Date of Award

1998

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

Education

First Advisor

William F. Pinar

Abstract

Cultural studies has emerged in recent decades as a popular realm of academic inquiry (During, 1993). Giroux (1994), while noting the field's increased acceptance, ponders why cultural studies has yet to permeate critical analyses of education and simultaneously questions cultural studies' reticence in considering schools as an important site of cultural production. Edgerton (1996) concurs with Giroux and notes that cultural studies' use in colleges of education is extremely rare. The realm of popular culture, one of the central foci of cultural studies, has especially been marginalized in academic discourses. My project is to explore the implications of curriculum theory as cultural studies, devoting special attention to the realm of popular culture. I use post-modern notions of recombinant texts (Miller, 1996) to interrogate the possibilities of alternative sites/metaphors for curriculum theory which might be generated from popular cultural forms and practices. I pay particular attention to the modes of theoretical re-presentation that seem most prescient to the future of the curriculum theory field, and utilize multi-tiered textual strategies to elaborate the significance of such sites/metaphors. In reconceptualizing curriculum as culture, and in utilizing the "antidisciplinary" (Edgerton, 1996) methodology of cultural studies, I believe we approach Pinar's (1991) notion of curriculum study as a visionary search. The cultural forms that I study and re-present, namely museums, rap music, science fiction, Bruce Springsteen's work, and vampire films, epitomize fluid spaces which point us toward new modes of knowing and new means of relating to the world.

ISBN

9780599213616

Pages

193

DOI

10.31390/gradschool_disstheses.6820

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