Reference no: EM133687175
Homework: Rituals & Symbols
Prior to beginning work on this homework, review the following essays found in your course text: "Journey by Inner Light," "Body Art as Visual Language," "A Look Behind the Veil," "Too Many Bananas," "An Island Passover," "Body Ritual Among the Nacirema," "Shamans, Healers and Experiences I Can't Explain," and "Walking Back Alone." In addition, review the sections "The Veil" and "The Bicycle" from the graphic novel Persepolis, and the resource How to Read a Graphic Novel.
For this homework, you will analyze how three texts depict rituals and symbols to reveal the norms and values of a culture and to challenge the assumptions that govern interpretations of the world.
The literary texts and graphic novel assigned for depict different cultures as understood through their cultural practices, rituals, and symbols. The authors of the texts attempt to understand cultural norms and values through observing a variety of cultural practices related to clothing, hair, body art, food, religious practice, funeral practices, and healing practices. These become signs and symbols of identity, belief, value, and individual reality.
Choose three of the texts assigned. Consider the rituals and symbols described in the texts and what they tell you about the values of the cultures in which they are used. Consider how they create meaning and encourage a new way of seeing the world. Consider also how the meanings given to events, actions, and words are not their only possible meanings (Hirschberg & Hirschberg, 2018, p. 338), and the how rituals and symbols of different cultures challenge assumptions of those meanings.
In your paper,
A. Develop a thesis statement that asserts a central idea about how three texts use depictions of rituals and symbols to define the values of a community and culture.
B. Analyze how the three texts situate rituals, practices, and symbols within a specific cultural context.
C. Interpret the meaning each author wishes to convey to readers through depictions of rituals and symbols within a culture context.
D. Asses how the depictions of rituals and symbols in each text challenge authors and readers' cultural assumptions that govern their interpretation of the world.