American Immigrant Cultures Final Essay Prompt (worth 100 points)
These essays assignments are a chance for you to consider and review what you have learned in this course and extend and apply your knowledge beyond our classroom walls. Final essays will consider immigration from one of these different areas of inquiry:

Option 1: Conduct A Primary Source Analysis

You will do a cultural analysis of a primary source of your choice from American Mass Culture through which you will explore the topics from this course. You can choose one- or more – of the weekly topics, as identified on the syllabuse (ex. Nativism, culture wars, gatekeeping, etc)
Your first task will be to pick an American primary source (specifically one that deals with representations of immigration) from the following list:

A Film
A music Video (both the visual image and the song lyrics)
A Television Show ( a single episode only)
A Novel
A photograph
A comic strip
An advertisement
After picking your source, in a 5+ page (double-spaced) essay, you will critically interpret and analyze this source. This means moving on just describing your primary source – You will want to think about the overall argument that this source is making about immigration and how it is making said argument.
When writing your essay, you will want to consider:

Who is the target audience of your primary source?
What is the historical context of your primary source?

What does this primary source say about immigration? In other words, what is the narrative presented, and what type of work does the presentation of this narrative do?
Please note – you will want to provide a brief description of your primary source before beginning your interpretation and analysis, but this description should be no more than a paragraph or two (on page, maximum), as details from and about your source will be included throughout your essay as evidence for your argument.
You will need to use a minimum 3 sources to support your argument/analysis.

These three sources need to come from our class readings – you are welcome to bring in additional outside scholarly sources as long as you meet this requirement.