Assignments for Cultural Analysis

Write a "Mythology"

due Friday, February 11

1. Keep the readings that we've done in mind.
2. Select something familiar to all of us that Roland Barthes would call a "myth"... a picture, a thing, a story, whatever.
3. Be a "mythologist" and have at it. About 900 words will do fine.

Hint: Think especially about the part in "Myth Today" where Barthes talks about the three ways to read a myth (page 128 in Mythologies). Give us an understanding of what the myth is that you see, and then take it apart a bit so that we can see how that myth was made (how it comes to seem "natural" and "given"). Make sure we know that you know what Barthes is talking about, and feel free to use his terminology.

 

Definitions

due Friday, March 3

 

Define 5 of the following terms, in your own words, in reference to what we've been reading and the discipline of anthropology. 900 words total.

 

ethnographic realism, ethnographic authority, holism, narrative, objective/subjective (one term), participant-observation, postivism, structuralism, poststructuralism, modernity, postmodernity

 

Hint: You can use outside sources, like the reference dictionaries and encyclopedias of anthropology and the social sciences in the library, plus your notes, and our readings. Do yourself a favor and pick the ones that right now you understand the least.