Prompt and Guidelines

Purpose:
In your first out of class essay, you focused on placing two texts side by side and argued about a particular relationship between the two texts. Then, in your second out of class essay, you took that analysis a step further by exploring how your reading of one essay impacted your reading of another essay. Now, you’re ready to go even further. Rather than focus on two texts from your book, I am asking you to take one previously assigned text (from any time in the semester) from your book and apply it to a specific piece of popular culture.

This is not a research paper; please focus only on the one essay from your textbook and the one piece of popular culture. Your research essay #4 assignment paper may actually grow out of this assignment, if you choose, but don’t get distracted by research assignment essay #4 just yet.

Try to focus on a piece of popular culture that is fairly specific: a single episode of a TV show, a tv commercial, a song, a print advertisement, a website, a single magazine, a billboard, a greeting card, etc. You might decide that it serves your argument better to bring in two items that are very closely related, like two episodes of the same tv show, or two greeting cards, or two print advertisements, but try to stay very focused. I would discourage you from focusing on an entire movie, for example, because that can be a little overwhelming. However, if you talk to me in advance about coming up with a very focused argument, then it might work.

Regardless of what type of popular culture you wish to focus on, you must be able to watch it over and over. If you choose an episode of a tv show, you must have it recorded or accessible online so that you can watch it repeatedly and develop specific evidence (like quotes).

The most important thing to keep in mind is that you want to make a clear, focused argument about how the essay from the book can be applied to the popular culture. The essay you choose might already talk about popular culture directly, it might talk about popular culture very indirectly, or it might not talk about popular culture at all. You have lots of options. The thing to keep in mind is that you need to be very clear about what you’re arguing and why it’s significant.

Questions to consider as you decide on an argument:
· What would your author say about your pop culture?
· Do you think your pop culture proves or disproves your author’s argument?
· How does your author influence your understanding of the pop culture?

If you want to use one of the structures we’ve used before, feel free to do so. In that case, you could set up your author as “Author A” and your pop culture as “Author B,” or you could set up your pop culture as “Author A” and your author as “Author B.” You have lots of options. Again, the most important thing is that you have a clear and consistent argument. This assignment will not include a template for a thesis or an outline. That is something you need to get more comfortable doing on your own. However, we will discuss possible templates in class so that you can figure out how to create the best template to serve your argument.

Other reminders:
· Your thesis should be an argument; do not state the obvious.
· Your reader has not read the essay nor seen or examined your pop culture. (This is practice for the research essay #4 assignment in which you need to be able to explain everything for your reader.)
· Create clear topic sentences and fluid transitions that will help your reader follow your logic. Your topic sentences should introduce your specific area of support and link it to your argument. If your topic sentence states a fact, then it is easy to fall into the trap of summarizing throughout the whole paragraph, rather than analyzing.
· You may weave in personal experience if you feel that it would strengthen your argument. However, the focus of your essay should be on analyzing a relationship between the two texts. I prefer use use only 3rd Person voice, but for this essay#3 I will allow you to use 1st person voice.
· Make sure you are bringing in specific examples from both the essay and the popular culture in order to prove your argument.
· Again, Feel free to use “I,” but make sure you stay focus on supporting your argumentative thesis/claim; DO NOT make fallacies within your writing or while trying to argue your point/claim in your essay; thus this is WHY it is best to use 3rd person voice
· Include proper in-text citation MLA style and a Works Cited page MLA style.

· When you submit Essay #3, Submit final draft to Turnitin.com. Your must do the pre-writing stages for your essay #3 (thesis/outline, rough draft#1 and draft #2). The final draft should meet the following criteria: 5 pages, double-spaced, word-processed, proofread, spell-checked, 1 inch margins, Times New Roman, font size 12, page numbers, in-text citation MLA style, with a Works Cited page (this page does not count toward the 5 page requirement); Approx. 6 to 8 paragraphs.
· For every day you submit your essay late, its grade will be lowered a full letter grade, if I accept your late essay, and you lose the opportunity to revise.