This page is your guide to written assignments for MDIA 201, sections 01, 02, and 03.

First, the rules:

1. All assignments are due on paper and in class on the day indicated. Late papers will not be accepted.
   
2. All assignments must be typed, double-spaced, with reasonable margins. Be sure to proofread and spell-check your papers. Give each one a title, and make sure that both your name and the date are on it.
   
3. There are eleven paper assignments indicated below, each due on a specific day of class. You must hand in eight out of eleven papers. You may hand in nine, if you want your poorest grade dropped.
4. The university has a draconian new policy regarding plagiarism. Any plagiarism, no matter how accidental, will result in failure for the course. Do your own work. Be particularly careful if you cut/paste. Remember, using someone else's ideas without acknowledgment counts as plagiarism. Using someone else's words without quotation marks does too. Give credit where it is due.
5. In terms of format, each assignment requires a three-paragraph essay. That's two pages or less. We'll do some thinking about technique and style in class, but if you'd like to have a sense of what I will be looking for, here's a general idea:
   • Paragraph one makes a claim while indicating context.
   • Paragraph two supports the claim by giving evidence, appealing to the particular.
   • Paragraph three complicates the claim while drawing a conclusion. Note that this is not a mere restatement of the claim.
     
     

Q. In class this week we will discuss what may be reality television's most important formal device, "the reveal." ("Formal" not as in white tie; "formal" as in "The world was without form and void.") The reveal entails knowledge -- the viewers' knowledge, the contenstants' knowledge -- but it also obviously entails feelings, emotions. Using the example of a reveal on Pimp My Ride or another show you have seen, indicate the relationship between knowing and feeling. How does the reveal use one to produce the other? Or, what is the relationship between knowing and feeling for the viewers as compared to the contestants?
(Note: This is a big, messy question, so it requires a preemptive decision on your part. Before you write, decide what you want to claim and how you will support the claim.)

or

Q. Montaigne's "On Coaches" is sometimes translated as "On Vehicles," but in some sense Montiagne's essay is about much more than mere vehicular conveyances. What would a better title for the essay be and why?

Q. Explain the way that YouTube is or is not structured by what Foucault calls "the author function." Does it make sense to think of an auteur theory of online video?

Q. Look again at Linda Williams's "anatomy of film bodies" in "Film Bodies: Gender, Genre, and Excess" (9). How do the readers of Rousseau work or not work according to Williams's scheme?

or

Q. Darnton uses several methods to study readers. How would any of his methods apply if instead of readers of Rousseau we were interested in, say, watchers of FOX news or users of Facebook?

Q. Write this 3-paragraph essay in the form of a 3-paragraph review of Galloway's article on video games. Remember to start with a specific claim and then provide evidence to support the claim.

or

Q. Write a 3-paragraph essay in which you explain Arnheim's use or misuse -- you pick -- of the term "realism" (26). You may wish to refer to Hartley, but you do not have to. Be sure to start with a specific claim and to support that claim with evidence.

Q. A new edition of Hebdige is going to include this one illustration. You are an editor, and it's your job to locate this image at exactly the right point in the text. What individual page does this image best illustrate? Your claim needs to include a page number of your choosing and a reason for your choice.

Note: The image is from the 2003 film School of Rock, but the film itself is irrelivant to this question. Concentrate on Hebdige.

These headlines are from The Onion (2006)

• "U.S. Children Still Traumatized One Year after Seeing a Partially Exposed Breast on TV"
• "CIA Realizes It's Been Using Black Highlighters All These Years"
• "Google Announces Plan to Destroy All Information It Can't Index"
• "Study: Watching Fewer Than Four Hours of TV a Day Impairs Ability to Ridicule Pop Culture"
• "America Still Searching for Funniest Home Video"

Q. As a parodic newspaper, The Onion pokes fun of the media at the same time that it makes fun of -- well -- everything else. Judging from one, some, or all of these recent headlines, what does The Onion staff think is wrong with the media in America today?
(Note: "the media" is an acceptable shorthand in this instance, referring to today's commercial news and information outlets, whether publishing or broadcasting.)