as a whole.
Using board work, move through the essay paragraph-by-paragraph and discuss differences in opinion on
how the paragraph is functioning in order to try to reach a consensus in a class-generated outline.
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MAKING SENSE OF HOW THE PHOTOS ARE COMPOSED
For this project, follow the suggestions articulated in the chapter in developing a successful photo museum
exhibition. Make sure you review the four photos in the section and how they relate to the ways in which
viewing positions of photos develop meaning in how images can be interpreted and contextualized.
Chapter 9:
 Ask your students to complete some of the writing assignments in Chapter 9 in the online
composing space available in MyCompLab™. Not only will students find a myriad of helpful
resources conveniently at their fingertips, but after they have completed the assignment they
can engage in a peer-review process within MyCompLab™.
 As your students develop a proposal for a new memorial (439), they may want to look over
the writing samples in MyCompLab™. The four sample proposals provided will show
students how to effectively use design, formatting, and content to sell their ideas. To access
this resource, go to the Resources section, select Writing Samples from the Writing menu, and
choose Writing Samples: Proposals.
 If your students need additional assistance writing the longer finished essay in response to the
speeches on race (459), ask them to review The Writing Process section of MyCompLab™.
This section offers instruction, multimedia activities, and exercises to help students master the
four stages of writing: planning, drafting, revising, and finishing/editing. To access these
resources, go to the Resources section and select The Writing Process from the Writing menu.
 Your students can use MyCompLab™ to further examine the concepts presented in “The
Good War” (485). The multimedia activity “The War Around Us: Understanding the
Rhetorical Situation” in MyCompLab™ uses images of Vietnam soldiers to engage students
in an analysis of visual rhetoric. To access this resource, go to the Resources section and
select Writing and Visuals from the Writing menu. The activity is one of the multimedia
resources in this section.
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CHAPTER 10: LIVING IN A TRANSNATIONAL WORLD
The chapter “Living in a Transnational World” provides students with opportunities to critically read their
own cultural moment. The readings collected here explore the complexities of a globalized world, where
languages, identities, economies, and ideas become more hybridized, that is to say they mesh and blend
across cultures.
The first section, “Making Connections: Colonized and Colonizer,” provides the chapter with a more
historical context by providing students with a glimpse of colonial life, the precursor to today’s
transnational world. The three readings in this section introduce students to the perspective of the colonized
and then the contradictions inherent in the role of the colonizer—the complicated relationships of
obligation, power, and identity. Finally, there is a time shift from the era of colonialism to the era of
globalization.
The next set of readings include an essay on the politics of language across the United States-Mexico
border, using the crossing of a physical boundary to explore crossing metaphorical boundaries that define
the transnational world. The next essay takes a markedly different approach, detailing slum tourism and its
effects. The third essay in this section returns to the concept of life on the border—both physically as well
as metaphorically and is written in a variety of languages: English, Spanish, Chicano dialects, and more. In
the final essay of this section, Mary Louise Pratt complicates the differences presented by the previous
authors as she attempts to come to terms with the way in which cultures, languages, and identities meet in
classrooms and other communities. She calls these arenas in which cultures collide contact zones, areas
both ripe with possibility and fraught with possible conflict. This essay gives the students a vocabulary to
describe the metaphorical hybridized spaces that they have been considering throughout the chapter.
Throughout the chapter are several Visual Essays and other research opportunities. In “M.I.A.’s Graphic
Style,” students explore the liner from M.I.A.’s album Kala. In the chapter’s next visual essay, students
examine artwork from artists who are working within the “contact zone.” The chapter closes with how to
lead a roundtable discussion and how to design a research project on global justice movements.
Margaret Mead, “We Are All Third Generation” (Chapter 2)

Visual Essay: Hip-Hop Styles (Chapter 5)
Marjane Satrapi, “The Veil” (Chapter 7)
Barack Obama, “A More Perfect Union” (Chapter 9)
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MAKING CONNECTIONS: COLONIZED AND COLONIZER
COLUMBUS IN CHAINS
Jamaica Kincaid
SHOOTING AN ELEPHANT
George Orwell
Both Kincaid and Orwell present arguments in the form of narrative. Both of these narratives contain
“thesis moments,” or a section of the text that encapsulates the argument in a precise way. Divide the class
into small groups, and ask them to identify each author’s “thesis moment.” Furthermore, ask students to
also identify areas that might be considered “reasons” or support for their argument. As a class, compare
each group’s findings, and use the discussion as an opportunity to examine a writer’s purpose or reason for
writing.
NEWS FROM NOWHERE

