The Midterm Examination

The midterm examination is due Friday, February 28. Throughout the first half of the seminar, you should pay attention to how evil is dealt with and addressed in popular culture; this can be in television shows (sitcoms, dramas, news and news magazines), magazine or newspaper articles, or music or art (try to stay away from feature films); advertising is also fair game. You should choose no more than three to deal with (and the three should somehow relate to each other either through comparison or contrast). Then, basically, deconstruct the pieces.

Your midterm examination is a polished written presentation (typed and properly formatted, no fewer than three full pages) of the items you have chosen to examine.

Some questions to consider:

-how is evil defined in the piece(s) you have chosen?

-how is evil addressed in the piece(s) you have chosen?

-do you think that is representative of how the culture looks at evil in general?

-does the source seem to clearly understand what evil is?

Use the readings from the seminar as your sources and document materials accordingly. You may not use dictionaries or encyclopedias as sources.

Here's an example of a current print item: