Importance of the Ring to Our Family and Culture

Now that you’ve learned about inquiry, research, and synthesis, it’s time to move on to another related and important intellectual skill: inferring an analytic model that you will apply to a subject in order to analyze the subject and its important features. This essay combines the academic, the personal, and the cultural.
You will develop an analytic model to explore how and why an artifact is important to your family and your culture.
Your analysis will use Ariana Curtis’s ideas about why representation matters and Roberta Sassatelli’s explanation of how consumers use artifacts.
Analysis does not have to be dull and ‘academic:’ so you will use narrative techniques from Adair Lara to integrate your analysis with personal narratives that will show a reader how your subject intersects with you, your family, and culture.
(We will also read some ‘sample’ narratives to give you examples of how real people have done work like this).
To get started, we will begin with some brainstorming exercises and discussions in response to Ariana Curtis’s Museums Ted Talk. Some of us will know immediately what we want to write about, while others will be sure that our families have no compelling artifact that anyone else would be interested in knowing about.
In pursuing this assignment, you’ll incorporate the following information:
Why are artifacts important for expressing human being?
Why does it matter whether or not a culture’s customs and artifacts are valued as representative?
You’ll develop 4-5 separate scenes and stories that use a variety of narrative techniques that show your family and culture using the artifact you choose.
You’ll likely want to interview a family member to learn more about the importance and ‘representativeness’ of the artifact you choose. While you’ll create most of your interview questions, at least one question needs to make use of ideas from Waller and Curtis.
You’ll need to be able shift from telling good stories about how and why the artifact is important to your family to using the ideas about significance and representation you’ll learn about to analyze what the importance of the artifact says about what kind of culture your family represents.
This Narrative and Analysis essay will continue to introduce you to the rigorous standards and expectations of academic research and writing. It will also allow you to begin the process of guided self-analysis and reflection that is a key part of a liberal arts education.
What are the assignment requirements?
To succeed with this assignment, you need to ensure you complete the following requirements:
Complete all pre-writing stages in both ENGL 1310 and ENGL 1033D: brainstorming journals; in-class writing activities; research notebook; and peer workshops
Write a well-organized essay that…
Uses an introductory paragraph (or two) that tells a personal anecdote or story. This anecdote will show someone in your family making meaning or memories with the significant artifact. Thus this anecdote will provide readers with an overview of how the essay will combine with your analysis to show how representative artifacts are important;
Synthesizes analysis and narrative into a presentation of the importance of artifacts for maintaining cultural identity that uses well-organized body paragraphs;
Makes good use of personal interviews and other reliable, verifiable sources;
Documents & cites all sources per MLA guidelines, including the Works Cited page at the end of the essay.
Complete and submit your essay by the designated due date