Pop Culture Professor
NDU member teaching at NDSU highlights her lessons with references to ’80s films, Netflix series and Tom Petty songs By Kelly Hagen, NDU Communications
Listen! That’s how Tom Petty kicks off the first chorus of his 1980 chart-topping song, “Refugee.” And he continues, “It don’t really matter to me. You believe what you want to believe.” According to one online quiz, if Dr. Melissa Vosen Callens was a Tom Petty song, it would be “Refugee.” And within an hour of communication with her deep beliefs and interests in areas of popular culture, as varied as the musical catalog of Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers to the roster of the 1991 World Series champion Minnesota Twins, it’s easy to see why. In the world of higher education, she is a “refugee” of a sub-culture of professors who use pop culture to color their instruction in
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subjects as varied as history, sociology, English and psychology. “I think for most of us, we’re just immersed in pop culture very early,” Callens said. “One of the earliest memories I can think of with pop culture is going to sleepovers and renting ‘Dirty Dancing.’ We watched it, and then afterwards we were trying to reenact that final dance scene, sort of like fifth and sixth graders do.” Callens dips into the deep reservoir of her lifetime fascination with American popular culture to assist her in teaching courses on media literacy, professional writing and online education at North Dakota State University. “I have always been interested in 1980s pop culture, so when [the hit streaming series] ‘Stranger
