Melissa Vosen Callens
The Cultural Diamond
as an English Teachers
Best Friend
T he role of popular culture in the
secondary and postsecondary class-
room has been widely debated.
Some teachers believe that popular
culture texts encourage and enhance critical think-
ing (Peacock et al. 1). Other teachers have argued
that students familiarity with popular culture can
help them feel confident entering the classroom
discussion, allowing students to demonstrate their
competency (Heron-Hruby and Alvermann 216).
In students early development, popular culture
texts can help them make sense of the world and
give them the opportunity to try different identi-
ties, in addition to helping them understand how
to be engaged adults (Lewis and Ketter 306).
I have also observed how popular culture can
serve as a talking point for serious issues facing our
society. Michelle Stack and Deirdre M. Kelly be-
lieve that shows such as The Simpsons can provide
a backdrop in which students can discuss power
dynamics based on gender, race, class, age, reli-
gion, sexuality; corporate ethics; family life; nuclear
energy; government corruption; and work place
democracy (16). Additionally, Alison Happel-Par-
kins and Jennifer Esposito argue that popular cul-
ture texts can help facilitate critical conversation
about homophobia, bullying, and social justice for
marginalized students (8).
Nonetheless, I have heard some colleagues
argue that the study of popular culture is frivolous
and devalues the traditional cannon often taught in
64 English Journal 106.5 (2017): 6469
Copyright 2017 by the National Council of Teachers of English. All rights reserved
EJ_May_2017_B.indd 64
The author describes how
the production and
reception of popular
culture can be studied in
secondary classrooms
using Wendy Griswolds
cultural diamond to
better understand the
homogenizing of content
and the limiting of
alternative viewpoints.
English classrooms. Thomas F. Bertonneau asserts
that the study of popular culture lowers expecta-
tions and promotes entertainment over learning
(429). As a teacher who frequently uses popular
culture in the classroom, this is an argument I have
had to refute. While edutainment is not exclusively
synonymous with the study of popular culture,
many have connected the two and expressed con-
cern that edutainment is taking over 21st-century
classrooms. I believe, however, that there is value
in using popular culture in academic settings, al-
though I agree that the study of popular culture
should be an object of critical engagement but not
valorization (Stack and Kelly 16). When I bring
popular culture texts into my classroom, it is to
help students better understand complex current
events or course concepts. By doing so, I have noted
how critical analysis of popular culture texts can
help students better understand traditional ones.
In 2002, Michael W. Smith and Jeffrey D.
Wilhelm studied the adolescent literacy of boys,
identifying factors that motivated their literacy
activities outside of the classroom, activities that
were largely absent in school. Smith and Wilhelms
research demonstrates that most students are con-
suming popular culture at home. Furthermore,
this consumption does not happen in a vacuum, as
these popular culture texts often inform students
academic work. In her research, Leigh A. Hall dis-
covered that adolescent students draw on popu-
lar culture texts to inform their understandings of
4/22/17 9:49 AM

academic ones, even if such practices are not sanc-
tioned in the classroom (304), a sentiment echoed
by Elizabeth Birr Moje and Jennifer Speyer. By ex-
plicitly drawing on popular culture texts, teachers
can help students make appropriate connections
between popular culture texts and academic ones,
build their vocabulary, and increase background
knowledge. In their concluding chapter, Smith
and Wilhelm assert that literacy must be redefined,
allowing opportunities to build on the strengths
and interests in popular culture and media litera-
cies as a way to develop more traditional forms of
literacy (186). By introducing popular culture into
the classroom, Smith and Wilhelm believe students
are able to engage in thinking through ideas that
matter to them.
In the remainder of this article, I describe a
course I teach on popular culture and the assign-
ments within that course. In the course, I aim to
help students articulate and generate our societys
understandings of complex issues surrounding
identity, justice, and inequality. Unlike any time
period before, it is easier for consumers, like stu-
dents, to provide feedback to popular culture gate-
keepers and stakeholders. In addition, it is easier
for students, independent of mainstream media
outlets, to produce popular culture texts that help
articulate and inform societys understandings of
complex issues. With a critical view of popular cul-
ture, students, as both receivers and creators of pop-
ular culture, have the power to facilitate change.
