Overview: In the modern age, for whatever reasons, we do not feel, act, nor behave in a heroic fashion. As students, we are more often prone towards hiding our ethos, for fear that others may judge our true selves. In fact, we are taught to play it smallrather than to play it big but then again, there might be certain cultural layers and nuances as to what it means to be quote-unquote heroicaccording to who you are, how you were raised, and how you came to develop your belief systems.

In this essay, you will be asked to profile yourself using MBTI (temperament personality indicators) and to use that as a viable jumping off point to answer several core questions:
How can I become a hero in my life, for myself and for my family?

What obstacles do I need to overcome as an individual?

This essay is both narrative and analytical, since you will be telling stories about yourself and also interpreting yourself.

Primary Example: http://www.theonion.com/

Overview: Using source texts such as the satirical article about being Superman, "Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex”your objective in this essay is to construct a newspaper dedicated to heroes, villains, and/or antiheroes in which you can satirize the humorous or ironic aspects of being a hero/villain/antihero. You might consider if and when superpowers become inconvenient or even ridiculous, or might consider some other oddities about the status of a superhero or villain.
You might also look at the examples comprised within several of The Onion articles, "We Must Expand Our Nuclear Power Program If We're To Realize Our Dream Of Superhero Mutants,"
When You Are Ready To Have A Serious Conversation About Green Lantern, You Have My E-Mail Address,"
"Only Guy Who Puts Paper In Copier Considers Himself A Hero,"
"Villain Contends He, Hero 'Very Much Alike'"
or "Hero Firefighter Loses Lifelong Battle With Fire"

Overview: Use some of the source texts in The Honolulu Advertiser, Star-Bulletin, or Honolulu Weekly to come to terms with what people today seem to be fighting for—issues about how Hawaii is becoming too overcommercialized, how Hawaii's natural resources were not being respected or utilized well, how Hawaii just doesn't seem like Hawaii any longer. The same tensions and issues raised by such individuals today seem to be exploding and increasing at a faster pace in modern times: Hawaii must increasingly be attuned and polarized to issues of The Brain Drain, the overeliance/sole reliance on tourism as a source of income, perhaps even the overabundance of Self Storage facilities that have begun to pepper the landscape, burying over some local landmark or two.

It's often convenient for media pundits to 'spin' all of these events in 'heroic' or 'villainous' terms, but there's an agenda behind labeling events and people as heroes or villains—your job is to pick or select a person and controversy in real life who has received media scrutiny, and to assess why they have labeled in the way that they have.

Your job is to create an exploration of the hero/villain issues raised by current events and people in the news and to potentially investigate what is going on in current LOCAL events. Your reliance on source texts such as in the Honolulu Advertiser, Honolulu Star-Bulletin, and Honolulu Weekly might be invaluable.

How might some groups respond to the Hawaii State Super Ferry? The mass transit issue? The development of a casino or shipboard gambling in the state? The preponderance of Storage Facilites all over the Aloha State? The departure of June Jones in the wake of poor facilities management at UH Manoa?

Or, on a national level, what is the utility in naming any number of groups a specific "villain" for society—the source of social ills? What is the utility of naming people as 'heroes?"

Student-Learning Outcomes, 1.

Student-Learning Outcomes, 2

Student-Learning Outcomes, 3

--Decide whether your essay's thesis will focus on a life goal or a career goal. Your thesis statement should ideally attempt to elicit a clear comprehension of this career or life goal. For example, if you articulate that you want to be a pharmacist, you would want to express how to get to that career pathway and why you want that career path.

--Craft a strong working thesis, in first or third person.

--Create body paragraphs that help to articulate your thesis statement; ideally, you should probably focus on two areas for this essay: your past and your present.

--Maintain clear E-wrap up linkage for your essay. In other words, at the ends of your paragraphs, check if your claims in the body paragraphs mesh up with your thesis statement.

--Cite all relevant outside data, support, or information.

--Include, if you want, visuals that help to corroborate your claims.

