Working from the popular notion of “cool,” this innovative text challenges students to think and write critically about how popular culture terms and phenomena are constructed.

Ideal for instructors interested in integrating cultural studies and technology into their classrooms, this text examines the popular notion of “cool” as a means of understanding the cultural dimensions of electronic writing as well as the rhetorical strategies implicit in such writing. By providing content-specific assignments to be created in HTML, the textbook merges the subject of cool with technology-based writing instruction.

Students are encouraged to think critically about the construction of popular culture and taught how to write critically about various popular culture phenomenon. Through the study of Web, advertising, literature, and technology usages of cool, students learn how to use HTML to write “cool” themselves.