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Acting Out Culture
Fourth EditionJames S. Miller
©2018
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Cultural messages bombard students daily, laden with unstated rules about what makes our work valuable, our bodies ideal, our connections meaningful. Acting Out Culture empowers students to critically read those messages and use writing to speak back to their culture and question its rules.
This book appeals especially to those students who are not full participants in the dominant culture, as well as to their instructors, who want to help students see how subtle (and not so subtle) cultural forces can shape their lives—and how they can challenge and resist those forces. The new edition of Acting Out Culture builds on that success, with provocative readings (more than 50 percent of them new) that challenge the rules we live by; pedagogical tools to encourage students to read, think, and write critically about their culture; and instructional support featuring sample syllabi, additional discussion topics, and ideas for teaching with visuals and online content.
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Learn MoreTable of Contents
Preface for Instructors
Introduction: How We Read and Write About Culture (and How We Ought To)
These Are the Rules
Norms, Scripts, Roles, Rules: Analyzing Popular Culture
How Culture Shapes Us: Rules of the Road
The World in Words
Guided Reading: Anne Trubek’s "Stop Teaching Handwriting" [annotated essay]
A Student’s Response to Trubek: Jordan Radziecki, "Don’t Erase Handwriting" [student essay]
Reading Multimodal Texts
Make Yourself Heard
1 How We Believe:
In what ways does what we know shape our daily actions?
Michael Sandel, Markets and Morals
*Andi Zeisler, The Corridors of Empower
Rewriting the Script: Buy Nothing Christmas
Michael Eric Dyson, Understanding Black Patriotism
Debra J. Dickerson, The Great White Way
Then and Now: Feeling (In)Secure
Amitava Kumar, The Restoration of Faith
*Naomi Klein, One Way or Another, Everything Changes
*Tom Jacobs, It’s Not Easy Being Green—and Manly
Scenes and Un-scenes: Political Protest
Acting Like a Citizen: Re-Scripting Belief
2 How We Watch and Listen:
Does what we see and hear depend on how we’re looking and listening?
Harriet Mcbryde Johnson, Unspeakable Conversations
*Lindy West, Bones
Rewriting the Script: Reality Television
Heather Havrilesky, Some "Girls" Are Better Than Others
*Steve Almond, Is It Immoral to Watch the Super Bowl?
*Amanda Hess, Why Old Men Find Young Women’s Voices So Annoying
*Tiffanie Wen, Inside the Podcast Brain:Why Do Audio Stories Captivate?
Then and Now: Wearing Your Identity on Your Sleeve
*Tom Vanderbilt, How Predictable Is Our Taste?
*Kevin Fallon, Why We Binge-Watch Television
Scenes and Un-scenes: Picturing Climate Change
Acting Like a Citizen: Keeping an Eye Out
3 How We Eat:
Which rules dictate the foods we put in our bodies?
*Kim Bosch, The Things We Eat Alone
*Sophie Egan, Having It Our Way
Rewriting the Script: Organic Food
Nicholas Kristof, Prudence or Cruelty?
*Nathaniel Johnson, Is There a Moral Case for Eating Meat?
Francine Prose, The Wages of Sin
*Harriet Brown, How My Life Changed In One Sentence
Then and Now: How to Make Meatloaf
*Lily Wong, Eating the Hyphen
Brendan Buhler, On Eating Roadkill
Scenes and Un-scenes: Giving Thanks
Acting Like a Citizen: Consumer Profiling
4 How We Learn:
What are our perceptions of knowledge and the ways we should acquire that knowledge?
Alfie Kohn, From Degrading to De-Grading
Kristina Rizga, Everything You’ve Heard About Failing Schools Is Wrong
Then and Now: Encyclopedic Knowledge
bell hooks, Learning in the Shadow of Race and Class
Jonathan Kozol, Preparing Minds for Markets
*Frank Bruni, Why College Rankings Are a Joke
*Ben Casselman, Shut Up About Harvard
Rewriting the Script: Job Skills in the Classroom
*Aaron Hanlon, The Trigger Warning Myth
* Ferentz Lafargue, Welcome to the "Real World"
Scenes and Un-scenes: Looking at Learning
Acting like a Citizen: Educational Scripts
5 How We Work:
What do our jobs say about us?
Matthew B. Crawford, The Case for Working With Your Hands
Mac McClelland, I Was a Warehouse Wage Slave
Rewriting the Script: Working at Wal-Mart
Barbara Ehrenreich, How the Poor Are Made to Pay for Their Poverty
*Linda Tirado, You Get What You Pay For
*Emily Badger, What Happens When We All Become Our Own Bosses
Catherine Rampell, A Generation of Slackers? Not So Much
Then and Now: Dressing for Success
*Maddie Oatman, The Racist, Twisted History of Tipping
Mike Rose, Blue-Collar Brilliance
Scenes and Un-scenes: A Woman’s Work
Acting Like a Citizen: Working Hard or Hardly Working?
6 How We Connect:
What forces help—and hinder—our relationships with others?
*Navneet Alang, The Comfort of a Digital Confidante
*Mae Wiskin, Can’t Quit the Clicks: The Rise of Social Media Rehab
Rewriting the Script: Political Gridlock
*Bijan Stephen, Get Up, Stand Up: Social Media Helps Black Lives Matter Fight the Power
*Caroline O’Donovan, Nextdoor Rolls Out Product Fix It Hopes Will Stem Racial Profiling
Then and Now: Personal Shopping
*Sherry Turkle, The Public Square
Charles Duhigg, How Companies Learn Your Secrets
Scenes and Un-scenes: "Hello, Neighbor"
Peter Lovenheim, Won’t You Be My Neighbor?
*Matthew Desmond, Home and Hope
Acting Like a Citizen: Bridging the Divide
7 How We Identify:
Do the roles we play reflect who we truly are?
*Sarah Mirk, Tuning In: How a Generation is Schooling Itself on Sexuality
*Thomas Page McBee, The Truck Stop
Rewriting the Script: Gender as Choice
*Rebecca Traister, All the Single Ladies
*Jodi Kantor, Historic Day for Gays, But Twinge for Loss of Outsider Culture
Then and Now: Saying "I Do"
David Brooks, People Like Us
*J.D. Vance, Hillbilly Elegy
Scenes and Un-scenes: Class Dismissed?
*Garnette Cadogan, Black and Blue
*Ta-Nehisi Coates, Between the World and Me
Acting Like a Citizen: Checking I.D.
Index of Authors and Titles