Unconventional English class examines pop culture
The English 1010 Learning Community class taught by Andrew Smith culminates Dec. 4 with a conference called “The Eclectic Spiderweb,” with student presentations covering a wide range of pop culture topics from the “Twilight” phenomenon to rock music’s influences.
“We’ve looked at popular culture mostly in terms of film and music this semester. The students have identified experiences in their lives where pop culture was real to them,” Smith said. “So we’ve treated pop culture in a scholarly way.”
The English 1010 Learning Community brings together 25 students who apply what they learn in the classroom to real-world experiences. The goal of the Learning Communities program is to more closely connect students to the university and to each other in hopes that they will complete their degrees. Students take both the English class and another general education course, in this case University 1020 or “First Year Connections.”
Their pop culture presentations are being offered 2-5 p.m. Dec. 4 at the Jere Whitson Building, Room 128. A reception follows 5:30 p.m.-7 p.m. and a free concert at the Backdoor Playhouse at 8 p.m. features three Middle Tennessee-area rock bands. The bands to be featured are Mother/Father from Nashville, The Pursuits from Clarksville and This is Luke from Jamestown.
Student Kati Woods, who is majoring in German, said she learned a great deal this semester about teamwork and organization as well as composition. She and the other students organized all aspects of the event, from writing the papers to be presented and debated, to organizing the reception and booking the bands.
“Not many classes offer students this type of full experience,” Woods said. “We’re doing things that have to do with the real world and it’s very exciting.”
Woods’ paper discusses how classic rock affected her life two summers ago when financial hard times found her moving from Florida to Nashville to live in an recreational vehicle and work at a campground.
“I wrote about my relationship with classic rock and made a CD with music about freedom and being on the road,” she said.
Smith says the students will present their papers in a scholarly fashion with points of view to be debated and discussed just as scholars do at a more advanced academic conference.
In the coming spring semester, a portion of the Learning Communities program will be shaped a little differently, said Kurt Eisen, interim associate dean of TTU’s College of Arts and Sciences. A group of students will take English 1010 along with sociology and political science classes for a program that will expose them to civic engagement.
“It will allow students to work on projects that connect them with civic agencies,” Eisen said. The program will receive funding via the university’s Quality Enhancement Plan, an initiative to improve student learning and critical thinking via real-world problem solving skills and active learning.
TTU’s admissions officers have begun recruiting students to participate in a similar residential concept called “learning villages” for the fall semester of 2010. The concept blends English tradition with local originality to create residential communities of 150-300 individuals in which students develop their own programs and activities. In Fall 2010, students will be invited to join one of two initial theme-based villages: service or environment.
