Assignment Overview:
This “final take-home essay” simply involves you producing organized essay responses to the following two topic questions. These questions are intended to get you to think about, and reflect on, some of the key ideas from the second half of the course’s Module set (Modules 11 to 20), while demonstrating your knowledge and understanding of key ideas and readings.
Both questions are to be answered. Each essay will be marked out of 15 and combined for a total mark out of 30 (which is then converted back to a total mark out of 15%).
Questions:
Essay 1:
(i) With reference to lectures, assigned readings, and media materials, discuss how the idea of “cultural appropriation” becomes part of the study of race, racism, and popular culture. How have anthropologists described the particular dynamics of “appropriation” and what are some examples from popular culture? How might such discussions relate to ideas of “performance” and how ideas of race are embodied and acted out in popular culture, past and present?
Essay 2:
(ii) Drawing on course lectures, assigned readings, and media materials, discuss the idea of counter-hegemony in the study of race, racism, and popular culture. What kinds of counterhegemonic expressions might we find in popular culture (refer to specific examples)? Given such forms of popular culture, what might it mean to also think of popular culture as a site of “cultural struggle”, as Stuart Hall once suggested?
Assignment Format / What to include:
Essays should be typed, double-spaced, 1-inch margins, and at a maximum 12-point font size, with a bibliography/references page. Essays should make reference to specified/relevant assigned readings and these must be properly and accurately cited. Citation style (e.g., APA, MLA, Chicago) is your choice, but do keep your reference format consistent (i.e., pick one format and stick to it).
Each essay should be around 1000 words or 3 pages typed double spaced (i.e., 6-7 pages in total, including a references/bibliography page).
All modules and their content will be posted and attached below. Please refer to the document titled “Anthropology Take Home Essay Assignment Description/Instructions with Media Links” for detailed instructions, as well as access to all media content and module content. It is important to read and watch all the content posted in the documents in the specific order instructed in the “Anthropology Take Home Essay Assignment Description/Instructions with Media Links” document.
