Rock and Roll Research Paper (4-5 pages, double-spaced in Word or PDF format)
Reminder: This paper is NOT meant to rehash or revisit what we’ve already gone over in class. It is meant to be a way for you to discuss topics not covered in class. This means you can choose any artist(s) you want, but if the paper starts to look like something we’ve already done, then it will be marked down in points. Do your best to cover original ground in some way.
The rock and roll research paper consists of an empirical exploration of some aspect of rock and roll music through a critical media literacy lens. There are three elements within critical media literacy and one or more can be used in your analysis including: political economy (zeitgeist), textual analysis, and audience reception. For example, you could focus on the political economy or zeitgeist surrounding a rock era such as the rise of punk rock or the emergence of hip hop. Or you could conduct a content or semiotic analysis of the lyrics of some representative bands of a given genre—the Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, and Big Brother and the Holding Company, as part of the psychedelic sounds era. Or you might want to take on an audience reception analysis contrasting dominant readings versus oppositional readings of the work of British invasion artists including the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, and the Who. Or you might just shoot the moon and take on all three—for example, discuss the political economy surrounding the emergence of grunge, conduct a semiotic analysis of some Nirvana, Soundgarden, and Mudhoney lyrics, and discuss a dominant reading of grunge music. The choice is ultimately yours and the possibilities and permutations are pretty wide-ranging, practically infinite. Watch out for regurgitation of class material and lack of depth in analysis. Oh yes, you can use the word “I”. The paper should entail:
1. a thesis [one or two paragraphs]—introducing me to the thesis or main point of the paper. What element of critical media literacy will you be using and what aspect of rock and roll music? Will you be exploring the political economy or zeitgeist of the roots of rock and roll or some other era within rock and roll history such as the British invasion, or a textual analysis of representative bands within a musical genre such as punk or rap, or an audience reception analysis of representatives of some rock genre, or will you taking on all three elements to analyze some aspect of rock music like women in rock? Whatever you choose, make sure you introduce it here. This section can be as dramatic as you’d like and include personal insight. Pick a topic that is connected in some way with your core self—make it from the heart and it will come across much stronger.
2. a body [four pages]—this entails your logical and thoughtful exploration of your thesis. If you have chosen the political economy of punk rock, then make a case and stick to it. This section will likely look something like this:
During the time that Madonna rose to stardom, America was living through the Reagan era. It was a time of cultural shifts in values and thinking from politics to boardrooms to MTV. Let me elaborate…. OR
The writing of punk rockers easily lends itself to multiple forms of analysis. This semiotic analysis will focus on themes emerging in the lyrics of a representative sample of punk rock bands to highlight comparisons and contrasts in the work of punk rockers. These themes include… OR
A dominant reading of punk rock largely turns the world on its ear, since punk rock was meant to clash, no pun intended, with mainstream thinking and values; while an oppositional reading of punk rock would question the value of this rock music genre and its meaning for generations. Let me begin with a dominant reading of punk rock through a look at the work of some representative bands… OR
Hip hop emerged within the disenfranchised inner-city neighborhoods of the South Bronx, New York. This political economy or zeitgeist will foreground a content analysis of lyrics by Tupac Shakur, Mos Def, and the Roots whose work I will argue from a dominant reading of their texts. So to begin…
3. a critique or evaluation section [one paragraph] this section can be as dramatic as you choose to make it and must entail a personal opinion of the task–it is not meant to be a summary of what you have already written.
4. a bibliography for the citations used. All papers will require some degree of research with citations. Make sure you use 3 citations beyond Wikipedia or websites. Look at books and journal articles as well.
