|
|
|
|
Syllabus Research Methods Assign 1 Assign 2 Assign 3 480: Pop Culture : Assignment 3 This assignment is due December 19th at the beginning of class. ABSOLUTELY NO LATE PAPERS PLEASE. Papers must be typed, double spaced, properly footnoted and referenced and should be a minimum of five pages in length. (Maximum 8) A DRAFT OF THIS PAPER IS DUE IN CLASS ON DECEMBER 12TH! THIS IS PART OF YOUR GRADE SO DON’T FLAKE IT OFF!. In this final paper you will be making an argument about the "politics" and/or meanings that you feel are involved in your practice. This final assignment gives you the opportunity to rewrite, modify, revise and rethink your original proposal. That is, based on what you have learned in this class, and in your research, revisit your original assessments and claims and do the following: 1) Reflect about the claims that you made in your first paper. Have your conceptions of the practice changed? Become more complicated? Have you shed one way of defining and understanding the practice or has the research you’ve done only confirmed what you suspected all along? 2) Using the concepts that you have explored in this class, analyze the data that you gathered and presented in the second paper. Think about the ways that Hebdige, Bernardi and Best analyze the popular practices they explore. They suggest that pleasure can align us with the power-bloc in certain instances, and with ‘the folk’ in another instance; they suggest that sometimes these opposing currents are operating at the same time. I want you to consider how these things might be related to your practice. Are there ways that the pleasures that your participants get from participating in X practice tie them more firmly to systems of domination; are there ways that the pleasures involved create a space of resistance? Another way of saying this is: theorize how your practice is linked with society wide systems of power or social organization. It is important in this paper that you demonstrate your development in familiarity with theoretical concepts central to the class, and your own theoretical growth. This means that if you have tended to only use writings or concepts from the first couple of weeks of the course, it is probably wise that you draw upon some of the later readings. In some instances some of you may want to use your selected forms and practices to criticize the theories and perspectives covered in the course. This is fine also. It is not necessary or desirable for you to discuss every theoretical tradition that we have studied in class. Use the ones that are most appropriate. 3) In either case it is important that you engage the materials presented in your second paper. That is, use examples from your research to clarify the points you are trying to make about politics, pleasure, theory, etc. The materials presented in your second papers are very rich and interesting! Use specific examples from that paper to illustrate your points and support your insights about popular culture. In other words, make your case on the basis of the concrete materials which you have organized, presented and discussed in the second paper. Please do not organize your paper into "sections" that correspond with numbers 1, 2 and 3 above. Write your paper in a cohesive and connected manner. All of the normal things that I take into account in a paper will be used to evaluate your work here: sophistication of theoretical content, use of appropriate examples from your data, clarity of thinking, quality of writing, organization, sentence structure, spelling, and so on. Please construct an appropriate bibliography, using ASA or APA citation format. Good luck!!! |
|