Over the course of the semester, students are required to prepare for their weekly tutorials and develop their understanding of the key concepts that underpin this unit by submitting 8 entries into their own visual concept journal on the ilearn page. These journal entries will be due at midnight on the Thursday night prior to the tutorials in weeks 2,3,5,6,8,9,10. 

For each of the selected weeks, students are required to explore what they have learnt from the weekly readings. In each entry, they should pick one concept that they found most interesting in the readings and then briefly outline the concept and relate it to an image/example they have pasted in their entry. Each entry should be no more than 100 words. Examples will be discussed in the first lecture.

The aim of this task is to prepare students for their tutorials, the class test, visual analysis and final essay. As such, entries do not have to provide a complete understanding of the concept. Rather, they should demonstrate that you have done the readings and are engaging with relevant ideas. While you are preparing these entries, you should also consider any questions you would like to ask in the tutorial. 

Assessment Criteria: Entries will be marked according to the following criteria:

1. Demonstrates engagement with the weekly unit readings 
2. Identifies one key concept and relevant example

Submission: Students will submit their journal entries via the link in ilearn.

Late Penalty and Disruption to Studies: As this assessment is worth 10%, no extensions will be granted for individual entries. Students who have not submitted an entry prior to the deadline will be awarded a mark of 0 for that entry, except in cases which a disruption to studies is made and approved.

In the week four tutorial, students will be given a 45 minute class test that requires them to offer brief definitions of the key concepts that organise the conceptual framework of the unit. Students should prepare by developing their understanding of the key concepts in the readings by Michel de Certeau, Stuart Hall, Jeff Ferrel, Greg Tate and bell hooks. In other words, students revise the readings from weeks one to four and identify the concepts such as  'tactics,' 'strategies' and 'crimes of style.' They should aim to develop a clear understanding of these concepts and identify relevant and productive examples.

Assessment Criteria: Students will be assessed on their ability to: 

1. Demonstrate a clear and functional grasp of the key concepts that enable us to re-evaulate and critique practices of everyday life that are often unexamined or dismissed as worthless 
2. Identify relevant examples that relate to the key concepts 
3. Employ effective communication skills

Submission: Students will complete this class test in their weekly tutorial on Friday the 26th of August 2016. 

Disruption to Studies: If students are unable to sit the class test on Friday the 26th of August, they must contact the unit convenor and submit a disruption to studies request via. ask.mq.edu.au. If the disruption to studies request is approved in line with university policy, an alternative assessment time will be arranged. 

For this assessment, students will build on their class test and the work they are doing in their visual concept journal. They are required to respond to the following prompt:

• Drawing on an example of kitsch or graffiti, perform an 800 word visual analysis that explores the ways in which "many everyday practices are tactical in character … victories of the ‘weak’ over the ‘strong’" (de Certeau 1988, p. xix). 

In their answers, students must draw on the readings in order unpack an image of their chosen example. They should aim to build a strong argument that exposes the ways in which their example is 'tactical in character.' The image they have chosen should be cited and pasted at the beginning of their analysis.

Students must also use academic referencing and attach a reference list at the end of their essay. For more information on referencing please follow the link to Macquarie University Library’s Referencing Guide here: http://libguides.mq.edu.au/Referencing.

Assessment Criteria: Each visual analysis will be marked according to the following criteria:

1. Demonstrates a clear and effective grasp of relevant key concepts
2. Develops an argument that is supported by both theoretical concepts and forensic analysis of a well chosen example 
3. Effectively uses writing skills to present academic research, including consistent and accurate use of in-text referencing.

Submission: This visual analysis will be submitted via the link to turnitin on the unit ilearn site.

Late Penalty: A late penalty of 10% per day including weekends will be applied. 

Disruptions to Studies: Students seeking extensions must submit a Disruption to Studies application via ask.mq.edu.au. Extensions will be granted in line with University Policy. 

For this assessment, students are required to write a 2,000 word essay in response to one of the questions listed below. In their answers, students must use the concepts offered in the relevant readings and draw on example/s in order to develop and support their own argument. They should not write on the same topic or example that they used in their visual analysis. For example, if a student used an example of graffiti in the visual analysis they should not pick one of the questions about graffiti for their final essay. If a student wrote about kitsch for their visual analysis, they should not write about kitsch for their final essay.

