This is a conversation concerning pop culture between Don F. Rogerson, Head of the Humanities Department of Baltimore City College and chairman of a faculty committee for the development of an experimental, humanities-oriented three-year high school, and John Cawelti, Professor of English and Humanities at the University of Chicago and chairman of the University Committee on General Studies in the Humanities. Professor Cawelti's assumption is that popular culture is everywhere about us--in advertising, recreation, print, film, music, and in other elements that surround our lives. It depends on a mass audience for its existence and on the mass media for its dissemination. The popular arts, then, tend to confrim the experience of the majority, in contrast to elite art, which tends to explore the new. This conversation makes clear that the study of traditional, elite culture should not be rejected or neglected. However, to rule out the rest of the broad spectrum of human activity as an area for exploration and understanding is far too restrictive when we consider that popular culture may represent the greatest single shared experience of a society. (LL)