Cultural Artifact Analysis of Pearl Harbor Movie Cultural Artifact Analysis
Topic chose- Pearl Harbor(movie)
Now we will try our hands at an analytical inquiry into a cultural artifact in order to discover a meaningful and valuable idea about the artifact and the cultures that relate to it.
Your first step in writing this project is to choose an artifact that has both interest to you and the potential to be interesting to an audience. Remember as you select your artifact that your goal is to use analysis to invent knowledge that has value to an audience. Ask these kinds of questions:
Who uses this thing? Why and how?
What does this thing mean? Why and how?
Who values this thing? Why and how?
Who made this thing? Why and how?
Specific guidelines
1) Your project must have a focusing idea/thesis.
2) Your focusing idea/thesis must be valuable to the audience you specify. In other words, it must pass the “so what?” test.
3) Your inquiry should focus on a single primary artifact. Secondary artifacts are useful only to reveal the primary artifact’s meaning.
4) As you generate inquiry questions, remember to approach the artifact from a variety of perspectives. And be aware of the various rhetorical features of your artifact, just like Mitchell is in her essay “The Rhetoric of Celebrity Cookbooks.”
5) Include a note at the end of your project and in this note tell me how you approached decisions in the following areas. Two to five sentences for each area will work.
Situation. What is this writing situation like?
Purpose. What is your purpose in writing this investigation?
Audience. Who is your audience and how does your writing relate to them?
Mode/genre. What do you think about writing in this mode/genre?
Learning goals
• To figure out how to use evidence and analysis for the purpose of the invention
• To understand how to relate to an
• To understand how the inquiry process works: forming inquiry questions, revising them, and seeking answers in order to develop an inventive thesis
Skills we’ll practice
• Inquiry skills
• Research skills
• Connecting specific details to larger ideas or concepts
• Strategies for inventing good ideas through repeated revision
