Project asks you to consider literacy and social meaning in a larger cultural context to think of learning, writing, and literacy issues as public concerns, and with relation to cultural significance and meaning. Each of us is unique and individual, yet we all also make some identification with various communities, groups, and social identities. Some of those identities we consider frequently and recognize relatively easily, such as broad-spectrum social distinctions including religion, race, ethnicity, class, gender, and sexual orientation, just to name a few. However, culture can encompass much more cultural categories might also include occupation, family status, and living location. Even more focused groups of belonging could include fraternal organizations, musical/arts groups, hobby clubs, and recreational sports clubs. All of these, in a way, fall under a large banner of culture.
THE PROJECT:
In this project, youll choose for analysis an everyday object associated with the nature of reading, writing, and literacy yours or that of others or an item which reflects a cultural group with which you have a connection. This object can be a literal, physical object, or, it can be a text, a product, a process, etc.
Once youve chosen, youll question, examine, and analyze this object to learn more about its nature, its attributes, its social and cultural meanings, and ultimately, what it reveals about the larger cultural values and practices which create and surround it.
This project will likely involve some research, but in a way different from other projects you may have undertaken you ll have to do some observation, some questioning (about your object's cultural uses, meanings, and values and perhaps on culture itself), and then work your way towards a conclusion about this artifact's significance for understanding how literacy and/or your item is used and valued in your particular culture. An object can reveal much about its creators and users think of the adage
A picture is worth a thousand words. For this project, find a picture, and then those thousand words.
A few suggestions might include:
- Considering an object which has significance for you/others
- Considering an object which is common, which you/others use daily
- Extending private knowledge: considering an object with which you have very little familiarity
- Extending public knowledge: examining a particular well-known artifact which exists in a larger world
These ideas may work alone or in combination; the choice is yours. Let self-discovery guide you as you invent and write. Regardless, the more specific you are the better and more effective your project is likely to be. Keep in mind, too, that this project may require a bit of outside research, especially if you are unfamiliar with your artifact; you will have to provide some background on this object and some sense of its history, relevance, use, etc.
PS: I really suggest you avoid cell phones for this assignment. Please.
GOALS and PURPOSE:
1) To invite you to inquire into the cultural values and practices which surround cultural literacy, as exemplified in one particular artifact
2) To give you practice in the process of inquiry forming and asking questions, revising questions, and formulating answers
3) To introduce outside research into your writing
AUDIENCE:
For this project, you will write as if your audience is a general academic audience, an educated audience, but assumed to be unfamiliar with your artifact.