Cultural Artifact Project
Prompt: Consider the meaning of an artifact of your choice as well as what it reveals about the culture(s) it is part of.
Your essay should analyze what exactly the artifact is, its impact, and what we can learn about society as a result of studying it.
Your paper must also directly contextualize your own research within the methods or approaches displayed by any two of the three “case study” texts we have read for this class (Let’s Talk About Love, Doing Cultural Studies, Consider the Lobster) In Let’s Talk About Love, the author approached as an individual that dislikes a particular person, Celine Dion by multiple ways (going to Dion’s concert in Las Vegas and interviewed with a few of Dion’s fans).
In Doing Cultural Studies, the author specifically focused on the “circuit of culture” includes “representation, consumption, production, regulation and identity”, which is a set of values that an object has to pass in order to be considered as a cultural artifact
How have you attempted to utilize their approaches to better understand your own artifact, and what benefits and pitfalls have you encountered along the way in doing so?
Specifically, your paper must address the following:
•What does it mean to study an artifact as a cultural document? Assess the methods of two case study texts we’ve read in terms of how they have shaped your own work. How has your artifact attained meaning through its production and consumption?
•How has your artifact’s meaning has been shaped or altered through a variety of social settings or contexts?
•What effects does your artifact have on other artifacts, industries, societies or the planet more generally (whether through its creation, usage, or eventual obsolescence)?
