The main piece of writing for this course is an 8-10 page (2500 word) essay that analyzes a media artifact from a critical media studies perspective. “Media artifact” can refer to any of a wide variety of cultural objects, from videos, to a song, to documentaries, interviews, photos, product packaging, magazine pages, or website.
You need to select and analyze a contemporary media text (or “artifact”) using the ideas, theories, and vocabulary discussed in course readings, lectures, and films.
Whatever the object you choose, your task is to analyze it drawing on the tools of Critical Media Studies – i.e., the ideas, theories, and vocabulary presented in your assigned readings, lectures, and screenings this term. Your paper must explain and argue a thesis (that is, your paper must have a point to demonstrate).
You must substantially use at least three readings from the course. This assignment will be completed in three phases: a proposal, an essay draft workshop, and the final paper.
Proposals
You are required to submit a two page essay proposal that presents your proposed case study in concise, theoretically informed terms. In your proposal, you must clearly describe the object of your analysis, the course concepts you will draw on to conduct your analysis, how you intend to use these concepts, and the theoretical question(s) you plan to address. Your proposal should give the instructor a clear understanding of what this case study illuminates about the ways in which ideology and the politics of representation intersect in the production, consumption, and/or circulation of your chosen media artifact.
Your proposal must be accompanied by a 1-page bibliography of FIVE academic sources, THREE of which are from assigned course readings or documentary film screenings (i.e., Miss Representation, Representation and the Media; not They Live). You will not receive credit for citing Wikipedia or online encyclopedia entries.
The proposal must be written in prose (not bullet points) and clearly identify your chosen media artifact and theoretical approach you’ll be using to analyze the artifact.

§ Clearly identify your artifact(s);
§ Include a preliminary thesis statement;
§ Explain why this particular artifact is of interest to you
(conceptually/theoretically, not personally);
§ Highlight THREE course concepts (ex. “hegemony”, “pornographic
eroticism”, “new consumerism”, “ideology”, “postfeminism”, “postracial”
and so forth) that you will substantively use in your analysis;
§ Describe why these concepts will be useful to your analysis (ex. what insight will be gotten from applying these concepts to your artifact?).
Bibliography
The bibliography must include five relevant academic sources:
• Three of these sources must be assigned course readings.
• The other two can be any combination of course readings and other
academic sources, including journal articles and book chapters.
• This is a preliminary bibliography and, as you write, you may
change/switch some of your sources – as long as you end up using at least three assigned readings.
Formatting
• Double-spaced, 12-point Times New Roman font, 1” margins (and no white space between paragraphs).
• Proofread, excellent spelling, grammar, and punctuation.
• Correct citation practice: either MLA or APA (do NOT improvise or guess).
Possible feedback on your proposal could include:
• Focus the topic more
• Return to library for additional sources
• Modify research questions
• Find a more persuasive argument
• Pick a different research topic
Sample Topic
1. For this question, you will draw on three relevant assigned readings from the course discussing the politics of representation, gender, femininity, race, postfeminism, and consumer culture to critically analyze the 2015 ad Berlei bra campaign featuring Serena Williams (image and link below). In what ways does the image reference postfeminist discourses of Western women’s freedom, choice and empowerment? In the print ad, how is this Black sportswoman subject constructed through discourses of “pornographic eroticism” and/or the “sexual grotesquerie”? How are white and Black women athletes constructed differently in this campaign (or are they)? Would you evaluate this campaign as a feminist media artifact? Postfeminist? Why or why not? Do you find one set of

meanings more persuasive than another, based on your informed, critical evaluation of the text? [Suggested authors might include Caputi, Ouellette, Gill, Hall, McKay & Johnson, Drew, Kellner, Lull]
