Prompt:
Students will write an essay that examines a cultural context for the express purpose of understanding social truths.
Writing Task:
For this paper, you will synthesize social and cultural contextual information. We have spent some time discussing and analyzing cultural and societal in relation to metacognition and zeitgeist—the issues and assumptions at work in our society that shape morality, gender, age, agency, perception, ethics, law, identity, and politics.
Students can consider topics such as:
Why do stereotypes perpetuate?
The resurging popularity of vinyl records.
Is failure really a negative thing?
Is the loneliness epidemic real?
What are the tech-monopolies doing to our society?
Why do we tend to misunderstand how the law works?
Why is the attention economy so important to our society?
Record Profits Mean Unpaid Wages.
Touch Starvation
What our disposable culture says about us.
How being human is increasingly difficult in this digital world.
Who benefits from inflation?
Cats vs. Dogs: How Pet Preference Reveals Personality Traits
Why there is such apathy about voting?
The popularity of toxic male characters in movies and television?
Why are we so prone to believe conspiracy theories?
Your final paper should incorporate at least five different scholarly, credible sources. Ultimately, you need to consider what argument the text seems to be making, given the knowledge you learn from the contextual research. You may find yourself focusing on a combination of topics of literary criticism, which is fine, but using these concepts will help you narrow your ideas since it is not necessary that you discuss everything in the novel, just those aspects that relate to your focus.
The aim:
The point of this essay is positive and constructive: it is your goal, then, to enlighten the reader to a particular societal perspective, examining how the literature’s argument impacts us as a culture. This type of argumentation assumes that, in order to get your reader to consider what the essay is saying is plausible, it must present anything about the writing’s social critique as if it were meaningful.
Essay Checklist:
1200 words minimum: The completed essay must have at least 1200 words. The essay should be typed, double-spaced, in Times New Roman size 12 font or equivalent.
The essay must include a Works Cited page. The Works Cited page does not count toward your length
Works Cited: This essay will contain a works cited (that will not count towards the page total) that must contain at least 5 credible sources.
A credible source is written by an author that is respected in their field of study, who is responsible and will cite their sources (their evidence) so that a reader can check for accuracy and validity. (Checking an author’s evidence is also a good way to gain more sources for your own research).
Non-credible sources are unreliable because they do not contain true, factual, accurate, or up-to-date information. Sources like Wikipedia can never be considered credible because they can be changed by anyone. But it can be utilized as a source when students are beginning to understand a topic.
If unsure, ask questions:
Who is the author? What makes them credible? What makes the source credible? When was the material published? What is the purpose of the source? How is the source proved? What type of audience is the source aimed at?
Format: MLA – complete with heading and page numbers
Grading Criteria: Refer to your syllabus
Value: 250 points
Thesis: Your thesis statement should not just argue that a particular perspective is significant, but what that perspective tells us about America as a culture and/or society: how does this perspective affect on a national and international level, but why those different perspectives are important in influence policies, attitudes, stereotypes, and laws?
Remember, a thesis is the main controlling sentence of the essay: every point or anything arguable should always point back to back, expanding on the ideas it states.
Weak thesis:
The contemporary popularity of the superhero blockbuster utilizes archetypes.
This is a weak thesis simply because it does nothing but state an observation, not why it is significant, why it is important to discuss, or what we can expect to get out of it. All it does is set up the essay to be simply a report.
Stronger thesis:
In such a highly politically charged society, Hollywood reflects society’s need for simplicity by providing many iterations for consumption through the superhero archetype. Although these are examples of clear and easily defined freedom, integrity, and morality help alleviate social and political ambiguity, they do little to assuage the cause of the angst, society’s lack of a clearly definable identity.
This thesis states something much more arguable in that it has taken the observation of the original thesis but applied it in such a way that it is attempting to make a point about it, not simply stating it.