The Course
At a land grant research institution, my course is
for juniors and seniors majoring in communication.
Throughout the semester, students watch television
shows and films. They listen to music; they play
video games. They use different social media sites.
As they read these different texts, they reflect on
this experience and use Wendy Griswolds cultural
diamond to analyze each popular culture artifact. In
doing so, students closely examine the production
of popular culture, noting the homogenizing of
content and the limiting of alternative viewpoints.
Moreover, students analyze current popular culture
texts to see how they are consciously or uncon-
sciously linked to larger stories in society.
EJ_May_2017_B.indd 65
Melissa Vosen Callens
While this course was developed for upper-
division college-level students, many of the assign-
ments discussed in this article can be adopted for
high school use with little or no modifications,
other than adjusting expectations on rubrics and
being mindful of social media policies that often
vary from school to school. Throughout course
discussions, teachers can help students see how
popular culture texts can reinforce the status quo
or sometimes intersect to interrupt existing struc-
tures. Through popular culture, students can gain
the confidence to speak on a variety of issues
something they might otherwise feel uncomfort-
able doing.
Theoretical Framework:
The Cultural Diamond
In the first few class periods, I introduce Gris-
wolds cultural diamond. The cultural diamond
is used to frame our class discussions throughout
the semester, discussions that help students com-
plete a series of assignments. The cultural diamond
is an an accounting device intended to encour-
age a fuller understanding of any cultural objects
relationship to the social world (Griswold 16).
The cultural diamond fea-
tures four points social By explicitly drawing
world, receivers, cultural on popular culture
object, and producers as texts, teachers can
well as the six links be- help students make
tween the points. The di- appropriate connections
amond demonstrates how
all cultural objects have
between popular culture
producers (creators) as well texts and academic ones,
as receivers, receivers who build their vocabulary,
make meaning of the cul- and increase background
tural objects within a spe- knowledge.
cific social, economic, and
political context. To analyze an artifact, students
must understand all points of the cultural diamond.
While younger students may have difficulties un-
derstanding the source material (Griswolds arti-
cle), a secondary teacher could explain the cultural
diamond and each of its four points by preparing
appropriate handouts and modeling how the de-
vice can be used to analyze any popular culture
artifact. To help my students understand and use
English Journal 65
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 The Cultural Diamond as an English Teachers Best Friend
the diamond, I give them the diagram in Figure 1.
They use it throughout the course as they analyze
different popular culture artifacts.
Throughout the semester, students study a
variety of different artifacts and answer the ques-
tions at each of the four points. They also analyze
the links created between the points, as they are just
as important. For example, one question I might ask
as we explore the links between points is, Why, in
this society (social world), are some people allowed
to create this type of cultural object (creators), and
others are not? Or does the background of the cre-
ators match the background of the receivers? Do
the creators backgrounds inform the background of
characters depicted in their popular culture artifact?
At the start of each of our courses major units,
we talk about the diamond and how it can be used
to talk about popular culture and race, gender, sex-
uality, and disability. For example, in our race and
popular culture unit, we first talk about racial de-
mographics in the United States as well as current
event issues related to race, such as the Black Lives
Matter movement, in our social world. Next, we
explore how race is represented in popular culture
artifactsand how those representations might
generate and articulate understandings reflected in
our social world. In addition, we examine the racial
breakdown of those involved in the creative process:
Are some races underrepresented or overrepresented
FIGURE 1. The Cultural Diamond
66 May 2017
EJ_May_2017_B.indd 66
in the production process, and what effect might
this have? Finally, we ask the question, Does race
influence how receivers respond and interpret cul-
ture objectives?
I assign the following three assignments in
my course, all of which use the cultural diamond
as a heuristic guide of learning. These assignments
require students to first critically interpret and then
respond to popular culture texts and can be easily
adopted for any classroom. While my class focuses
on current popular culture artifacts, it is important
to note that the cultural diamond can be used in
English classrooms to analyze any text, including
traditional ones.
