ReMix Reading and Composing Culture

With a mix of humor and analysis, a collection of fresh readings, engaging assignments, and an enticing design, Remix is not your ordinary textbook. It asks students to re-examine everyday concepts (such as identity, entertainment, and technology), to question assumptions about everyday life and culture, and to respond critically and creatively to some of the most imaginative projects you’ll find in a composition reader.

Built on the idea that students live in a do-it-yourself world in which they are writers, designers, and inventors of  identity and culture, Remix invites students to bring their own creativity into the composition classroom. It inspires them to ask: Why do I think the way I do? What is my relationship to the culture around me? This inquiry-based approach allows students to write about culture and identity in a meaningful way.

 

Catherine G. Latterell is associate professor of English at Penn State Altoona, where she teaches first-year composition as well as a range of other rhetoric and writing courses. In addition to composition and cultural studies, her scholarly interests include post-critical pedagogy, literacy studies, and computers and composition. Her published essays consider the intersection of theory and practice in writing programs, writing centers, and composition classrooms.

*new to the third edition

1. Identity… or, who do you think you are?

Emily White, High School’s Secret Life

*Alex Kuczynski, Identity Crisis: Sign Your John Hancock Here. Or is it Your Lady Gaga?

*Jennifer Ouellette, Tokens and Totems

*COMIC: Gene Luen Yang, Forfeit Your Soul

*Heather Havrilesky, Bobos

*Roland Kelts, The Fifth Flavor

Lucy Grealy, Masks

*W. Ralph Eubanks, Color Lines

*COMICS: Jim Davis and Dan Walsh, Garfield Minus Garfield

Paired Readings: Focus on Language

Gloria Anzaldúa, How to Tame a Wild Tongue

Firoozeh Dumas, The "F Word"

2. Community… or, are these your people?

Paired Readings: Focus on Beliefs

Sarah Adams, Be Cool to the Pizza Dude

Azar Nafisi, I Believe in Empathy

*Garrison Keillor, In Search of Lake Wobegon

David Berreby, It Takes a Tribe

Jon Stewart, Commencement Address

*Dinaw Mengestu, Home at Last

Paired Readings: Focus on Social Networks

*The Onion, New Facebook Notifications Alert Users When They Not Currently Looking at

Facebook

*Kat Ascharya, What Facebook Is Doing to Your Brain Is Kind of Shocking

*SIDEBAR: Louis C.K. … On Why He Doesn’t Want to Get a Phone for His Kids

Shari Caudron, Befriending Barbie

COMIC: Aaron McGruder, The Boondocks

*Alessandra Rizzotti, How Citizen Science Is Saving Our Oceans

*Joan Didion, From Where I Was From

*Mackensie Griffin, 'No Place For Discontent': A History Of The Family Dinner In America

3. Competition… or, is it in you?

*COMIC: Bill Watterson, Calvin and Hobbes

Bruce Glassman, We Can Work It Out: The Beatles’ Creative Competition

SIDEBAR: George Martin and the Beatles, On Collaboration

*Frank Bruni, How to Survive the College Admissions Madness

*Tina Fey, Confessions of a Juggler

Paired Readings: Focus on Originality

*Nitsuh Abebe, On the Far Slope of the Uncanny Valley

*Scott Plagenhoef, The Tumblr Trap

*Barbara Ehrenreich, On Post-Positive Thinking

*Dave Barry, Representing a Country is a Great Feeling

*Flinder Boyd, When Smush Parker Saved the World

*Clickhole, Science FTW: IBM Just Announced A Robotics Competition To Stop The Winner Of The Previous Competition

Clustered Readings: Focus on Tips for Success

Dale Carnegie, How to Win Friends and Influence People

Stephen R. Covey, The Habits of Highly Effective People: Think Win/Win

Lois P. Frankel, Nice Girls Don’t Get the Corner Office: Mistakes and Coaching Tips

4. Romance… or, what’s love got to do with it?

*Mira Jacob, The Arranged Marriage That Ended Happily Ever After: How My Parents Fell In Love, 30 Years Later

Tim Neville, Once Upon a Time in a Tent

David Sedaris, The End of the Affair

SIDEBAR: Chris Rock… on Marriage

*Emma Court, A Millenial’s Guide to Kissing

Paired Readings: Focus on the Science of Attraction

Benedict Carey, The Brain in Love

*David Rothenberg, Come Up and See My Bower

bell hooks, Baby and Daddy Gus

*Tim Gunn, Know What to Get off Your Chest and What to Take to the Grave

*Nancy Hale, Are You Fickle?

Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, Cinderella

5. Entertainment… or, why are we so bored?

Katie Roiphe, Profiles Encouraged

SIDEBAR: Ellen DeGeneres… on Celebrity

*Mindy Kaling, Types of Women in Romantic Comedies Who Are Not Real

*Michael W. Clune, The Sun and the Stars

SIDEBAR: George Will… on Entertainment and Progress

Paired Readings: Focus on Music

*James McBride, Hip-Hop Planet

*Tom Junod, How Beyoncé and Taylor Swift Conquered the World with Pop Music

Pete Rojas, Bootleg Culture

David Nasaw, The Pernicious "Moving Picture" Abomination

*William A. Ward, Humor From the Tombs

*PHOTO ESSAY: Harry Pointer, 1870s-1880s: Victorian Lolcats

*Amy Poehler, Things They Don’t Tell You about the Biz

*David Mitchell, Something More Boring Instead

*David Samuels, The Night Before the Grammys

*Patton Oswalt, You Can, Unfortunately, Go Home Again

6. Technology… or, what’s so great about progress?

*COMIC: xkcd, Preferred Chat System

*Michael Wolff, Television and the Way We Live Now

Paired Readings: Focus on Language

Christine Kenneally, The First Word: The Origins of Language

*Rebecca Armendariz, Chat History

Langdon Winner, Technological Somnambulism

*SIDEBAR: Vivek Wadhwa, Our Lagging Laws

*Adam Gopnik, How the Internet Gets Inside Us

Scott McLeod, Words and Pictures

Henry Petroski, The Toothpick

Donald A. Norman, The Psychology of People and Machines

SIDEBAR: Malcolm Gladwell, On the Perfect Innovation

*Gloria Jahoda, From Marshes and Moonports

*Teddy Wayne, The Microcomplaint: Nothing Too Small to Whine About

*Marco Kaye, Son, It’s Time We Talk about Where Start-Ups Come From