| [ Assignment | Additional Tips | Criteria for Evaluation ] |
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Please choose a work of literature, journalism, film, television, or music that depicts suburbia or suburban life and develop an analysis of its depiction of issues having to do with race, class, sexuality, age, family, and/or gender in suburbia. You may not use one of the films or works of literature or journalism required for class as the central focus for your project. However, the course readings and viewings and our discussions of them can form the core of your bibliography supporting your project, if appropriate. To begin your analysis, consider the following questions (but the issues you focus on and your particular interests will lead you to other questions as well): 1) how are race (and/or class and/or gender, etc) depicted in this text? 2) does the treatment of race, class, or gender, etc., provide important insights about suburban life? what are those insights? 3) what is your critical assessment of the text, i.e., how valuable is its depiction of race (or class or gender, etc.) in suburbia? 4) how do race, gender, class, or sexuality intersect or interact in the suburban setting?
The draft for your project is due on Tuesday, November 9th. The final project (and at least three substantial links to other projects) will be due on Thursday, November 11th.
You may focus on more than film or TV show or work of literature, but doing so may require a longer analysis.
Here are a few examples of possible projects, just to get you thinking: an analysis of growing up as a teenager in suburbia from the perspective of one or more John Hughes films; an analysis of race issues in city and suburb through Spike Lee's Crooklyn; an analysis of images of the 1950s suburban housewife through a comparison of Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique and Elaine Tyler May's "Hanging Together" or Wendy Kozol's "Kind of People Who Make Good Americans"; a gender analysis of images of men and women and family in suburbia through a study of films like Serial Mom, Ordinary People, and Raising Arizona; a comparison of media representations of suburban family life in 1950s and 1960s television sitcoms or advertisements with representations in Tom Hine's Populuxe; an analysis of racial or ethnic stereotypes or differences in films like Edward Scissorhands and The 'Burbs.
If you are choosing literature, you may focus on fiction or non-fiction. If you are interested in media texts, you may choose documentaries, shorts, feature films, television series, one-time shows or made-for-TV movies, docudramas, or television ads or infomercials.
You will need to describe the texts that you are analyzing, but the majority of your project (80%, say) should be devoted to analysis, not description.
1. Substantive analysis of theme of race, gender, etc. in a text depicting suburbia or suburban life.
2. Care and precision with which you frame the issue(s) and use of sources external to the text to help you do so.
3. Quality of your argument: are your conclusions well reasoned and well supported?
4. Quality of your writing: do you express your ideas clearly and in an organized manner? Is your writing technically correct?
5. Quality of your html formatting; is your project well presented, and easy to navigate around?
6. Quality of your hypertext links to other projects.