CMS Spring 2007

7-Day Take Home Examination (10/4 – 17/4)

 

Your paper may not exceed 20 pages at 2400 characters per page.  The number of characters in the paper must be listed on the paper’s cover sheet.  Failure to list this will result in the paper not being read.  Use a consistent, comprehensible documentation style throughout the paper. All quotations, sources and borrowed ideas must be cited.

Please answer one, two or three of the following questions in an essay style format. Indicate clearly in your paper which question(s) you are addressing.
 
  1. Discuss everyday life as an object of cultural studies. What is the importance of studying the mundane, trivial or quotidian? Illustrate your claims with an exemplary analysis of an everyday phenomenon (such as queuing) or object (such as a bus shelter).
  2. Discuss the force of subculture theory as a tool for explaining otherness and belonging. Illustrate your points with an analysis of a specific subcultural practice.
  3. How do Baudrillard's analysis of interior design and Stigel's analysis of the role of television in modern life function as analyses of our "surrounding worlds" (Umwelten)?  What kind of analysis do they represent:  cultural, historical, political economic, or a mix of the three?
  4. What kind of models does the "New Cultural History" provide for cultural analysis?
  5. Analyze one or two TV commercials of your own choice. Your analysis should consider issues such as gender representation, commodity aesthetics, subgenres and narratology.
  6. How does the use of life style segment surveys in the design of TV commercials or magazine advertisements influence their form and content? Analyze one or more commercials or advertisements with special focus on this question.
  7. Analyze a website of your own choice. What special approaches should be used when analyzing the new media and the Internet?
  8. Based on analyses of one or more media texts of your own choice discuss the relationship between intertextual quotations and narrative flow.
  9. How do paratexts influence the audience’s reception of a hypotext? Your answer to this question must include analyses of one or more media texts, including their paratexts.
  10. How has the Web 2.0 concept changed the Internet? Analyse one or more websites that are placed firmly within the Web 2.0 concept.
  11. Discuss how the analysis of contemporary media audiences needs to take into account the diversity and proliferation of new media, such as the Internet, in our lives.
  12. In what ways can new media facilitate as well as hinder innovative democratic forms of media participation? You may wish to consider LINUX/FLOSS or peer-to-peer file sharing, or new social software such as Wikipedia.
  13. Discuss the advantages and disadvantages of using McCloud's typology of comics and panel closure for analysing graphic novels and adult comics. Use examples of comics to illustrate your answer.
  14. Analyse Spiegelman's 'Maus' and its representation of national identity, race and ethnicity. You might wish to compare 'Maus' with Spiegelman's 'The Shadow of No Towers'.