Abstract

This paper takes on the mixtape as a pedagogical method for approaching urgent and critical topics within the undergraduate online classroom. Drawing on two case studies from different sections of an introductory course on environmental and social justice taught in an American studies department, we demonstrate how mixtape-inspired assignments offer a method for theorizing and enacting the connections between popular culture and critical scholarship around injustice in the humanities and social sciences while
also altering the space of the classroom to promote deeper student engagement, comprehension, and reflection. We argue that introducing popular culture as both content and method within an undergraduate course not only strengthens student understanding of key concepts and the relevance of these outside the classroom, but also acknowledges the importance of time and context within the space of the online course. Popular culture, a component of this context, enriches the online learning experience and responds to contemporary issues and events that students encounter in the material world. Mixtapes serve as a conceptual tool for understanding the contents of a syllabus and as a pedagogical tool for assessment. The practice of making mixtapes within a course on environmental and social justice opens the possibility for radical expression.

Keywords: mixtape, environmental justice, online classroom, online teaching and learning, popular culture, pedagogy

Author Bio

Elspeth Iralu is a Visiting Assistant Professor in the department of Community and Regional Planning at the University of New Mexico, where she teaches courses on Indigenous planning, environmental and social justice, and decolonial politics. Her research brings transnational American studies into critical dialogue with Indigenous geographies. Her writing has appeared in The New Americanist, the Journal of Native American and Indigenous Studies, and the American Association of Geographers Review of Books. 

Caitlin Grann is a PhD candidate in American Studies at the University of New Mexico. Her current research explores the relationality of avant-garde and alt-country via a reimagined North American Southwest as it exists in the archive of artist Jo Harvey Allen. Caitlin makes photographic artist books in tandem with her scholarly research. Several of her pieces are in permanent collections of the Southwest Collection/Special Collections Library at Texas Tech University in Lubbock, Texas.

Suggested Citation

MLA

Iralu, Elspeth and Caitlin Grann. “Hell You Talmbout: Mixtapes as method for online environmental justice pedagogy.” Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy, vol. 7, no. 1. 2020. http://journaldialogue.org/issues/v7-issue-2/hell-you-talmbout-mixtapes-as-method-for-online-environmental-justice-pedagogy/

APA

Iralu, E. & C. Grann. (2020). Hell You Talmbout: Mixtapes as method for online environmental justice pedagogy. Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy, 7(2). http://journaldialogue.org/issues/v7-issue-2/hell-you-talmbout-mixtapes-as-method-for-online-environmental-justice-pedagogy/