--Brainstorm, by visiting the websites Onion.com or Cracked.com, to comprehend satirical news venues and the types of articles that are housed there.

--Identify, if at all, humorous targets for your satires. Figure out what you are poking fun at.

--Create catchy but altogether ironic headlines regarding your analysis.

--Use applicable newswriting styles and conventions. For example, in journalism, most quotes appear as follows:

"The monster's tentacles wrapped around the innocent bystander's camera rather rapidly," indicated Shuya Takeda, an eyewitness to the event.

In most newswriting contexts, the quote usually goes first.

--Craft or copy relevant web images to enhance your work. Your own work is more interesting and more labor-intensive than just cutting and pasting off of the Internet.

--Create enough articles so as to meet applicable page lengths.

--Research and investigate source texts of various types to clearly establish modern controversies or controversial figures in the State of Hawaii that were likely to be criticized or rallied against by the media.

--Explain and investigate the controversy in light of the tensions that were raised by the source texts, but make especially certain that the controversy can be shown in dual or multi-layered perspectives. For example, if the target of the controversy is the funding for a UARC project at the University of Hawaii campus or the funding for the Hawaii State Super Ferry, make sure that you equally emphasize the positive aspects (the counterpoint) for these particular issues.

--Establish a clear thesis statement, one that identifies the controversy that you will investigate, and one that possibly underscores the people who are battling for and against the controversy. In any controversy, some of the participants will always feel comfortable in providing themselves and their opponents labels like 'hero' and 'villain.' Your job is to assess whether or not these labels can stick in the controversy.

--Apply proper P.I.E. paragraph structures to the essay so as to outline and organize the major points consistent with the essay's thesis statement (e.g. setting, character, plot-conflicts, point of view, symbols);

--Apply proper M.L.A. or A.P.A.-based quoting conventions to the essay with regards to proper quote introduction, parenthetical citation, and other quote dynamics;

--Examine quotes or images from the formal and informal text or visual-based resources so as to significantly comment on the relevance and impact of those selected images/words.

--Employ at least 3 quotes from various source materials that you find, of a textual or visual nature.

--Create a final, polished draft of at least 4-6 pages, with a List of Works Cited.

4. Visual-Analysis Option (Art-Marketing)

Visual-Analysis Option: Since we live in a visual age dominated by images of bodies often in a hypersexualized context, many of us have become "inured" in a way to recognize certain body tropes and stereotypes, especially stereotypes of masculinity and feminity. The body becomes polarized, therefore, as a nexus of societal projections of gender.

In this option, I want you to scour through or scan through visual depictions of heroes and heroines and use a selection of these print or online pictures to do strong visual rhetoric-based analyses of these pictures.

The central questions in this unit are: how are heroism and gender constructions related?

What types of gender identity and gender-based discussions can be achieved while interpreting your pictures?

What comparisons can be made behind the pictures?

--Student Learning Outcomes,4

--Research and investigate source images of various types from classical to modern depictions of heroes or heroines.

--Discuss, using visual rhetoric, the tropes that are inherent to those images and employ strong critical analyses to thereby critique those images using specific art terms and visual cues;

--Use visual rhetoric websites to assist you in your discussions:

http://www.cla.purdue.edu/dblakesley/visual/

http://www.stanford.edu/~steener/f03/PWR1/whatisvisrhet.htm

http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Visual_Rhetoric

--Compare pictures if possible to create a strong potential tension between classical and modern depictions; Discuss those critical differences or similarities (musculature, positioning, etc.)

--Establish a clear thesis statement, one that identifies the core sense of heroism inherent to the pictures that you represent; what type of general vibe are your selected picture sets indicating?

--Apply proper M.L.A. or A.P.A.-based quoting conventions to the essay with regards to proper quote introduction, parenthetical citation, and other quote dynamics;

--Examine quotes or images from the formal and informal text or visual-based resources so as to significantly comment on the relevance and impact of those selected images/words.

--Employ at least 6 quotes from various source materials that you find, of a textual or visual nature.

--Create a final, polished draft of at least 4-6 pages, with a List of Works Cited.