Assignment 1

This is a short assignment designed to provide a close textual analysis of a cultural artifact of your own choice, taken from the period of the 1960s. It requires close looking, careful critical analysis, and the ability to draw out larger interpretation and conclusions.

Choose a cultural artifact. This might be a photograph, work of art, poster, postcard, album cover, song, fashion outfit, television episode or scene, example of design or craft, book cover or alternative publication, etc.

Write an analysis of your chosen example, focusing on the following questions:

What is it (think about when, how, for whom, and why it was made)?

What does it mean, and how does it accrue or convey meaning?

What might it tell us about the sixties (or a particular aspect of the sixties)?
Provide a list of five sources that you would use to research a longer essay on this topic. These must be relevant and useful. Don't just list the first things you find on Google. This list of sources is not included in the word count.

This is a short text rather than an academic essay (it''s the sort of thing you might write for a museum website), so you do not need to reference secondary sources in your account. It will be important to paraphrase those sources, rather than to directly reproduce their words verbatim.

Assignment 2 (2,500 words)
This assignment builds on the previous one and asks you to undertake a longer, more academic piece of writing. It asks you to write an essay that considers 3 cultural artefacts that are thematically related, drawn from the period of the sixties. You may if you wish include the previous object from your first assignment for further development (though you should not copy and paste your original 500 words).

Your analysis of your cultural artefacts should consider the same questions as in your first assignment, but given the longer, more in-depth approach, you should emphasise the final question to bring together your analysis of all three objects: what do they tell us about sixties culture or counterculture? What conclusions might we draw if we approach a study of the period through these particular artefacts?

This assignment should be written as an academic essay with references (in text citations or footnotes) and bibliography.