Jeff Chang
Chang moves from colonialism to globalization in his analysis of M.I.A.’s Kala. To help students better
understand Chang’s piece, first play a selection of the album for your students in class. Then, have your
students compare Chang’s essay to Orwell’s and Kincaid’s works. How do your students see the move
from colonialism to globalization through the texts? How does this affect how they approach all three
readings?
VISUAL ESSAY: M.I.A.’S GRAPHIC STYLE
First, ask your students to listen to the entire album Kala before completing this assignment. (This
assignment would work best as a group project.) Because students will need to listen to the album to best
complete this assignment, have this as an out-of-class group assignment, in which they use Chang’s essay,
the album itself, and the liner notes to work through the Classroom Activity in this section.
PASSPORT PHOTOS
Amitava Kumar
In an attempt to not only have students explore hybridity as a concept, but also to understand it as a
rhetorical move, consider how the argument can be mapped quite literally using signs and words to express
the progression of the text visually. Ask students to make note of the areas where Kumar is using novel
strategies or other texts that might not normally be thought of as evidence: poems, speeches, imagined
conversations, etc. Should students represent these areas as on the border of their map or at the center?
Provide students with markers and large sheets of paper in order to emphasize the visual focus of this
assignment.
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SLUMDOG TOURISM
Kennedy Odede
This essay would be best paired with “Passport Photos” as it gives a very different glimpse into the events
that transpire in both pieces. As Odede states in the conclusion of the essay, “there are solutions to our
problems—but they won’t come about through tours.” After students read this essay, what are some
possible solutions to slum tourism they can think of? What is the attraction of slum tourism? Put students in
groups to explore both the causes of and viable solutions to this issue.
HOW TO TAME A WILD TONGUE

Gloria Anzaldúa
The experience of reading the essay, where some readers will be excluded by Anzaldúa’s use of unfamiliar
language, recreates the real-life experience of how language can exclude some, while including others. As a
homework assignment to accompany the preliminary reading of “How to Tame a Wild Tongue,” ask
students to execute two written responses, each about a page. The first one should describe the essay by
paraphrasing and summarizing key moments. The second should describe their feelings as a reader. How
did the experience of reading the multiple languages affect them as a reader?
In class, divide the students into small groups and ask them to share their homework responses. When each
group member has had a chance to speak, the group should then form a consensus on what the text means.
Challenge them to try and infer Anzaldúa’s purpose in writing this piece and making the language choices
that she did.
ARTS OF THE CONTACT ZONE

Mary Louise Pratt
Based on “Arts of the Contact Zone,” ask the class to articulate their own definition of a “contact zone.”
Based on this definition, what are the potential challenges and opportunities that a “contact zone” offers?
Once this definition has been created, lead the class in a guided freewrite. Ask students to describe a time
when they felt they were in a contact zone. By their definition, what made this instance a contact zone and
what challenges and opportunities did they face?
Share and discuss the freewrites as necessary to examine the power of contact zones.
VISUAL ESSAY: COCO FUSCO AND GUILLERMO GÓMEZ-PENA’S “TWO UNDISCOVERED

AMERINDIANS VISIT THE WEST.” SAMUEL FOSSO’S “LE CHEF QUI A VENDU
L’AFRIQUE AUX COLONS.” WANG QUINGSON’S “REQUESTING BUDDHA SERIES NO. 1.”
The images here relate to Pratt’s essay, so be sure to have students read her text before beginning this
assignment. For research possibilities, have students choose one of the three Writing Assignments provided
in this section. Prompts #1 and #2 would also work well with a fieldwork possibility: as part of their
research, students could seek first-hand accounts (for example, a letter, as is mentioned here) of people
living in “contact zones” or communities that share commonalities.
65

