Hi! My name is Sarah Hanks and I am currently a professional Technical Writer and teach Technical Communications at the University of Oklahoma (OU). In the Spring of 2013 I earned my MA from OU. My focus was on Composition, Rhetoric, and Literacy Studies. While at OU I taught several Western Civilization Intersession courses, all of which used popular culture as a theme. The courses themes were largely based on TV genres from Reality TV to Fantasy. One course, 'Jersey Shore - GRC: Gender, Race, and Class on the Shore' was noted in Wired Magazine but garnered both positive and negative media attention. This ambiguous media response was mostly due to a course on popular culture being offered at an accredited university - a topic which I explored in several conference papers and continue to examine. Before OU's College of Arts and Science ceased to allow non-standard Humanities courses to be offered during their Intersession program, I designed and instructed two courses on George R.R. Martin's Song of Ice and Fire book series and HBO's adaptation Game of Thrones. I continue to teach at the collegiate level and explore how popular culture can be a useful tool in pedagogy - mainly due to its unique ability to not only capture student interest but also provide a fitting platform for examination of social-cultural issues via the lens of critical, literary, and film theory.
