Assignment: Your midterm essay is an analysis of an issue that troubles, fascinates, enlightens, or illuminates something within your chosen text(s). You should compare or contrast the ways at least two separate academic disciplines analyze this topic. While I will not give specific provocations (or questions) to you about where to concentrate your writing, I hope to offer many questions and issues during the lectures and class discussions.
My only designations are that you should write about the material that we have read, viewed, and discussed in Units One, Two and Three. Thus: The Silence of the Lambs, Psycho, and Dexter or our readings from Natural Born Celebrities, and any concepts discussed in the discussion sections or lectures within those areas.
Example questions/topics:
- You may compare and contrast the way literary analysis would analyze Darkly Dreaming Dexter differently than a film analysis would be of the TV series. How does Dexter’s “heroic†vigilantism bleed into the real world?
- You may compare or contrast the film analysis of Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho with the medical or psychological diagnosis of Norman Bates. Is it possible to learn from the film’s fiction to allow us to see a “real world†perspective on serial killers?
- How would a criminal justice perspective on Hannibal Lecter differ from a social psychological profile? How does our academic knowledge change our viewing of the film?
Specifics: The midterm should be three to four pages in length, double-spaced, with one inch margins, and normal pitch fonts. Longer writing will not garner you a better grade, so use the format to show your precision, focus, and support clearly within the space allowed. The work should be, otherwise in MLA or APA format, with a thesis or argument.
Resources: Your essay should include academic research from at least two different academic disciplines. The rule of thumb in most academic essays is roughly an equal number of research sources as there are pages in your essay. Thus, you should have three or four academic sources. Your paper may follow MLA or APA guidelines.
