Popular Culture

“For your Synthesis Essay, you will use a secondary text as a lens for developing an analysis of a popular culture primary text of your choice. Select a scholarly analytical secondary source that analyzes your primary text or a similar kind of primary text or a scholarly theoretical secondary source that offers an interpretive framework for analyzing your primary text. Do not choose a review as your secondary source. Your task is to look at your primary text through the lens of your secondary source and to develop an analysis of your primary text that you place in conversation with your secondary source. In other words, your 4-5 page Synthesis Essay will develop an analytical claim about your primary text. This new claim should not merely reiterate a claim that your secondary source makes. Instead, you will engage in conversation with your secondary source by making an analytical claim about your primary text that applies, challenges, complicates, or extends the claims of your secondary source.”