Blog 3: Pop Culture Influences

Blog Posting Due:  Monday, December 3 (Class Time).  

Peer Responses (3) are also due by class time on December 3 , as you will need to enter your peers' names in your folders.  This will be your last day of class.

Pop culture is a primary agent of our socialization. We cannot escape it. We discover our identities, in part, through the influence of pop culture. We learn about the norms, beliefs, and values of our society through pop culture images and narratives that take on an appearance of normalcy. Sociologist and author Dustin Kidd notes, "As a socializing force that most of are exposed to, popular culture becomes a second skin and is taken for granted" (Pop Culture Freaks, p. 13).

For Blog 3, you will need to think and write about a cultural artifact that has personally impacted you in some significant way -- something that has been an important influence on your childhood or young adulthood, that helped shape who you are, what you value, and/or how you see and navigate the world. What were the messages that this artifact conveyed to you at the time?  How did consuming this artifact make you feel?  If you look back on this cultural artifact using your "critically vigilant" lenses (or, in the language of feminist cultural critic bell hooks, as an "enlightened witness"), do you see this artifact differently?  If so, how?  If not, why not?

This blog is not as prescriptive in that I am not requiring you to answer specific prompts, with each assigned a particular point value. However, you do need to choose something that you can write 300-400 words about (at least two-thirds of a single-spaced page). To receive full credit for Blog 3, you must also include images of or a hyperlink to your cultural artifact.

As an example, I will post a response to Blog 3 this week.