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Teaching English Literature Through Popular Culture in China: Record and Reflection

Classic English literature is high culture of a sort, too high for tertiary English majors in the 21st China, who have grown up with total exposure to popular culture in an electronic way, to reach so that they show indifference to literature class. To solve this problem, this paper intends to consider the implications and feasibilities of integrating popular culture into literature education in English departments of Chinese universities. After carefully reviewing the current English literature teaching connected with popular culture both in China and other parts of the world, this paper concludes that the choice of the popular culture texts shall be neither too random to include any form of popular culture nor too limited to only cover the film/TV adaptations of literary classics. Subsequently, the paper records the procedure and progress of the author’s classic-literature and popular-culture class and reflects upon the students’ substantial responses to the class. From the record and the reflection, three major findings are drawn: The students know little about how classic literature inspire popular culture and when they know, they become excited and want to know more; when further exploring those original texts which inspired their favourite pop, the students find themselves greatly challenged and stimulated as well; the students have strong desire to reach the “highness” of classic literature and would like to read challenging texts with their own spirits. A conclusion can be drawn from these findings: Both academic and popular literacy of English majors in Chinese universities should be enhanced, and it is workable to incorporate popular culture into literature classroom with careful preparations for classroom activities and guarantees of the smooth implements of these activities.