Critiquing Pop Culture

It’s not who you are — it’s where you are that matters,” Theresa Geller, associate professor of English, concluded after a lecture on Robert Stam’s and Ella Shohat’s seminal book, Unthinking Eurocentrism: Multiculturalism and the Media. Prior to my arrival to Geller’s Film Analysis, Theory, and Criticism course, I had not encountered a book that critically interrogates popular culture to the extent and intensity that Stam and Shohat do with this book. 

From critiquing colonialist discourse to racist politics of casting, this book helped decolonize my mind, influence my activism, and bridge the divide between theory and practice. Now, every time I engage with activism outside of the classroom, I ask myself: “Am I helping dismantle the unjust power relations? Is this empowering the disempowered? Am I transforming the subordinating institutions and discourses?

Abdiel Lopez ’18
Los Angeles
Issue: 
Prompt: 
Grinnell students read a great deal for their courses. What has stuck with you from your course reading, and why?