Throughout the semester, we have discussed and written about a number of topics shaped by our exploration of food in a variety of reading materials. We have considered questions like “How does food reflect and influence our identities?” and “How do certain factors impact our food choices?” We analyzed arguments and synthesized some key debates about food, including food access, food security, and sustainable farming. While our course materials focused on food, they intersected with broader social justice, environmental, technological, ethical, and identity issues related to human consumption.
For your final project, you will develop your own argument-driven essay about a topic that is meaningful to you or a community you are a part of. Your goal is to write to an audience of your choosing about how the stories told in media (read in or outside of class) lead audiences to think or feel a particular way about your community or community-related issue.
For this project, you should (1) interpret how the work you are analyzing represents or makes people think about the issue and (2) persuasively explain to an audience why they should do or think something different about the issue after reading your analysis.
You could choose any form of media to analyze: news articles, video essays, podcasts, blog posts, scholarly studies, etc. You are encouraged to find a media object with a developed argument that you can respond to over several paragraphs in your essay. Here are some examples:
Examine an op-ed article that advocates for a policy or point of view that you disagree with and impacts you or your field of study.
Read a professional blog post and make an argument about how it portrays an identity and why your readers should or should not adopt their point of view.
Examine a video essay to show how it enforces or challenges certain stereotypes.
Read a scholarly article in your major field and examine some of its conclusions to reveal something about the norms or conventions in that field or related to the issue you’re focusing on.
Research an issue that has come up in something you read for a class, for example, food access in “The Hidden Resilience of Food Desert Neighborhoods,” and analyze the data to argue about the relevance of the text to a community you are a part of.
Task
Consider how your chosen media gets its audience to think or feel a certain way about a particular identity or community. Then, make an argument about something that matters to you, drawing on close analysis of the media and using research to support your ideas.
Choose a topic and an audience that matters to you. You might write to the administration at Menlo, a politician, business executives, activists for a cause you support or oppose, newscasters, influencers, etc.
Your goal is to use writing techniques learned in class to persuade your audience to adopt a new understanding, to take some specific action, to feel differently, or to respond in some other way to the issue as you present it. In other words, you are not just reporting about what “they say.” You are using analysis (and research) to persuade your audience on an issue that matters to you. You will present your projects to the class during the final 2 classes.
Format: Your final draft should be about 1250-1500 words (approximately 5-6 pages), double-spaced, with 1-inch margins in MLA style. As with all of our class work, both the draft and final essay should be your own original work.
