The document provides instructions for an assignment to construct a critical argument using visual material from course lectures and readings. Students must select a slide from a weekly lecture dated before 1968 and write a paper analyzing the slide in its historical context. The paper must include a thesis, discussion of a selected visual object and how it connects to course themes, evidence from sources and visual materials, and how the thesis is symptomatic of something broader. Students must also include two additional pieces of visual evidence and one scholarly article in their analysis.

1. Read the Marshall Mc Luhan pages
You will be constructing a critical argument using the visual material encountered this.
Select a slide from a weekly lecture deck where you want to gain more expertise. The
corresponding weekly reading will be used as a source for your paper. The slide should
have a date, and you should consider the ‘shape of time’ your paper constructs. Keep the
narrative chronology specific, not necessarily linear, and be cautious of making ‘present’
comparisons to the contemporary. The slide and paper must be of material older than 1968;
choose something unfamiliar as a method to learn more about its history. Visual analysis
needs a set of questions to ask of the slide which connect it to a historical context and
argument. Think of this as the shape of time your critical argument constructs and
chronology measures out a series of causes and effects. A distant event may or may not have
entanglements elsewhere. You are using visual material to narrate an argument as it
intersects architecture, broadly considered. We’ve encountered a diverse range of topics
and the slide can be situated into these broader course themes. You will need to find at least
two other pieces of visual evidence plus one other scholarly article from the library as a
minimum to complete the assignment. This requires you to analyze visual evidence and to
put that analysis into a written argument. 1. Thesis 2. Object [select visual material
from slide, primary source, or secondary source] 3. Theme [connect object to larger
theme. The corresponding themes from the objects weekly lectures are useful]
4. Evidence [may come from sources, visual material, or your argument]
5. 4Symptom [What is your thesis symptomatic of?]