Fantasy Media in the Classroom, ed. Emily Dial-Driver

2012 Book 107: Fantasy Media in the Classroom, ed. Emily Dial-Driver (7/12/2012)

Categories: Other

Reason for Reading: Early Reviewer's Book. 

My Review 4/5 stars
Fantasy Media in the Classroom is a collection of essays which describe why fantasy media and popular culture are useful in the classroom. For instance students can learn the same techniques using popular fiction as they can with an old-school class, but they feel more confident in their analyses because they already feel like they are experts on popular culture. These lessons and confidence can then be extrapolated on to classical literature. Fantasy Media in the Classroom also gives examples of how popular culture can be used to design lessons. This book was written mostly from the perspective of teaching college students, but a few essays talk about high school students. It's possible these lessons could also be changed a bit and used for younger students, as well. I think this book would be useful to teachers, even if they don't plan on fully incorporating popular culture in their classrooms, because it may help them to see the benefit of popular culture references their students make during class...and how such references could be embraced as an interesting interpretation rather than brushed off. I am not a teacher, but I found this book interesting because it helped me to better understand what fantasy media says about psychology/sociology/politics.