Assignment

Your first task will be to identify a form of cultural resistance (or attempted cultural resistance) and its connected controversies and then to spend some time listening in on and analyzing the arguments that are embedded in the debate. Who is saying what? What positions are the various participants taking? What are the ethical and social consequences of those positions? Who wins? Who loses? What is the history of this issue? What kinds of arguments are being constructing for what kinds of audiences? What seems to influence who takes what position? What is the scale of this controversy (local, regional, national, global)? Which positions seem to have the most credible arguments? Which positions seem to have the most power? What visual images do the various participants deploy? You are going to, more or less, map out the opinions and the implications surrounding your issue.

You will use the skills of analysis that you have honed in unit 2 to arrive at research questions, which you will then explore through the various methods we have identified in class (database research, personal experience, etc). As you perform your analysis, you will again practice deferring judgment, identifying parts and how they are connected, looking for patterns, making the implicit explicit, and reformulating questions. However, unlike your analysis essay, your central purpose in the essay your write for unit 3 (Argument) will be to persuade your academic audience to adopt the position that you recommend from the position of authority you have built with your research. Your argument will be based on and will emerge from your analysis of the controversy. In your essay for this unit, you will construct an argument that positions you within the controversy. You will not simply argue for who is right and who is wrong-rather, you will argue for a particular way to understand the issue and, if appropriate, you will include a call for a certain kind of action from your audience as a way to resolve the controversy. To do this, you will select a limited number of sources (these may be written, visual, audio, video, etc.) from those you uncovered in your research. No more than three or four of these (at least two scholarly) should represent the views you wish to explore in depth, support, work against or develop in building your own argument. Others may be included if you need to reference them briefly in order to summarize the controversy or present statistics, etc. This is not a "full blown" research project.

My topic of controversy will be the Current NFL kneeling issue and I would like to side with the fans and owners about how its disrespectful to the country and the people defending it.