• Popular culture, Stuart Hall argues, is structured by the "double movement of containment and resistance." Discuss in relation to a particular cultural practice such as graffiti or the production/consumption of kitsch.
• "Subcultures represent 'noise' (as opposed to sound): interference in the orderly sequence . . . a kind of temporary blockage in the system of representation," Dick Hebdige. Discuss in the context of a specific subcultural practice.
• Dick Hebdige outlines two forms of incorporation of subcultures by a dominant culture: the commodity form and the ideological form. Discuss these two forms of incorporation in the context of an actual subcultural style, with reference to bell hooks' essay on "Eating the Other."
• Graffiti, as a subcultural practice, contests established legal notions of public space, private and corporate property and art practice. Discuss.
• In the face of systemic exclusion and disenfranchisement of particular radicalised communities, graffiti is about regulation, respect, reputation and the signing of space into place. Discuss.
• The subcultural practice of graffiti challenges established notions of the ‘aesthetics of authority’ (Ferrell 1996, p. 176). Discuss.
• Discuss how graffiti is a “contentious form of political participation.” Evidence your arguments with relation to specific and culturally-situated examples of political graffiti.
• Drawing on Pierre Bourdieu's work, discuss how both kitsch and art are in fact all about questions of taste and distinction and the consecration of the social order.
• Discuss the importance of technologies of reproduction in relation to kitsch. In your answer, you need to discuss Benjamin's and Olalquiaga's work on the aura, the original and the reproduction, the tactility of kitsch, and the democratisation of the image.
• The kitsch object/souvenir promises the consumer "pieces of the aura (mythic time)." Celeste Olalquiaga. Discuss Olalquiaga's concept of notalgic kitsch and melancholy kitsch.
• Aboriginalist kitsch is enabled by white supremacism: it is an "assertion of rights of ownership in the intellectual and cultural sphere to match power in the political and economic sphere," B. Hodge and V. Mishra. Discuss.
• "Indigenous tourist wares were threatening because they blurred the boundaries, they rendered the other unrecognisable," R. B. Phillips. Discuss in the context of indigenous tourist art.
• "We are enveloped by the gigantic, surrounded by it, enclosed within its shadow. Whereas we know the miniature as a spatial whole or as temporal parts, we know the gigantic only partially. We move through the landscape; it does not move through us," Susan Stewart. Discuss gigantism and the miniature in the context of examples in the Australian landscape and kitsch culture.
• Art cannot exist without kitsch. Discuss in the context of the work of Marcel Duchamp and Jeff Koons.
• Kitsch and queer "are in a lascivious embrace. They constantly transmute," Craig Judd. Discuss.
• Queer kitsch brings into focus a concept of the self as "performative, improvisational, discontinuous, and processually constituted by repetitive and stylised acts," Moe Myer. Discuss.
• "Representational excess, heterogeneity, and gratuitousness of reference, in constituting a major raison d'etre of camp's fun and exclusiveness, both signal and contribute to an overall resistance to definition," Fabio Cleto. Discuss.
• "The audience's connection with celebrities, celetoids and celeactors is dominated by imaginary relationships," Chris Rojek. Discuss how celebrity kitsch is one of the key products of this imaginary relationship.
• Construct your own essay question, with reference to the topics and readings of the unit, in consultation with your tutor.

Assessment Criteria: Essays will be marked according to the following criteria: 

1. Demonstrates a clear and effective grasp of the key concepts raised in the relevant readings
2. Identifies relevant examples and provides contextualised and forensic analysis
3. Develops a well-supported and well-researched argument 
4. Effectively re-evaluates practices of everyday life that are often dismissed as worthless or ephemeral 
5. Critiques relevant hierarchies of value 
6. Effectively uses writing skills to present academic research, including consistent and accurate use of in-text referencing.

Submission: The final essay will be submitted by Midnight on Wednesday the 9th of November 2016 via the link to turnitin on the unit ilearn site.

Late Penalty: A late penalty of 10% per day including weekends will be applied. 

Disruptions to Studies: Students seeking extensions must contact the unit convenor and submit a Disruption to Studies application via ask.mq.edu.au. Extensions will be granted in line with University Policy.