Editorial: The Story of Popular Culture

N IMPORTANT (AND PLEASING) RECENT DEVELOPMENT AT MANY

colleges and universities is the creation and expansion of

courses devoted to the scholarly study of popular culture. My
home institution of Michigan State University is no exception, and this
past year I have been involved with the design of a new undergraduate
American Studies class entitled American Popular Culture.
As I was assisting in navigating this new course proposal through
the faculty governance process, at one point I was asked by a colleague
in another department about the need for such a class. This individual
was not being an obstructionist with this question, but was expressing
a genuine need to understand the importance of this course in the
undergraduate American Studies curriculum.
But how was I to explain the value in teaching popular culture to
someone without any background in the subject? Before answering, I
thought about my work as the new editor of The Journal of Popular
Culture. What I perhaps most enjoy about my job is reading the new
article submissions about topics as diverse as one can possibly
imagineFthe umbrella of popular culture studies, both in the
United States and around the world, is a rather large one indeed.
Though quite different in approaches and subject, the single quality
that these articles share is that each tells a fascinating story.
And I had my reply. Popular culture is a story, I told my colleague,
or more precisely, a collection of stories. Each story tells something
critically important about an object, or an entertainment formula, or a
belief, or a way of behaving. To understand the way in which these
stories are toldFand even more importantly, to understand the
meaning of these storiesFis to understand how culture, society, and
the individual interact. To be ignorant of the stories of popular culture
is to be ignorant of our relationship with our culture. It is, in fact, to be
culturally illiterate, which thus does a disservice to the fundamental
concept of a liberal arts education.
The Journal of Popular Culture, Vol. 37, No. 2, 2003
r 2003 Blackwell Publishing, 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA, and
PO Box 1354, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK

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My colleague was satisfied with this explanation, and the course,

now approved, will be taught for the first timeFfall semester
2003Fat Michigan State University.


In closing, I would like to welcome a new member to the MSU
editorial staff of The Journal of Popular Culture: Jennifer DeFore, who
will be working as a production assistant.
Gary Hoppenstand
Editor
The Journal of Popular Culture