We are pleased to announce the Fall preview of Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy, Volume 2, Issue 2. The preview showcases a sneak-peek into the upcoming special issue on integrating popular culture in pedagogical practices, which will be released at the Southwest Popular Culture/American Culture Association (SWPACA) conference in Albuquerque, New Mexico on February 10^th, 2016.

The four articles in this preview demonstrate a breadth of possibility in popular culture and pedagogy. They include a retrospective of the 2015 SWPACA conference, a reflection on developing courses with popular culture components, an analysis of teaching and learning with popular culture, and an article addressing how fiction can be applied to the higher education classroom.

Laurence Raw’s retrospective piece, A Pedagogical Journey: Albuquerque 2015, contemplates a number of presentations in the Popular Culture and Pedagogy area at the SWPACA conference held last February. In addition to the presentation synopses, Raw considers the future of pedagogy as it relates to popular culture studies.

Following Raw’s article, Emily Howson, Chris Massenburg, and Cecilia Shelton share their individual pedagogical practices in Reflections on Building a Popular Writing Course. Using multiple course scenarios, Howson, Massenburg, and Shelton provide practical examples to encourage student engagement.

In (Re)learning about Learning: Using Cases from Popular Media to Extend and Complicate Our Understandings of What It Means to Learn and Teach, by Kelli Bippert, Dennis Davis, Margaret Rose Hilburn, Jennifer D. Hooper, Deepti Kharod, Cinthia Rodriguez, and Rebecca Stortz , the authors offer an analysis of learning and teaching in popular culture texts. The authors apply sociocultural and socio-constructivist learning theories to uncover how learning and teaching can be re-conceptualized.

The final article, Anne Collins Smith’s Applications in the Classroom: The Potential of Scholarly Studies in Higher Potter in Higher Education, contemplates the various ways in which the reviewed text could be utilized in the classroom. Smith discusses multiple avenues for gearing the work towards college-level English instruction.

The full issue on Popular Culture and Pedagogy will appear in conjunction with the 37th annual Southwest Popular/American Culture Association conference in February and will include these four articles, as well as a guest editorial by Kurt Depner, Chair of the SWPACA Pedagogy and Popular Culture Area, and additional examinations of popular culture using music to teach sociological theory, and more! We look forward to sharing with you the issue in its entirety.