Popular Literature and Culture – Transnational Latinx Pop Cultu

Assignment:

An Analytical Response Paper (ARP) has two missions: 1) quickly summarize a source’s main point/idea and 2) respond to the source’s main idea with a reaction based on your own synthesis.

For this assignment, you are required to produce a 2-page ARP (double-spaced, 12-point Times New Roman font, 1-inch margins) on one course reading (see list below) as your focus. Read the text closely (preferably a couple of times). Think about classroom discussions. Then identify the passage, points, questions, confusions, and connections that catch your attention—these places, moments, and particulars are the starting point for a good response paper. Select one of these starting points to generate a more complex argument about the reading. Your ARP should include important quotes from the text that best support your argument. You should then perform a close reading of the quotes, explaining why it matters and supports your larger claim.

Analytical Response Papers are NOT to be composed as journal entries, reviews, summaries, or opinion pieces—you will be graded on clarity, focus, evidence, analysis, and ability to concisely formulate a claim.

Analysis:

Consider the following questions to help generate content for your analysis:

— What does the text leave you asking?

— What difficulties or confusions need clarification or explanation?

— How might the text push, expand, or focus your understanding of concepts, definitions, practices, or theories we have discussed in class?

— Can you supply further explanation to clarify or support any of the main points, ideas, and arguments?

Organization:

Offer a relevant and compelling title for your Analytical Response Paper—productive titles should engage the argument you put forth in your ARP.

Dispense with the formal “five-paragraph” paper. Get to your argument right away, then support it. Your first paragraph will begin right away with your overall point and claim. Be specific. Develop your paper around only one main idea or one critical question.

Analytical Response Papers are a window to your ideas, analytical processes, reading practices, reactions, and critical thinking—tidied up and nicely framed, of course. Introduce quotes and ideas from the text but use them strategically. Quotes should be brief and illustrative. Then provide your analysis, and commentary explaining why the evidence is important.

Your response paper need not end with a formal, generalized conclusion. You might not reach a hard-and-fast conclusion at all. Rather you should articulate the stakes of your argument or leave the reader with a final, specific provocation or end by establishing connections to other readings or concerns of the class.

Possible Texts:

Myra Mendible, “Embodying Latinidad: An Overview”

Arlene Davila, “The Hispanic Consumer”

Kency Cornejo, “Writing Art Histories from Below: A Guanaca-Hood perspective”

Ila Nicole Sheren, “The San Diego Chicano Movement and the Origins of Border Art”