XIDS 2100: American Media and the Arts

Instructors: Brandy James and Rod McRae

**Note** In addition to office hours listed above for Professor James and Professor McRae, you also have available to you a GRA (Graduate Research Assistant), Erika Pratt, who can meet with you to discuss your assignments for this class.  She is available during the "workshop sessions," held from 9-11 am and 4-6 pm on Tuesdays.  She is also available to meet with you during the "study hall sessions," held from 7-10 Mondays-Thursdays.  She is also available via email at epratt1@my.westga.edu.

Note: all email communication between the student and instructor must be conducted via my.westga.edu account.

Course Description: This course will explore how media forms and mediations of perspective shape audiences' understanding of events in modern American culture. Students will examine the defining characteristics of different media forms (i.e. television, photojournalism, short and long fiction and non-fiction works, popular music) and will examine how the construction and projection of textual, aural and visual images shape meaning and influence broader discussions of events. The course will proceed through a series of units: the examination of a particular media event, exploration of texts that examine the mechanisms of media and a discussion of a particular historical phenomenon from several mediated perspectives (i.e. a work of non-fiction, a graphic novel, a film). This trajectory will enable students to understand the relationship between form and content and will allow students to become more intellectually engaged participants in contemporary cultural debates.

Section Description: This section focuses on media forms and audience perspectives with specific emphasis on issues of identity, fame, and the nature of celebrity in America. Our three primary texts will be

• A variety of music and music videos as well as selected photographs, advertisements, and television programs, all of which we will interpret as “texts” that work to create, construct, deconstruct the culture of celebrity in America
• The novel The Hunger Games, which we will examine in its entirety while paying close attention to nature of celebrity in a post-apocalyptic America
• The film The Truman Show, which we will examine in its entirety while paying close attention to the staged nature of reality television and celebrity in America

In addition to these primary texts of analysis, we will read and analyze brief essays (available as hyperlinks below in the assignment portion of this syllabus), as well as any other media suggested by either myself or students during class discussions

Learning Outcomes:

• Students will demonstrate an understanding of the characteristics that define and differentiate literary, filmic and visual texts.
• Students will be able to apply this understanding to analyze the relationship between form and meaning.
• Students will be able to explain how diverse modes of humanistic and artistic endeavor contribute to an understanding of the media in America.
• Students will be able to produce written work that synthesizes evidence effectively in organized, specific, and focused paragraphs to support analytical claims.
• Students will demonstrate the ability in informal and formal writing contexts to express ideas using concise and rhetorically appropriate academic English.
• Students will demonstrate the ability to produce a thesis-driven essay that analyzes text in relation to larger “real world” questions of social, cultural, or thematic significance.

As a writing-intensive XIDS class, the writing exercises will foster both individual exploration of ideas, analytical critical questions, cultural or historical contexts, and ultimately thesis-driven argument. Writing assignments will build on each other and will engage students in discussion of the characteristics of visual media, written text and the construction of performances.

Assignments:

(1) Reading Journal:  students respond individually in writing to daily reading assignments (print, filmic, and visual), demonstrating

•                     expressive writing (personal response), and

•                     analytical questioning (for example, have students use their perception of  "pressure points" or parts of the text that they found confusing in order to ask critical questions and then,  importantly, return to the text for deeper investigation of how to answer that question).

Both of these will help students move from response towards analysis.

Journals will be collected regularly and used as prompts for class discussion.

(2) Visual image analysis:  a brief writing assignment, paragraph length at least, based on an observation, description, and analysis of a visual: a print ad or photograph or drawing/painting.  This assignment fosters intellectual curiosity and analytical questioning through a medium they know well and instills confidence in “analysis” before they move on to academic writing about written texts.

(3) One short essay (2 pages) explicating an image from a course text and its function in the text as a whole. This assignment builds upon the skills learned from the visual image analysis, transfers it to a written text and moves the writer toward understanding how to build a thesis from critical analysis.

(4) Longer text and context essay (4-5 pages): An essay moving from a text itself to consider contexts: social, cultural, or thematic issues that the text raises in connection to the “real world” of individual experience.

(5) Final creative project: students will develop a creative project at the end of the semester on a topic of their choosing that is related to the course content. Students will develop a presentation related to this project at the end of the semester.

Evaluation:

Reading and Assignment Schedule

Week One

M 07/02 – Intro to course basics: syllabus, major assignments, course theme: meaning of media in American culture; “Cult of Personality”; diagnostic exercise: response to visual image: iconic Iwo Jima photo; grammar exercise.

Tu 07/03 – What is media (past and present)?; ad analysis; grammar exercise. (Read before class: 3-Ied Monster;"What We Are to Advertisers".

W 07/04 – No class for Independence Day

Th 07/05 – Discussion/in-class writing about 4^th of July imagery; the makings of Dirty Pop; female pop stars in America: Britney Spears, Madonna, Christina Aguilera, Pink, Lady Gaga; grammar exercise. (Read before class: Awesome Action Verbs.)

F 07/06 – Continue discussion; reality stars: Kim K., Paris, Teen Moms; grammar exercise; assign XIDS 2100 Paragraph Prompt (Writing #1); paragraph exercise, draft due on Monday.

Week Two

M 07/09 – Draft workshop; introduction to The Truman Show: analyze movie poster and trailer; introduction to film analysis; grammar exercise. (Read before class: "The Hollywood Sign".)

Tu 07/10 – Writing #1 due; The Truman Show; grammar exercise.  (Read before class: Cases of 'Truman Show' Delusions.); Reading Journal Entries

W 07/11 – Assign Writing #2; grammar exercise; Reading Journal Entry (Truman Show); Film Analysis; Link to Script; Truman Image 1 ; Truman Image 2

Th 07/12 – Essay Construction:  (Read before class: Writing an Introduction.);Thesis Contruction ; grammar exercise; Reading Journal Entry

F 07/13 – Drafting Workshop; grammar exercise (CS--Due Monday, 7/16).; Reading Journal Entry

Week Three

 M 07/16 – Peer review workshop; initial discussion of The Hunger Games: major characters; grammar exercise.

Tu 07/17 – Writing #2 due; reading day. 

W 07/18 – Reading day; reading journal discussion. (Read before class: Stanley Fish’s NY Times article.);  (Read before class: ‘The Hunger Games’ REVIEW: ‘Truman Show’ meets ‘American Idol’ meets Charles Darwin .) 

Th 07/19 – Assign Writing #3; Argument: media as oppressive versus revolutionary in the novel; discussion of The Hunger Games: context; themes; culture; plot design, naming, settings (small group work); Reading Journal Entries; (Read before class: “Fast Entertainment” and “Youtopian Dream”.)  

F 07/20 – Writing #3 drafting; Reading Journal Due 

Week Four 

M 07/23  Peer review workshop (bring a completed, typed rough draft of Writing #3 with you to class)

Tu 07/24 – Writing #3 Due; Final Creative Project (work on in class)

W 07/25 – Final day of class; return to visual image response (from first day): Write about how your perspective and ability to “read” this image has changed at this point of the semester. What have you learned that you did not expect to learn? In what ways has this course prepared you for college-level coursework?; final preparation for Final Creative Project (held in Humanities, 2nd floor, from 4-5:30 pm)