RESEARCHING LIFE IN A TRANSNATIONAL WORLD
Please see the opportunities for short research projects that follow the readings throughout Chapter 10.
BANNING BURQAS AND HEADSCARVES IN FRANCE: PLANNING A ROUNDTABLE DISCUSSION
Begin this assignment by brainstorming why France may have wanted to ban burqas and what opponents
may say against the ruling. Then, once you proceed into the project listed in this section, be sure to set
some “ground rules” for your students since any time that debates occur, clashes may arise. Use the
breakdown under Planning a Roundtable Discussion and sketch out who will present what material and
who will serve as a moderator. As is discussed in Staging the Roundtable, be sure to take time constraints
(and how many students are in your class) into account as you plan how many students will speak and for
how long.
GLOBAL JUSTICE MOVEMENTS: DESIGNING YOUR OWN RESEARCH PROJECT
The projects in this section all relate to global justice movements. The five prompts provided are only some
examples of research projects related to this topic, and each could be carried out individually or in groups.
Spend one class period brainstorming other topics, beyond these five, by having students complete an
informal freewrite for five minutes on potential topics. Then, have the class share their ideas with the class,
and write down the potential topics on the board, adding more as the class reflects on their classmates’
ideas. Then, have students choose a topic and write a proposal on which topic they intend to pursue that
would include explaining why they are interested in their chosen topic and the likely research they will
need to complete. As the book states, because this is the final assignment in Reading Culture, be creative in
how your students present their final research project: a photo book (with captions), a news article, a
Wikipedia entry, an academic journal article, a webpage, a brochure, etc.—encourage creativity and visual
design in their final project.
Chapter 10:
 After your students have read “Arts of the Contact Zone” (529), you may want to ask them to
complete the “Imagining your Community” exercise in MyCompLab™. This exercise deals
with the concept of imagined communities and prompts students to analyze the communities
to which they belong.
 Students can work with the idea of transnational solidarity by completing “The Universal
Declaration of Human Rights” activity in MyCompLab™. This activity looks at the universal
rights declared by the United Nations and challenges students to write about their own views
on global rights. To access this resource, go to the Resources section and select Writing to
Reflect from the Writing Purposes menu. The activity is one of the exercises in this section.
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 After your students have read “How to Tame a Wild Tongue” (521), you may want to ask
them to further consider the multicultural nature of American English. MyCompLab™
provides students with an excellent example of a student paper titled “Beyond Words:
Diversity in American English.” This paper explores diversity in American English, while
defending a stance on the national language issue. To access this resource, go to the
Composing section and select Writing Samples from the Writer’s Toolkit menu.
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TEACHING READING CULTURE

 What are writing courses about?

 Is there, or should there be, a “content” to writing courses?

 Does it matter what students read?

 How do digital literacies figure in writing instruction?

 What is the role of visual communication in composition courses?

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USING THE FEATURES

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USING THE WEB

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Types of Writing Assignments

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Sequencing Writing Assignments

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COLLABORATIVE LEARNING AND CLASS DISCUSSION

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PEER RESPONSE TO WRITING

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ADDITIONAL RESOURCES FOR TEACHING READING CULTURE

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On postcolonial studies, see Ania Loomba, Colonialism/Postcolonialism (London: Routledge, 1998);

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A FEW THINGS TO CONSIDER

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READING SELECTIONS: CLASSROOM CONTEXTS

FROM LITEARCY IN THE NEW MEDIA AGE

VISUAL ESSAY: WORD, IMAGE, AND THE DESIGN OF THE PAGE

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WORKING WITH TEXTS: USING LAM’S WORDS

UNDERLINE/HIGHLIGHT, ANNOTATE, SUMMARIZE

HYPER AND DEEP ATTENTION: THE GENERATIONAL DIVIDE IN COGNTIVE MODES

WORKING WITH TEXTS: FRAMING THE ISSUE

MAKING CONNECTIONS: WHAT HAS CHANGED?

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RESOURCES AVAILABLE ON MYCOMPLAB™

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Min-Zhan Lu, “From Silence to Words: Writing as Struggle” (Chapter 3)

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GEN (FILL IN THE BLANK): COMING OF AGE, SEEKING AN IDENTITY

MILLENNIALS: CONFIDENT. CONNECTED. OPEN TO CHANGE

GIANT DREAMS, MIDGET ABILITIES

PATTI SMITH PISSING IN A RIVER

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HOW “DUNGEONS AND DRAGONS” CHANGED MY LIFE

VISUAL ESSAY: HOLLYWOOD ICONS: BRANDO, MONROE, AND DEAN

WE ARE ALL THIRD GENERATION

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FIELDWORK: MAKING SENSE OF MY MUSIC: ETHNOGRAPHIC INTERVIEWS

LOOKING THROUGH TIME: LIFE MAGAZINE

RESOURCES AVAILABLE ON MYCOMPLAB™

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Copyright © 2012, 2010, 2007, 2004 Pearson Education, Inc.

Andrew Lam, “I Tweet, Therefore I Am” (Chapter 1)

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WHAT HIGH SCHOOL IS

THE MYTH OF CHARTER SCHOOLS