Like your previous essay, your assignment for your third essay is to choose a pop cultural artifact. You should choose an artifact that you feel has academic value. Be sure to keep in mind your discussion of the readings and your prewritings for Education: Popular Culture and the Academy as you choose your artifact. When choosing your artifact, be sure to consider its original source. In citing your artifact, you will want to be as precise as possible in providing your reader with most relevant citation.
Your Thesis
The thesis of your essay should argue why you believe that your artifact has academic value. (Why would this artifact be worth studying in a course?) This assignment is a bit more difficult than our earlier two assignments because, in order to make a strong academic argument, you will want to think beyond the obvious. While lots of artifacts have educational value in that they teach us something (such as learning our numbers or letters from Sesame Street), this thesis asks you to consider how the popular cultural artifact can help us better understand the world around us or help us grow as people through our consumption of it. In the sample essays for this week, the authors argue how Stephen King,Greys Anatomy, and two Loretta Lynn songs from the 1970s can help us come to a greater understanding of the world in which we live. If you are unsure about what constitutes academic value, be sure to read the following article: The Purpose of a Liberal Arts Education. Your thesis statement should be an assertive statement that tells the reader how/why this artifact has academic value.
Evidence to Support Your Thesis
Like the previous two essays, in order to support your thesis statement, you will need to provide a careful analysis of your artifact. (Your artifact will be one of the required sources for this essay.) In addition, you will need to explain to your reader how your analysis demonstrates that your position is true.
In developing your argument, be sure to consider the prewriting that we have done in class as well as our in class discussions. You want to be sure that you address the key components of the artifact and the ways in which this artifact provides academic value.
In addition, your evidence for this essay may also draw on two outside sources for support. Please be sure to keep in mind the lectures and quizzes from Weeks 2 and 4 as you go about your research. You will want to begin your research at the library. You will also want to focus your research on as scholarly as sources as you can find. The library catalog and library databases should be the first places that you begin your search. Please be sure to remember the video by Dr. Bob Baker, Info Literacy 10. Evaluating Information Sources. Part of your score for your use of in-text citations will consider whether you are using credible sources.
Audience
Your audience is a college educated person who may or may not be familiar with your artifact, but who does understand the concepts covered by the essay. Be sure to use the appropriate academic voice as described in the lesson, The Academic Essay.
Essay 3 Requirements

Your essay should be typed and double spaced using MLA format.
This essay should be at least seven paragraphs.
You will need to be sure to cite your outside sources according to MLA citation guidelines.
For this essay, use three outside sources. Your artifact will be one outside source. You will also want to find additional outside sources to help with your analysis. Be sure to keep in mind the Citing Sources lectures and quizzes on research as you go about your research. In particular, be sure to start your research at the library and always choose credible sources. If you have trouble finding sources to support your argument, do not hesitate to let me know. I am happy to help.
Be sure to include a Works Cited page as the final page of your essay. Essays, either rough or final drafts, will not be considered complete without the Works Cited page, and I will not comment on incomplete essays.
The late submissions (even one minute late) of your rough draft will not receive credit or instructor comments. Rough Drafts without Works Cited pages will not receive comments.
Late Final Drafts will be deducted ten percent for each day that they are late. Final Drafts without Works Cited pages will not be graded. Final Drafts will be graded using the Composition II Essay Rubric found in the Introduction to Composition II folder.Essay 3 Readings
From the Book- Discovering popular culture by Anna Tomasino.
PAGES:
Education, Popular Culture, and the Academy, 162-163
Trussel, 165-168
Johnson, 202-208
Franzen, 181-191