Minor Assignment: Twitter
Throughout the semester, students are required to
tweet weekly. I use Twitter in this particular class
because Twitter itself is part of the popular culture
terrainan important one. As Twitter users, students
are both creators and receivers of popular culture, and
I believe it is important for students to not only un-
derstand how to use Twitter (particularly as commu-
nication professionals) but also understand how social
inequalities are present on the site, both in terms of
access and the claims that are made by users. My stu-
dents learn how Twitter works as a social mechanism
and how the use of Twitter can both affirm and chal-
lenge inequalities by using the cultural diamond. In
the assignment, created by Dr. Dustin Kidd and mod-
ified for this course, students are required to choose an
idea or issue (race, class, gender, sexuality, disability,
etc.) within popular culture (TV, film, video games,
fiction, advertising, music, Internet, social media) to
explore in greater detail. Throughout the semester,
students tweet about their topics and are required to
use relevant hashtags, connect their tweets to relevant
Twitter accounts, and engage with other users. These
requirements allow me to talk about how Twitter
works on a macro level, but it also allows them to
explore it on a micro level.
For example, one student tweeted at Di-
recTV, urging the company to stop airing and cre-
ating sexist NFL commercials. In the commercials
in question, football players play two versions of
themselvesa desirable version and a nondesirable
version. As one columnist points out, however, the
guys no guys want to be are not obnoxious or
4/22/17 9:49 AM

mean; rather, they are feminized (Dailey). Through-
out a series of tweets, connected to a variety of
stakeholders and engaging other users, the student
demonstrated how detrimental and sexist these
commercials are toward young men and women.
To ensure that students have examined the issue
critically before tweeting about it, we workshop ideas
at the beginning of each class period. Students work
in small groups as well as larger ones. For this par-
ticular assignment, we use NCTEs persuasion map
(www.readwritethink.org/files/resources/interactives
/persuasion_map/) to outline possible pieces of evi-
dence to support their primary claims. In addition,
I require students to get into groups and identify
counterarguments; at least one of their tweets must
respectfully address and refute a counterargument.
Finally, we examine, How can one respond effec-
tively and encourage change with only 140 char-
acters? If your school does not allow Twitter,
students can still engage in the exercise on a poster
boardand can display their tweets around the
classroom.
When completing an assignment such as this
one, it is important to acknowledge and discuss
with students the limitations within the medium.
Understanding how Twitter can both affirm and
challenge social inequalities helps students under-
stand how the stratified structures of Twitter are
an expression of the limits of the public sphere
(Fuchs 207). Who has a voice on Twitter? What
tweets frequently get a response from stakeholders?
These are questions the students explore as they
complete their assignment.
Major Assignment: Talk Back Letter
For one of their major assignments, students write
letters that are complimentary, critical, or a com-
bination of both to someone who profits from a
certain popular culture artifact, an artifact they
previously analyzed using the cultural diamond.
Students can write to an advertiser, manufacturer,
corporation, retailer, media outlet, or celebrity. In
their letter, they are to respectfully tell the recipi-
ent what they like and/or dont like, why they feel
that way, and what they plan to do about it. It gives
them a chance to be more than a passive consumer
and to use their economic power. Hall argues for
regular, thoughtful, and systematic planning that
EJ_May_2017_B.indd 67
Melissa Vosen Callens
students are pushed to think deeply about what
they are reading and how pop culture and academic
texts connect, so they may feel empowered, rather
than reinforcing the status quo (304).
While some students decide to write to com-
panies they had already reached out to on Twitter,
other students decide to write to companies with
which they had no previous contact. To help them
brainstorm, I provide them with the following list:
Does it (the popular culture artifact) promote
racial, class, or gender stereotypes?
Does it encourage or discourage racial profil-
ing, misogyny, and/or heternormativity?
Does it normalize violence toward women?
Does it support and cultivate risky
behaviors?
Does it promote the thin ideal or another
certain body type?
Does it encourage or discourage violence?
Does it victimize a certain group?
Does it exploit children?
Not only does this assignment provide stu-
dents with the opportunity to use their economic
power, but it also provides them with an authen-
tic writing experience, a practice recommended by
the Council of Writing Program Administrators.
