Acting Out Culture Readings for Critical Inquiry

Cultural messages bombard students daily, laden with unstated rules about what makes our work valuable, our bodies ideal, our connections meaningful. Acting Out Culture empowers students to critically read those messages and use writing to speak back to their culture and question its rules.

This book appeals especially to those students who are not full participants in the dominant culture, as well as to their instructors, who want to help students see how subtle (and not so subtle) cultural forces can shape their lives—and how they can challenge and resist those forces. The new edition of Acting Out Culture builds on that success, with provocative readings (more than 50 percent of them new) that challenge the rules we live by; pedagogical tools to encourage students to read, think, and write critically about their culture; and instructional support featuring sample syllabi, additional discussion topics, and ideas for teaching with visuals and online content.

Make Yourself Heard

1   How We Believe:

In what ways does what we know shape our daily actions?

Michael Sandel, Markets and Morals

*Andi Zeisler, The Corridors of Empower

Rewriting the Script: Buy Nothing Christmas

Michael Eric Dyson, Understanding Black Patriotism

Debra J. Dickerson, The Great White Way

Then and Now: Feeling (In)Secure

Amitava Kumar, The Restoration of Faith

*Naomi Klein, One Way or Another, Everything Changes

*Tom Jacobs, It’s Not Easy Being Green—and Manly

Scenes and Un-scenes: Political Protest

Acting Like a Citizen: Re-Scripting Belief

2   How We Watch and Listen:

Does what we see and hear depend on how we’re looking and listening?

Harriet Mcbryde Johnson, Unspeakable Conversations

*Lindy West, Bones

Rewriting the Script: Reality Television

Heather Havrilesky, Some "Girls" Are Better Than Others

*Steve Almond, Is It Immoral to Watch the Super Bowl?

*Amanda Hess, Why Old Men Find Young Women’s Voices So Annoying

*Tiffanie Wen, Inside the Podcast Brain:Why Do Audio Stories Captivate?

Then and Now: Wearing Your Identity on Your Sleeve

*Tom Vanderbilt, How Predictable Is Our Taste?

*Kevin Fallon, Why We Binge-Watch Television

Scenes and Un-scenes: Picturing Climate Change

Acting Like a Citizen: Keeping an Eye Out

3   How We Eat:

Which rules dictate the foods we put in our bodies?

*Kim Bosch, The Things We Eat Alone

*Sophie Egan, Having It Our Way

Rewriting the Script: Organic Food

Nicholas Kristof, Prudence or Cruelty?

*Nathaniel Johnson, Is There a Moral Case for Eating Meat?

Francine Prose, The Wages of Sin

*Harriet Brown, How My Life Changed In One Sentence

Then and Now: How to Make Meatloaf

*Lily Wong, Eating the Hyphen

Brendan Buhler, On Eating Roadkill

Scenes and Un-scenes: Giving Thanks

Acting Like a Citizen: Consumer Profiling

4   How We Learn:

What are our perceptions of knowledge and the ways we should acquire that knowledge?

Alfie Kohn, From Degrading to De-Grading

Kristina Rizga, Everything You’ve Heard About Failing Schools Is Wrong

Then and Now: Encyclopedic Knowledge

bell hooks, Learning in the Shadow of Race and Class

Jonathan Kozol, Preparing Minds for Markets

*Frank Bruni, Why College Rankings Are a Joke

*Ben Casselman, Shut Up About Harvard

Rewriting the Script: Job Skills in the Classroom

*Aaron Hanlon, The Trigger Warning Myth

* Ferentz Lafargue, Welcome to the "Real World"

Scenes and Un-scenes: Looking at Learning

Acting like a Citizen: Educational Scripts

5   How We Work:

What do our jobs say about us?

Matthew B. Crawford, The Case for Working With Your Hands

Mac McClelland, I Was a Warehouse Wage Slave

Rewriting the Script: Working at Wal-Mart

Barbara Ehrenreich, How the Poor Are Made to Pay for Their Poverty

*Linda Tirado, You Get What You Pay For

*Emily Badger, What Happens When We All Become Our Own Bosses

Catherine Rampell, A Generation of Slackers? Not So Much

Then and Now: Dressing for Success

*Maddie Oatman, The Racist, Twisted History of Tipping

Mike Rose, Blue-Collar Brilliance

Scenes and Un-scenes: A Woman’s Work

Acting Like a Citizen: Working Hard or Hardly Working?

6   How We Connect:

What forces help—and hinder—our relationships with others?

*Navneet Alang, The Comfort of a Digital Confidante

*Mae Wiskin, Can’t Quit the Clicks: The Rise of Social Media Rehab

Rewriting the Script: Political Gridlock

*Bijan Stephen, Get Up, Stand Up: Social Media Helps Black Lives Matter Fight the Power

*Caroline O’Donovan, Nextdoor Rolls Out Product Fix It Hopes Will Stem Racial Profiling

Then and Now: Personal Shopping

*Sherry Turkle, The Public Square

Charles Duhigg, How Companies Learn Your Secrets

Scenes and Un-scenes: "Hello, Neighbor"

Peter Lovenheim, Won’t You Be My Neighbor?

*Matthew Desmond, Home and Hope

Acting Like a Citizen: Bridging the Divide

7   How We Identify:

Do the roles we play reflect who we truly are?

*Sarah Mirk, Tuning In: How a Generation is Schooling Itself on Sexuality

*Thomas Page McBee, The Truck Stop

*Rebecca Traister, All the Single Ladies

*Jodi Kantor, Historic Day for Gays, But Twinge for Loss of Outsider Culture

Then and Now: Saying "I Do"

David Brooks, People Like Us

*J.D. Vance, Hillbilly Elegy

Scenes and Un-scenes: Class Dismissed?

*Garnette Cadogan, Black and Blue

*Ta-Nehisi Coates, Between the World and Me

Acting Like a Citizen: Checking I.D.

Index of Authors and Titles