“Every day we are constantly confronting content whether that is food, sports, movies, images, video games, advertisements, news, or books. It is easy to consume these cultural products mindlessly, however, as we have seen throughout this class, everything is imbricated within systems of power and must be critically analyzed. Using what we have learned in class, students will be asked to step into the shoes of a cultural critic and analyze in “real time” a contemporary cultural object or phenomenon.
For this assignment write a 500-word short essay (approximately 1.5 pages) that connects ONE of the following themes/issues we explored in the first section of class: coolie, exclusion, foreign, immigration, labor, orientalism, and yellow. Focus on ONE contemporary object or phenomenon – anything from activism, music, film, sports, food, and popular culture – and discuss it in relation to the theme/issue you have selected. Does the contemporary object explore a new manifestation of oppression? Does it replicate historical forms of oppression? Does it critique old forms of oppression? How does this theme manifest in the contemporary moment? What is different? What is the same? Does it offer new stories and perspectives?