According to the Council of Writing Program
Administrators:
Effective instruction approaches writing as a
whole and varied activity, by its nature includ-
ing feedback from peers and experts, that aims to
create authentically communicative results. Most
isolated drills and decontextualized instruction
have shown no value in improving student writ-
ing in large part because authentic writing is
always embedded in complex rhetorical situations.
(WPA Network for Media Action)
An authentic writing experience, and the audience,
can help encourage students to draft and revise
multiple times, with the goal of producing a top-
notch piece of writing. For the most part, students
letters were well thought out and passionate. Stu-
dents researched their topic, as well as their audi-
ence, finding support for their argument. Moreover,
they used the cultural diamond to identify other
perspectives and pieces of evidence. Since the pur-
pose of a letter was to raise awareness of a neglected
English Journal 67
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 The Cultural Diamond as an English Teachers Best Friend
and important issue and/or negotiate an agreement,
we talked about persuasive writing techniques.
In my class, for example, one student wrote to
the head of marketing at Hardees, requesting the
company stop over-sexualizing women to sell their
products. While she did not receive a response, she
felt as though her voice was heard. Another student
wrote to ESPN, respectfully asking the cable com-
pany to hire more women anchors.
Major Assignment: Tumblr Page
Finally, students also create a Tumblr page explor-
ing the issue they tweeted about earlier in the se-
mester in greater detail, an assignment created by
Dr. Dustin Kidd and once
I had to negotiate how to again modified to emphasize
handle relationships with the role of the cultural dia-
students on social media. mond. If students wanted to
I also had to learn how to change their topic, they were
manage the tweets. allowed to after discussing it
with me. Each Tumblr post re-
quired students to research the topic in more depth.
The following is a list of their required posts:
One blog must provide a short (300500
words) introduction to your topic with some
basic observations about the importance of
the topic, drawing on the four points of the
cultural diamond.
One blog must provide a short (300500
words) statement about academic research
findings related to your topic.
One blog must provide a short (300500
words) position statement about your topic,
where you actually issue a critique or an
argument.
One blog must provide a video from You-
Tube or elsewhere related to your topic with
a short caption explaining why the video is
significant.
One blog must provide a link related to your
topic, with a short caption explaining why
the link is significant.
One blog must analyze a specific popular cul-
ture artifact, related to your topic, using the
cultural diamond.
The final blog is in place of the final exam. They
share this particular post with the class.
68 May 2017
EJ_May_2017_B.indd 68
Like with Twitter, we talk about how Tum-
blr is an important aspect of the popular culture
terrain. Tumblr users, like those who use Twitter,
Facebook, Instagram, etc., are both consumers and
makers of culture. But social inequalities also map
out onto the space of Tumblr, both in terms of access
to blogs and in terms of the posts that aremade.
Pitfalls
The assignments described above are not without
their pitfalls. At times, it was difficult to get some
students to view popular culture through a critical
lens, as I heard on more than one occasion, I just
want to watch the movie/television show and enjoy
it. Having the cultural diamond as an accounting
device, however, helped students look at popular
culture from a variety of different perspectives,
moving beyond their initial reaction to the artifact.
In many ways, it made their consumption and sub-
sequent analysis systematic instead of falling into
the I am here to be entertained mode.
In addition, when completing the talk back
letter assignment, some students believed that
their voice or opinion did not matter. Some told
me they were embarrassed to send their letters, so
we drafted and revised on two separate occasions.
To help students better understand the power they
hold as receivers of popular culture, I shared sev-
eral examples with them that demonstrated their
opinion does matter, and that in some cases, like
with the removal of confederate flag merchandise at
Walmart, it can enact change.
Finally, using Twitter also presented chal-
lenges. I had to negotiate how to handle relation-
ships with students on social media. I also had to
learn how to manage the tweets. Because of my
class size (25), it was difficult to track what stu-
dents wrote; after some trial and error, however,
I found a workaround. I asked students to use a
course hashtag and created a course list for students
to join. The list, however, wasnt particularly help-
ful because I had a lot of students who tweeted for
fun, and those tweets often peppered the lists feed.
