Trio Abstract Handout
ABSTRACT: It might surprise some passing
onlookers to see students in my American
history class watching an early 1930s gangster
film like Scarface, a cheesy science- fiction film
like Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956), or
listening to the rap of Public Enemy. But
Scarface is an exemplar of the boom of gangster
movies that emerged during the death spiral of
the Great Depression, and it is fascinating for
students to consider the resonance of this
perverse inversion of the Horatio Alger story in
the midst of economic calamity. While the
seemingly frivolous Invasion of the Body
Snatchers is about pods from outer space
coming to take over the human race, students
can make connections to Cold War fears of
infiltration, conspiracy, and conformity. And a
politically conscious rap group like Public
Enemy provides an excellent opportunity for
students to unpack the iconography of black
radicalism and identify the brewing anger within
the black community during the late 1980s. In
other words, a history class can use popular
culture texts like these to elucidate the
ideological contours of American culture in
various historical periods.
This is the premise of my American history
class: I use popular culture sourcessuch as
movies, music, TV, periodicals, fashion, sports
eventsas vehicles for studying twentieth-
century American cultural history. The class,
inelegantly titled Race, Class, and Gender in
Twentieth-Century American Popular Culture,
is offered to juniors and seniors at University
Laboratory High School, a selective admission
school for academically talented students in
Urbana, Illinois. The pedagogical approach
taken in this classwhich might be derided as
merely showing movieshas a (perhaps
justifiably) bad rap in the eyes of many history
educators; if popular culture texts are handled
uncritically without sufficient analytical rigor,
the resulting classroom experience is
intellectually feeble and pedagogically lazy.
However, when approached with sufficient
sophistication, popular culture texts give
students the opportunity to do real intellectual
heavy lifting, performing the complex work of
identifying the ideological content of a mass
media text and grappling with the di cult
question of what popular culture tells us about
the historical context in which it is produced and
consumed. Based on student feedback I have
received, such an approach to a history class is
not only fun for students, but it is also
stimulating and truly intellectually challenging.
Textual Analysis: While Studying a Text
Provide background ahead of content
delivery
Prepare students to look for certain
things, give cues before scenes to help
focus attention
Provide graphic organizers
Stop frequently to discuss key points
Textual Analysis: After Viewing a Text
Start with small group discussions
Map the characters
Move from description to interpretation
Determine what a source does
Force students to cite evidence
Synthesis Discussion
Cross-textual comparison
Connecting to historical context
Modern comparisons and self-reflection
questions
Shortcomings
Discussing tough topics: race,
sexuality, etc.
The high level of depth needed
 Trio Abstract Handout

The high level of abstraction somehow there was all this overlap, and
Benefits the broader historical context made the

Helps students become sophisticated source make so much more sense,

analysts ahhh.
It gets student participation up [W]e learn...as much [about] the study
Encourages sophisticated analytical of history and the effect of perception on
thinking and a complex approach to
the historical record as we do about the
history
Student Feedback actual events...I enjoy how we approach
history in a very nuanced way,
It is fun, stimulating, and intellectually
understanding it as something very
challenging
subjective and colored by perception.
I will truly never look at pop-culture
the same way again. Discussion Questions
Im now always looking for trends I
How do you feel about using popular
see in society and culture today and
culture in the classroom?
subconsciously (or consciously)
How do you think popular culture
analyzing them and thinking about how
impacts historiographical context?
it relates to other things, how it relates to
Do the positives outweigh the negatives
me, and depending on what it is, how I
of using popular culture in the
can personally react to it and impact it
classroom?
based on who I am.
I like that we go beyond a typical
history class and try to analyze things
ourselves.
Its one thing to be told the facts and
made to memorize them, but getting the
chance to analyze history on our own
and draw our own conclusions has been
very valuable.
The ways we analyzed the sources
were SO fascinating; we pulled so many
different threads through the sources and