Hoppenstand, 53, now boasts the title of “popular culture expert.”

In addition to teaching at MSU, he is regularly called by media throughout the country seeking his opinion on anything from the representation of adultery in popular culture to violence in movies.

Recently, he appeared on a National Public Radio segment about the old TV show “The Lone Ranger” and also was quoted last week in a USA Today story about teen pregnancy in response to 2007’s “Juno.”

Specifically, Hoppenstand said he is a narrative theorist, meaning he studies popular formulas and narratives, such as formulas in TV sitcoms or in a specific genre of movies.

After receiving a degree in secondary English education from Ohio State University, Hoppenstand was drawn to Bowling Green State University, which at the time was the only university with a popular culture department, he said.

“I really wanted to see myself, rather than just teaching the standard literature courses, I wanted to try to go into new directions so that sort of determined my direction in graduate school,” he said.

Under his mentor Ray Brown at BGSU, he earned a master’s degree in popular culture studies and a doctorate in American culture studies.

When he began teaching at MSU in the late 1980s, he joined the late Russel B. Nye, who he said, along with Brown, founded popular culture as an academic field.

“It’s not often a university can claim it supported a professor who almost invented a field of study,” Hoppenstand said.

In his 20 years at MSU, the professor said he has seen changes in the way scholars think about popular culture.

“When I started back in ’88, (MSU), as well as other institutions, really was hesitant in terms of recognizing the validity of popular culture as (an academic field),” he said.

Hoppenstand said that in most cases, the main roads to achieving recognition in a field are through teaching, research and publication.

“Publishing in the field garners recognition from other scholars at other institutions or universities, and teaching in that area sort of garners a recognition among the students,” he said.

Hoppenstand has edited books about notable people such as Stephen King and Anne Rice, and his own published works include the first-ever book about the study of popular formulas in mystery fiction and a book about Hollywood director/fiction writer Clive Barker.

He also has editor credits in a six-volume world encyclopedia of popular culture. The series, which he said is the first of its kind of book to be published, won a 2007 national book award from the Popular Culture Association in the category of “Best Reference work.”

Part of what Hoppenstand said makes his job fulfilling is his love for connecting and relating to students.

“Many students have a cultural knowledge or expertise, and I like to direct them into areas they haven’t thought of before,” he said. “What I love to see are these sort of lightbulbs going off when they’re making these larger connections.”