Essay Assignment #5: Research Essay
Talkin’ ‘Bout My Generation
For this essay—the final essay assignment of this class—you will use a variety of resources to define your generation. To create this definition, I want you to look at works of art, books, journals, advertisements, song lyrics, inventions, articles describing current events, and any other concrete form of cultural output between the date of your birth and the present, at the rate of two items for every three years, beginning with one published or produced on the actual day of your birth. Obviously, any notion of what characterizes your generation is highly subjective; I am interested in an articulate, considered, and engaging essay rather than some kind of broad historical analysis.
Make sure you come up with a name for your generation, just as others have done before you (for example: “the Lost Generation,” “the ‘Me’ Generation,” “Generation X.”) You cannot simply use a pre-existing term, i.e. “Millennials.”
Make sure that you use diverse sources—please do not use seven different articles from the New Yorker, for instance. Make sure also that at least one of your sources is a book, at least one is an article from a newspaper, and at least one is some kind of visual item (a building, a work of art, an ad).
please come to class with a bibliography featuring all of your sources, as well as the name for your generation.