To combat these problems, teachers have a couple
different options: ask students to create a separate
academic account, or complete an advanced search
of each students username and the course hashtag
when grading, which is what I chose to do. While
4/22/17 9:49 AM
 Melissa Vosen Callens

this process is tedious, it does work, and because
I found the assignment so valuable, I believe the
extra time was worth it.
Conclusion
In my course, I wanted students to understand that
popular culture texts are important because they do
often articulate and generate our understandings on
complex issues surrounding identity, justice, and
inequality. Rather than dismiss these texts as non-
academic, it is time to recognize the power they
hold in our society, and the power students have,
as both receivers and creators of popular culture.
Not only do I want my students to be able to crit-
ically analyze popular culture artifacts, I also want
them to realize they are also producers, and in many
cases, they have the choice as to whether they want
to affirm existing inequalities or challenge existing
structures.
Works Cited
Bertonneau, Thomas F. A Counter-Curriculum for the Pop
Culture Classroom. Academic Questions, vol. 23, no.
4, 2010, pp. 42034.
Dailey, Dalana. DirecTVs Sexism Against Men. The
Tacoma Ledger, 12 Oct. 2015, http://thetacomaledger
.com/directvs-sexism-against-men/.
Fuchs, Christian. Social Media: A Critical Introduction. Sage,
2014.
Griswold, Wendy. Cultures and Societies in a Changing World.
4th ed., Sage, 2012.
Hall, Leigh A. How Popular Culture Texts Inform and
Shape Students Discussions of Social Studies Texts.
Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, vol. 55, no. 4,
2011, pp. 296305.
Happel-Parkins, Alison, and Jennifer Esposito. Using
Popular Culture Texts in the Classroom to Inter
rogate Issues of Gender Transgression Related
Bullying. Educational Studies, vol. 51, no. 1, 2015,
pp. 316.
Heron-Hruby, Alison, and Donna E. Alvermann. Implica-
tions of Adolescents Popular Culture Use for School
Literacy. Literacy Instruction for Adolescents: Research-
Based Practice, edited by Karen D. Wood and Wil-
liam E. Blanton, Guilford Press, 2009, pp. 21027.
Lewis, Cynthia, and Jean Ketter. Encoding Youth: Popular
Culture and Multicultural Literature in a Rural Con-
text. Reading and Writing Quarterly, vol. 24, no. 3,
2008, pp. 283310.
Moje, Elizabeth Birr, and Jennifer Speyer. The Reality of
Challenging Texts in High School Science and Social
Studies: How Teachers Can Mediate Comprehension.
Best Practices in Adolescent Literacy Instruction, edited by
Kathleen A. Hinchman and Heather K. Sheridan-
Thomas, Guilford Press, 2008, pp. 185211.
Peacock, Jessica, et al. University Faculty Perceptions and
Utilization of Popular Culture in the Classroom.
Studies in Higher Education, 26 May 2016, pp. 113.
Smith, Michael W., and Jeffrey D. Wilhelm. Reading Dont
Fix No Chevys: Literacy in the Lives of Young Men.
Heinemann, 2002.
Stack, Michelle, and Deirdre M. Kelly. Popular Media,
Education, and Resistance. Canadian Journal of Edu-
cation, vol. 21, no, 1, 2006, pp. 526.
WPA Network for Media Action. Council of Writing Pro-
gram Administrators, 2011. http://wpacouncil.org/nma.

Melissa Vosen Callens is an assistant professor of practice in communication and instructional design at North Dakota State
University and serves as a judge of NCTEs annual Achievement Awards in Writing; she can be reached at melissa.vosen@ndsu.edu.

R E A DWR IT E T H IN K CO N N E C T IO N Lisa Storm Fink, RWT

In this lesson plan from ReadWriteThink.org, students practice writing effective letters for a variety of real-life situ-
ations, such as responding to a prompt on a standardized test, corresponding with distant family members, or
communicating with a business. They begin by reviewing the differences between business and friendly letter for-
mats, using examples and a Venn diagram. Next, students write two letters, choosing from a list of prompts that
include letters for varying audiences and purposes. After completing drafts and revisions, students complete their
final versions using an online tool. http://bit.ly/1Ys8aiT

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