Step 1: Select an event. You can pick any event, including one that has happened to you or a family member. If picking an event reported in the news, please keep it within the last five years.
Step 2: Select a lens to use to analyze the event. Remember that you do not have to agree with your selected lens’s perspective. You are simply using it to root your critical thoughts into a single perspective. Feel free to use a lens not presented or discussed in class.
Step 3: There are also some questions to guide students through the thinking process listed to help you through the writing process, but as always, feel free to create your own structure.
Please use the following questions as a guide for your body paragraphs or general structure;
1) What is the narrative being delivered about the event?
2) What voices are being centered?
3) How is the narrative in one form (perhaps the news) different from the narrative being presented in another form or other platforms (perhaps social media)?
4) What is missing from the narrative?
5) How do we want the narrative to change?
This essay is for a general academic audience; don’t assume your reader is in our class and knows the story/event as well as you do.
You should research and find your source material to support your claims in the essay. Since you can write about any event, please translate articles in different languages into English when necessary.
No sources will be required if using a personal event, but you may still need to use sources to help define your lens and its historical context.
The essay should be 1000-1250 words (at least four pages though I recommend 5-6 pages). Include the word count at the end of your essay.
Your thesis should identify the critical lens and how that lens interprets your selected event.
Like the previous essays, always use specific passages to support your discussion since doing so offers more opportunities for close analysis.
