MAS215 Theorising Media

Marking criteria: You will be marked against the following criteria in this essay:

o Does the essay stay focused on the question? Does the essay do what the question asks?

o Does the essay show sufficient critical engagement with relevant and sufficient readings from the MAS215 unit readings?

o Does the essay show critical engagement with sufficient independently sourced, relevant and appropriate academic publications?

o Does the essay identify appropriate theoretical concepts & theorists?

o Does the essay show sufficient knowledge and understanding of the relevant theory?

o Does the essay demonstrate critical and analytical thinking?

o Does the essay demonstrate relational thinking? (Does the essay make connections between the set texts and the theory, and to other theoretically relevant ideas and information?)

o How well does the essay use academic research to support the analysis? Are there enough citations?

o Essay writing skills: essay structure, paragraphing, sentence structure, clarity of expression etc.

Q.1 Critically compare, in light of postcolonial theory, Trevor Noah’s response to criticism after congratulating Africa on winning the FIFA World Cup (The Daily Show, 2018) and Rita Panahi’s newspaper column ‘Why We Need to Fly the Flag’ (Herald Sun2017). You may look to postcolonial notions such as: resistance; otherness; orientalism; hybridity and ambivalence in your comparative analysis.

Q.2 Critically analyse, from an ecocritical perspective, the lyrics of Neil Young & Crazy Horse’s ‘Be the Rain’ (2003) and an extract from Alan Weisman’s The World Without Us (2007). You may draw on such ecocritical concerns as: the nature/culture binary;anthropocentrism; ecocentrism; and environmental activism, in your comparative analysis.

Q.3 Critically analyse the short film ‘A (very) Rough Guide to Wanstead Flats’, by John Rogers (2015), and an extract from Owen Hatherley’s A New Kind of Bleak: Journeys Through Urban Britain (2012) from a psychogeographical perspective. You may like to discuss such psychogeographical concerns as: walking; marginal/marginalised urban spaces and experiences; the re-enchantment of the cityscape; spatial history and ‘the past’; trauma; and socio-cultural critique in your comparative analysis.