Critical Analysis

Overview
For this activity, you will consider how your popular culture example could expand our understanding of different cultures and people. You will also suggest ways that critical analysis can be used to meet personal and professional goals. This activity contributes to your draft of the critical analysis section of your project. It also provides an opportunity to obtain valuable feedback from your instructor that you can incorporate into your project submission.

Directions
In this activity, you will work on the second part of the critical analysis of your example within an area of popular culture. You should consider the feedback from your instructor on the previous activities to inform this assignment. Throughout the writing process, you will support your analysis with reliable evidence from varied sources. You should continue to gather the sources you will integrate into your project. These sources will include two resources from the module resources sections of this course and two resources that you find through your own research using the Shapiro Library. It may be beneficial to identify more than the number of sources required for the project so that you can eventually choose the most useful and credible ones. For this activity, you will assess how the popular culture example you chose could broaden an outsider’s understanding of the cultures or people that engage with it. You will also describe how an element of your chosen example reflects your field of study or profession. Finally, you will recommend strategies for using critical analysis skills for meeting personal and professional goals.

You are not required to address each item below the rubric criteria, but you may use them to better understand the criteria and guide your thinking.

Specifically, you must address the following rubric criteria:

Integrate reliable evidence from varied sources throughout your paper to support your analysis.
It is important to draw from a more diverse pool of perspectives from varied sources to support the analysis, which is different from the Citations and Attributions rubric criterion.
Reliable evidence from varied sources should be interwoven throughout the paper itself. Citing and attributing sources will be represented as APA in-text citations and a reference list at the end of your work.
You will be evaluated on both criteria.
Assess how the example you chose could broaden an outsider’s understanding of the cultures or societies depicted in it or the people who engage with its popular culture area.
An “outsider” is someone who is not part of a culture or society connected to a particular area of popular culture.
Consider how the example you chose could contribute to understanding others in productive ways that do not reinforce negative representations of other people.
Describe how the example you chose reflects an aspect of your field of study or profession.
Recommend strategies for using this kind of critical analysis for meeting your personal and professional goals.
Consider the skills you have developed in the process of doing critical analysis as strategies for understanding your goals. How might those skills be used to better understand popular culture? How could they be used to address the day-to-day responsibilities or questions faced by yourself as well as practitioners in your field or discipline?
What to Submit
Submit your short paper as a 1- to 2-page Microsoft Word document with double spacing, 12-point Times New Roman font, and one-inch margins. Sources should be cited according to APA style. Consult the Shapiro Library APA Style Guide for more information on citations.