Critics and Builders is the home of Bernie Heidkamp, a teacher and a cultural critic. In 2000 I co-founded PopPolitics.com, one of the original sources for cultural criticism on the web, and I continue to contribute there as a writer and editor.
Presently, because of a few too many committments, I am not posting new entries on this site's blog, but the focus of the site -- as well as my own teaching -- remains to explore ways in which we can empower students (and everyone else, for that matter) to interpret and participate in the their world -- as both critics and builders of culture.
This site centers around the blog and other resources for students and fellow critics and educators, covering the many intersections of education and technology, but its chief focus is media literacy.
In its broadest and most genuine form, the concept of media literacy maintains that we all need to be able to see the ideology -- the dominant or subversive values -- behind what we watch, hear, read and play. We need to see how all culture -- whether it be considered "high" or "low," "popular" or "literary" -- both reflects and influences the world.
In our increasingly mediated lives, where we are absorbing images and information at an unprecedented rate, we must never accede to the consumerist mentality that encourages us to be passive cogs in an impersonal economic machine. We must become active agents of cultural criticism and change.
I have a Bachelors of Science in Foreign Service at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. I also have an MA in English Language and Literature and three years of Ph.D. coursework from the University of Maryland in College Park (alma mater of Jim Henson) and a M.Ed. from the University of Vermont in Burlington (alma mater of John Dewey).
I taught Introduction to Academic Writing and Introduction to Literature courses for four years at the University of Maryland and interned for a year at Otter Valley Union High School in Brandon, VT. Since 2000 I have been teaching English at Oak Park and River Forest High School in Oak Park, IL. I've taught at every grade level, but I presently teach juniors and seniors in American Studies and AP College English.
Examples of my cultural criticism can be found at the PopPolitics blog.. Longer pieces I have written for the site include "Now Rolling ...," one of the first analyses of the pop culture filter through which American viewed the 9/11 attacks, and "Just When Men Thought They Were Out ...," a look at the modern crisis in masculinity as represented in The Sopranos and recent presidential campaigns.
One of my full-length published cultural analyses is available online: "Responses to the Alien Mother in Post-Maternal Cultures: C.J. Cherryh and Orson Scott Card," a close reading of popular science fiction and feminist psychoanalytic texts.
