Stepping Across: Four Interdisciplinary Studies of Education and Cultural Politics(6 Intersections in Communications and Culture Global Approaches and Transdisciplinary Perspectives)

Stepping Across: Four Interdisciplinary Studies of Education and Cultural Politics is a collection of four studies of education, privilege, and power - each of which explores relationships between formal schooling and larger cultural contexts. Representing some of Koza's most recent thinking, the studies examine interrelated constructs of race, gender, and social class as they materialize in local and specific settings. No Hero of Mine: Disney, Popular Culture, and Education (2001); Rap Music: The Cultural Politics of Official Representation (1994); Unhappy Happy Endings: Cultural Politics in the Broadway Musical Hit Once on This Island (1997, revised 2001); To Shave or Not to Shave: The Hair Removal Imperative and Its Implications for Teachers and Teaching (2001) comprise the collection.

About the Author :
The Author: Julia Eklund Koza is Professor of Curriculum and Instruction and of Music at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She has published widely in scholarly journals and is the author of chapters in several edited collections.

Review :
Julia Eklund Koza offers both a powerful corrective to popular culture distortions and a fresh critical lens through which to make sense of the music, art, and drama that surround and confound us. This is an informed citizens' guide to living in the postmodern. (Gloria Ladson-Billings, Professor of Curriculum and Instruction, University of Wisconsin, Madison) 'Stepping Across' documents why we need work that trespasses disciplinary boundaries. It is insightful and provocative and shows how one can combine the structural and the poststructural in important ways. (Michael W. Apple, John Bascom Professor of Curriculum and Instruction and Educational Policy Studies, University of Wisconsin, Madison) A tantalizing, thoughtful, and provocative book concerning music and popular culture. This analysis of aspects of the cultural politics of music education suggests solutions to important issues facing classroom teachers today. (Estelle R. Jorgensen, Professor of Music, Indiana University and Editor of Philosophy of Music Education Review) Julia Eklund Koza has written a thoughtful, passionate book about corporate influence over popular culture. She makes clear the importance of understanding how and to what effect our experience of the everyday world of schools, music, theater, and even our bodies is shaped by others in the service profit and power. 'Stepping Across' is an eye opener and a call to action that I hope will be read, argued about, and acted on by teachers, parents, and anyone interested in wrestling control of their destiny from the 'powers that be'. (Alex Molnar, Professor and Director of Education Policy Studies Laboratory, Arizona State University)