UCB Presentation of Heterosexuality & Different Cultures Essay
In Process Post 1, you were asked to watch several presentations, to begin thinking about what research topics and primary sources interest you, and to share a few images that might eventually become part of your Analytical Research Project or Symposium Presentation. At this point, you should have begun to describe and summarize a few potential primary sources.
Assignment Purpose
The purpose of Process Post 2 is for you to:
Choose a Primary Source that you think you can work with for the rest of the semester
Begin to identify how your chosen primary source is culturally significant and worthy of analysis
Identify 3 images that may become part of your Symposium presentation later this semester
Assignment Instructions
Your task now is to:
Share the two primary source summaries that you started working on last week (see The Method Worksheet for details)
Write a paragraph (5-10 sentences) explaining which source you’ve chosen to work with and why you’ve decided on this source. As you address why you’ve made this decision, reflect also on the “so what?” of your topic—why it matters in a contemporary social and cultural context. You don’t have to have the “so what?” completely figured out right now; use this opportunity to generate ideas on why this topic could be important, that is, what its stakes could be.
Post three new images that relate to the primary source you’ve chosen. You should try to select images that you might use in your Symposium Presentation. Although these images don’t necessarily need to satisfy the standards guiding a successful primary source, eventually they need to:
Extend your thinking about your primary source
Consider a range of connections to the course theme
Engage with one another thematically
Tips and Resources
The images you choose in step 3 should relate in some way to the theme or message of your chosen primary source. If, for example, your primary source was a Pepsi commercial depicting young women and men drinking Pepsi and playing volleyball on a beach, you could gather images of:
young people as commonly depicted in popular culture,
beaches used in advertising,
infographics that show the effects that high soda consumption has on the body, etc.
Create citations for each of your chosen images according to chapter 2 of The Writer’s Companion and the handout entitled “How to Find and Identify Images for Your Symposium Presentation.” As you search for images, keep in mind that they will affect the direction of your projects, so choose things that are relevant and that are of interest to you.
