A cross-cultural historical examination of Santa Claus reflects that women have contributed substantially to the legend of Santa Claus, but their contributions are downplayed, demeaned, or reframed to fit a sexist view of women's roles. Santa Claus type figures have emerged around the world as part of celebrations of the winter solstice, but…

Pop culture has served as a catalyst for leadership development, both creating and manufacturing culture while also creating the parameters for us to understand culture in a public context. While pop culture has influenced how people engage with leadership development across contexts, celebrities have been the manifestation of pop culture…

Chengdu's popular music, with its profound historical and cultural significance, serves as an educational resource at the intersection of music, literacy, and cultural education. This research aims to propose guidelines for the teaching resource of Chengdu popular music for fostering literacy and cultural education. Located in the culturally…

To start teaching about climate change in an immediately attention-grabbing and fully somatic way, the author begins with an activity called Singer/Songbird. The goal is for students to quickly identify that media and technology influence our environmental knowledge, beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors toward climate change. Besides learning that…

Through the use of horror movie motifs like zombies and mad doctors, "The Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials" (2015) stands in drastic contrast to other young adult dystopian properties like "The Hunger Games" (2012), for example, in that "Scorch Trials" uses allegory as a means to comment on neoliberalism, alienated…

This research features a discourse analysis of two podcasts: the "Mobb Deep, Shook Ones, Pt. II" episode of "Song Exploder" and the "Rap on Trial" episode of "Hidden Brain." We selected these podcasts through an abductive method of what we call "fortuitous listening" because of how they reveal…

Musical play is a vital aspect of children's musical cultures. As the social and cultural experiences of children change over time, their playful engagements with music may reflect these shifts. The purpose of this oral historical research was to explore girlhood musical play experiences over the course of a span of approximately 80 years (ca.…

This narrative inquiry research study explores the ways in which hip-hop culture functions as a form of resistance to the oppressive and traditional spaces that constitute predominantly white institutions (PWIs) of higher education. Despite the prevalence and power of hip-hop among Black collegians, little is known about how hip-hop can assist…

Popular culture exists as an expression of cultural history. It speaks to who we are, what we aspire toward, and where our generation stands in relation to the major issues of the day. This article is a conversation about the myriad perspectives offered in this issue of "New Directions for Student Leadership," exploring the contributions…

Hip Hop is a cultural phenomenon deeply rooted in the collective knowledge and resistance of Black and Latina/o(x) youth, who are often silenced or missing from the traditional social studies curriculum. Even as the culture's presence has spread within schools, the social studies has yet to engage with the civic identities and critical…

This feature describes the efforts of the Oviatt Library at California State University, Northridge to offer programming presenting hip-hop and spoken word poetry. These events, begun in 2016, feature genres relevant to the university's diverse and global enrollment. Though not traditional library presentations, they recognize the wide appeal of…

Investigating children's pop cultures that rely on myth-making provide understandings about how children are active agents in the socialization into cultural and moral practices in their everyday lives. An annual visit to Santa Claus is important in children's pop culture in the Western world, however, the social practices associated with the…

In my investigation of dance curricula in US higher education, the dance discipline's primary pedagogical concentrations in classical ballet and Eurocentric modern dance techniques implicitly signal their centrality to the development of any academically trained dancer. This focus, in turn, generalizes and essentializes other cultural and…

In this New York City, New York-based study, we made use of a Critical Cycle of Mixtape Creation (CCMC) intervention to examine a Bangladeshi high school student's understanding of justice, and the impact of injustice on his well-being, through his creation of and reflection on original hip-hop song lyrics. The student participated in the CCMC…

In 1963--a racially-charged time in the United States--James Baldwin delivered "A Talk to Teachers," urging educators to engage youth in difficult conversations about current events. We concur with Giroux (2011, 2019) that political forces influence our educational spaces and that classrooms should not be viewed as apolitical, but…