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Professor Stewart-Steele
English 1301
PAPER #2:
Analyzing a Visual Representation of a
Culture or Ethnic Group
Weight: 20% of Final Grade
Length and Formatting: 4-5 pages, typed, double-spaced, with a left-justified margin, and black
12-point Times New Roman font, utilizing APA style.
Assignment Preparation: List how the Culture or Ethnic Group that you wrote about in Paper #1
have been depicted on a billboard, on TV, or in print. What visual representations come to mind?
Complete a free write on what those representations have in common and what makes each of
those representations different. Then ask yourself: which one of those representations seems to
be the most interesting or complex?
Assignment: Select a visual representation (e.g., poster, billboard, photograph) of the culture or
ethnic group that you wrote about for Paper #1. Note: A webpage or movie will not work for
this assignment. Analyze how that representation is achieving or not achieving its creators’
desired effect. The point here is not to evaluate the representation, but to walk your readers
through the specifics of how that representation is working, or attempting to work, on a group of
viewers.
Please limit your focus to 3 key strategies that the creator of the representation uses; these
strategies should come from our reading in our course textbook “Writing Guide with Handbook”
pages 537-573.
*You will need to include the selected image in your essay and pre-writing.
Research: If you choose to obtain outside sources you are limited to 2 sources only. Do not use
Google. Resources that can be used for this assignment should only be comprised of in-class
text, Jstor, or LSC Libraries. If you choose to utilize quotes from these sources for this paper,
you will need to make sure you are introducing the quote or quotes correctly, make sure that it is
absolutely necessary to have the author’s words exactly and not your own words.
You will need to cite the source both in and out of text correctly using APA format, and make
sure that you are not overusing quotes within the paper.
Note: If unapproved outside sources are used or plagiarism is found in your paper a zero will be
entered into the gradebook.
Audience: Local high school seniors who generally believe what they see on a billboard, TV, or
in print. These students are avid and usually unreflective consumers not only of products but also
of images—of ideas. Imagine that they are reading your essay as part of an extracurricular club
on exploring life and cultures.
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Rationale: Although you will probably not write visual analyses throughout your life, you will
encounter many occasions, in and after college, when you must break down how a topic is
working, asking yourself what its key parts are and how those parts relate to each other. Paper #2
gives you practice making precisely those moves. Moreover, the level of specificity required in
Paper #1 is retained, perhaps even enhanced, here in Paper #2. Finally, by forcing you to include
a visual, this assignment acknowledges that writers may communicate not with alphabetic text
alone but sometimes—depending on the occasion, the genre, and the audience’s needs—with
alphabetic text in conjunction with other methods.
