Write a 4-5 page essay in which you analyze a cultural text (a film, memoir, novel, set of images, etc.) or social practice associated with the United States
during the Civil Rights Movement. You may take ONE of the following approaches:
Perform an ideological analysis of a film, photograph, television report, documentary, journalistic account, recording, or other cultural representation of the
Civil Rights movement. What does the text suggest about America in the 1920s through the 1950s? How does the text construct a particular form of
collective memory about equal rights? That is, how does it work to make a certain view of civil rights seem “incorrect”? What features of the fear of equality
are foregrounded, which ones are rendered invisible, and what is the effect of these choices? Your response should use class readings or other reliable
secondary sources to develop/support the argument.
Analyze how the Civil Rights movement and the struggle for equality continues to resonate in contemporary American culture and politics (for example, the
recent Presidential elections). Choose one or, at most, two examples of contemporary culture that illustrate the on-going renegotiation of the meaning of the
equality; explain how and why attitudes shifted during this era. Your response should use class readings or other reliable secondary sources to
develop/support the argument.
Consider a text or practice that constitutes a form of cultural politics. How does the text or practice illustrate the tensions inherent in this style of resistance?
That is, how successful is the text or practice as an act of resistance to established forms of power in minorities in the 1920s, 30s, 40s and 50s? What made
this change happen in a multiple generations? Your response should use class readings or other reliable secondary sources to develop/support the
argument.
