For the argument assignment, you will select some controversial issue connected to your theme. Remembering that writing is an act of communication in which the writer tries to bring something new to the reader, I strongly encourage you to spend some time brainstorming issues, so that you don’t settle on the old cliched topics of death penalty, lowering drinking age, steroids in baseball, etc. The reading you have done for your reading journals may have introduced you to new issues, or raised questions you’d like to further investigate. Selecting a issue that you do not know too much about may be a good strategy, as you will have some real motivation to do research and you may be more open-minded to finding and interpreting information.
There are some suggestions on the main part of the course blog in this post, which I will add to and annotate. Make your your issue is truly controversial–that is, that reasonable people have adopted different positions. (The notion that smoking is bad for your health, for example, is not controversial.) Make sure the topic is not too large to research and write about in a few weeks (the target length of your argument will be the usual 1000 words). Looking at an issue from a local perspective may be an effective way to limit your discussion.
The other thing to keep in mind is that you must have a way to link this argument to some images, for a photo essay that will also involve research (often many of the same sources). Here are some examples:
- You might write an argument that the laws about defacement of public property should be changed; your photo essay might be a collection of photos you take of graffiti in Boston.
- You might write an argument claiming that food labeling should be simplified (or made more explicit); your photo essay could be a set of food labels from whenever they started doing labeling through today that you find online (or a set of food labels you photograph from products in your cupboard).
- You might write some claim about direct-to-consumer advertising of drugs; your photo essay could be a series of drug ads, either contemporary ones or a historical view.
- I might write an argument proposing some policy changes that would make it easier for family farms to succeed; my photo essay might be a series of photos I took on a bike ride around my town.
- One of my students last semester wrote an argument that more schools should consider erecting wind turbines on their property; her photo essay could have been a series of photos explaining how wind turbines work.