Cultural Artifacts
Overview:
In Claudia Wobovnik’s text and video “These Shoes Aren’t made for Walking”, she presents an analysis of the high-heeled shoe as a cultural artifact. Wobovnik explains that people often have different associations with the same cultural artifact, because the “cultural agents bring the object into meaning by using it” (85). In other words, an object only has meaning because it is used by people, and people create meaning according to cultural and social practices.
Prompt: Using Wobovnik’s cultural artifact analysis as a model, identify a cultural artifact and analyze its connection with freedom. Consider the questions below:
How is the artifact experienced or interpreted?
What is the artifact’s role in society?
How does the artifact contribute to and actively shape cultural ideals and expectations?
How does the artifact support or revise conventional ideas, practices, or expectations?
How does the artifact create meaning?
How does this artifact promote specific values of freedom, or oppression?
Which cultural groups are affected by the artifact?
How does the artifact participate in influencing the formation of personal or group identity?
How is this artifact representative of wider social assumptions that are promoted through media, stereotypes, and single stories?
After selecting a cultural artifact to research and completing the tasks throughout the module, compose an essay that includes the following:
A thesis that argues the cultural artifact’s connection to freedom
Analyze the artifact:
Provide a brief history
Explain its role in contemporary society
Explain it’s connection to freedom through multiple examples from credible sources
Analyze a non-text object related to your cultural artifact
Apply Wobovnik’s ideas about the creation of meaning by social agents to your analysis:
What are the different ways that the cultural artifact is interpreted based on cultural factors and differences?
Which groups benefit from the cultural artifact? Which groups are harmed by it?
Who decides the meaning and interpretation of the cultural artifact? How is it promoted, reproduced, and shared?
You may select a cultural artifact from any of the following fields:
Literature— an author, book, poem, story
Music— musician, album, song, genre (i.e. hip hop or country)
Cinema or Television— an actor, director; movie or series
Media— social media, advertisement, news channel, magazine or newspaper, journalist
Fashion— Fashion trend, article of clothing, fashion designer, models
Visual Art – photographs, paintings, multi-media works, non-conventional works of art and /or genres (tattoos, tagging, etc.)
Technology—Video games, smart phones, apps, portable electronic devices
Audience: Your audience is your instructor and other members of the class, representative of an adult, educated, academic audience.
Length: 4-6 pages (1000-1500 words), not including the non-text object and Works Cited page
Requirements:
Include an original title (not “Unit Three Essay” or “GREATs Essay”)
Use MLA Style to format your essay
Compose a thesis statement that argues for the cultural artifact’s connection to freedom
Include at least five (5) resources from the CCBC Library Database or other credible source
Cite all sources using MLA style in-text citations
Include an MLA style Works Cited page at the end of the essay (not included in 4-6 pages of text)