Explore a particular issue or case study related to Popular Culture as covered in the themes and ideas of the course. The goal is to explore these ideas through a deeper dive into a particular subject

 Explore a particular issue or case study related to Popular Culture as covered in the themes and ideas of the course. The goal is to explore these ideas through a deeper dive into a particular subject, case study, phenomenon, or theoretical concept related to popular culture that engages with some of the ideas and issues we are examining. In doing so, you must relate course materials to other academic sources that you find through your own research, while using both course readings and outside readings to help explore your subject and produce a compelling argument about it. Like many aspects of this course, the goal is synthesis: the combination of multiple sources and ideas to produce an original (and convincing!) analysis.

This could involve

• Applying a particular theoretical approach (or multiple approaches) to ideology or discourse to a given media genre, franchise, or text.
• Debating the relevance of a particular course concept (cultural imperialism, Orientalism, Mythology, etc.) to an aspect of contemporary popular culture.
• Intervening in a particular theoretical or conceptual debate within the study of popular culture.
• Using course concepts (theories, analytical methods, etc.) to explore a particular event or controversy related to popular culture.
• Examining a particular theory, theorist, theoretical tradition, or one or more rival theoretical traditions, and arguing for or against their applicability in interpreting a particular form of popular culture, pop-cultural trend, or media industry.

Here are some examples. One could apply previous approaches to the analysis of subcultures and countercultures to a contemporary youth subculture or virtual community; apply the culture industry thesis to a particular media industry, franchise, genre or emergent digital media practice or platform; analyse a particular media text, franchise or genre through the lens of ideology, hegemony, and ‘mythology’; explore a particular example of nationalist discourse within popular culture as a form of ‘imagined community’; explore the rise of virtual reality and the ‘metaverse’ through the concept of the ‘mobilized virtual gaze’; explore a particular advertising campaign through the lens of signification, mythology, branding and consumerism; write a historical account of ‘culture jamming’; analyse a particular news story or cycle through the lens of moral panic, primary definers Orientalism, or other relevant concepts; explore a recent media controversy through the lens of the encoding/decoding model; use concepts from the course to analyse a media text or genre; apply different theories of the relation between media and audiences to a particular popular culture debate; argue for or against the relevance of the cultural imperialism thesis in an age of globalization; explore a recent self-help or health trend as an example of biopolitics or technologies of the self.

The options are many. But they are not limitless! The paper needs to be relevant to the study of popular culture as explored in this course. Above all, you want to apply one or more course concepts to a particular ‘case’, event, or controversy in a way that allows you to explore that case or concept.

Paper Proposal

To prepare for the paper, students must submit a one-to-two-page (not including bibliography) term paper proposal that outlines their eventual term paper topic, research questions, and methodology, complete with a prospective annotated bibliography containing at least four sources.

The proposal must provide a brief description of the proposed research as well as an annotated bibliography of at least 4 relevant academic sources (such as academic books and articles, book chapters, substantive reports and studies from governments or NGOs). These 4 sources must include at least 3 non-class readings and 1 course reading.

Proposals will be graded based on the following criteria:

Proposals should be 1-to-2 pages in length, double-spaced, at the 12-point font, not including an annotated bibliography. Ie. A proposal with a half-page of prose and a half-page bibliography does not satisfy the assignment criteria.The proposal is meant to help you home in on your paper/project idea. Therefore it must include:

1. A clear and relevant topic and/or site of study.
2. A clear research question and/or thesis.

The proposal must explain (briefly!) how your case study will be relevant to course materials and themes, with direct references to specific lectures and/or readings. Final papers that are not related to topics and/or themes of the course will receive a zero!

Note: as the proposal is due halfway through the course, I strongly encourage you to look through the course outline for future themes and readings when considering your proposal ideas, as opposed to merely engaging with materials and themes from the early sections of the course

Even if it is just a term paper, you need a research plan! HOW will you answer the questions you ask in your proposal? What academic literature and/or concepts will you explore? Will you be looking at primary sources? What methods will you use?

Remember, a literature review or library research can be considered a method. For instance, a literature review that brings together ideas and findings from various academic sources is a perfectly valid method for an undergraduate paper, and you may not have to go any further than that depending on the topic. But perhaps you may be doing textual analysis (content analysis, discourse analysis, etc.) of media texts (advertisements, a movie or television show, etc.). Perhaps you will be looking at official statistics or research reports. These are just ideas. The important thing is that you indicate what research approach you will use to explore your case study and answer your research questions. And above all, make sure your research plan is realistic in terms of the length of the final paper, your own semester workload, work and life obligations, etc. A less ambitious paper that is well executed will probably get a better mark than an ambitious paper that is very poorly executed because you ran out of time or space!

Make sure to include at least 3 academic sources in your bibliography from outside the course readings – these can be journal articles, books, government reports, research reports from NGO’s, etc. You should also include at least 1 source from the course readings. Both outside sources and course materials need to be RELEVANT TO THE TOPIC AND THE COURSE.  Sources should be listed in an annotated bibliography, with each source accompanied by no more than three sentences describing the source and its relevance to the course, your topic, and your approach to answering your research questions. If you are having difficulty finding sources, let me know.

All sources within the annotated bibliography should be referred to in the body of the proposal with intext citations. This is to make sure you are helping me connect your proposed research plan to the sources within the bibliography.