For this project, you will need to select a non-superhero film, musical album, graphic novel or run of a comic*, or season/series of a television program created in the last 10 years that you believe can be read as a social justice “text” in line with how we’ve discussed various cultural products throughout the semester. Your selection will be your primary source for an essay-length analysis of 1,000+ words that examines your chosen text along the following lines:
What is the context for the text? Does it fall into a lineage or body of work with a known social justice history?
How does the text fit within its genre of work?
Is there any kind of biographical connection between the texts creators and the text itself?
Why is this a social justice text? Does the work oppose some injustice, envision a better world, explicitly take sides in a struggle, etc.?
This project will likely require additional research to support your analysis of the first three bullet points above; this material must be accurately quoted, paraphrased, or summarized in MLA Style, including through the use of in-text citations and a formatted Works Cited page. See me if you need help with either, and feel free to make use of resources available through the Rowan Writing Center (Links to an external site.) or Purdue OWL (Links to an external site.).
That said, you must ensure your exploration of your primary selected text is original. If you are borrowing ideas, analysis, or other work, it must also be credited. I expect the majority of your analysis of this text to be original and reflect the learning that you’ve done in the course throughout the semester.
Please note that your essay must be a cohesive, coherent, college-level piece of writing. I will not accept a paper that moves through the above questions like a disconnected set of responses or answers to a set of questions on an exam. This project requires serious thought and analysis, and I suggest you select a work with which you are already familiar.
Some examples of texts and framings that would fit this assignment well:
Don’t Look Up as an environmental justice text highlighting governmental failures to address existential threats;
Lemonade as a feminist text on navigating race and womanhood amidst intersectional prejudices;
Pose as an LGBTQ+ commentary on present-day queerphobia and historic discrimination within the LGBTQ+ community;
Hyperbole and a Half as a social justice advocacy text raising awareness of life with chronic disabilities;
If Beale Street Could Talk as a prison-reform text with a stirring (even radical) depiction of Black love.
NO PLAGIARISM
