Essay Instructions: The assignment
Your first writing project emphasized entering a critical conversation about the frontier in American historiography (the writing of history). This second project builds on that work, but now our emphasis is on making use of other writers to do your own critical and creative work with modern materials. In Project 2, you will use writers like Patricia Nelson Limerick and Elliot West to consider how a primary text of your choice deploys or engages the frontier through imagery, metaphor, or narrative. Your argument will offer a way to understand how your text imagines the frontier, as well as the relationship between that vision of the frontier and earlier frontiers as imagined by Turner or Buffalo Bill. Does your text extend, complicate, re-envision,reject or repackage Turner’s frontier?
Possible primary texts include: a film, a television series or episode, advertising, a political campaign or speech, a magazine or newspaper article, a website, a video game, photography, music, a novel or story, an organization or business, the sports industry, tourism, etc.
Whatever topic you choose, keep the focus of your project narrow so that you can go in depth. For example, you might write about how one film revises the frontier myth, or how Las Vegas casinos deploy frontier imagery. Do not try to cover more—you don’t have room to go in depth about several films, or about the hospitality industry in general. Narrow, interpretive arguments supported with detail and thoughtful analysis are more sophisticated than general arguments that skim the surface of your evidence.
Steps in Project 2:
Read articles by Limerick, West, and McLure for a sense of how frontier myths function in popular culture.
Select a primary text, or a group of shorter, related texts (a set of advertisements, for example, or several songs by a single artist).
Begin to articulate questions about your text(s), modeled on the questions and concerns we encounter in Limerick, West, and McLure.
Work closely with your primary text(s) to answer those questions. In your work with your primary text, you will:
Identify frontier/western imagery, metaphors, and/or myths at work in your text
Explain how the myth/imagery works (What associations does it invoke? What does it assume about the audience?)
Explore the implications of the myth. (What does the text encourage people to believe/feel?)
Draw some conclusions based on this work.
Pull your ideas together into a project Proposal (see below for details). I will respond to this Proposal and offer suggestions.
Draft Project 2 and revise in response to peer feedback.
Submit a final draft of Project 2.
The early stages of the Project are about getting familiar with a critical conversation (talking about frontier myths in American culture) and working closely with your primary text to figure out what you want to say. The second phase of the Project will focus on crafting your essay so that these ideas are clear and convincing to your readers. We will look at the shape of the essay, making sure each paragraph furthers your analysis. We will consider transitions between the parts of your essay, and ways to keep your readers with you as you explore your topic in-depth. And we’ll talk about articulating your ideas clearly and concisely, as you work to strike a balance between clarity and complexity in your writing.
Thursday 12/8 Project 2 Final Draft due to Blackboard (Assignments page). The paper should be at least 5 full pages long, with MLA-style in-text citations and list of Works Cited.
What I have so far...
The E-frontier
Western advertisements have been notorious for their rugged and cool cigarette depictions of the Marbolo man puffing away out on the frontier. This was then, a time where the main source of media were newspapers, magazines, or even posters. Now, it’s all about modern technology and new advances. Advertisers are fully aware of this and the potential in innovation in online advertising. Not only are they taking the western myths and running with it, but they’re now using the latest technologically advanced shoes for the run, the E-frontier. The web takes ads to another level. The ads themselves are inter actable with the viewer, weather its an exciting mini game for the younger audiences, or a provoking question that leads the viewer to eventually click on the ad. One advertisement in particular was an interactive shooter. The task was simple, to point the mouse at the wild horses and click, attempting to wrangle five buckers. Once the task was complete, it automatically forwarded the page into their product of advertisement. Now, advertisers don’t even have to integrate the western image with their product, they can just use it to draw their audience in. In this case, it was an addicting and fun based mini game using colorful and cartoon like graphics. They can manipulate their ads to extend the western myth with limitless possibilities.
You can continue off of my work, or choose a topic of your own. The only thing about my topic is that it might be difficult to cite other examples of online advertising. Maybe pictures or links? Please relate and quote a lot from the sources i will send and relate the work
There are faxes for this order.
