Assignments: Batch Two

You need to choose your second assignment from this list having already completed your first one - chosen from the first batch. Click on each title for a reading list and guidelines. Please note that many students throw away marks by not paying close attention to the guidelines. You are very welcome to propose your own assignment topics if you have a particular interest that you would like to pursue, but you must get my written approval at least three weeks before the deadline.

For your assignment deadlines see the department's deadlines page.

• What do cars say about their owners? Illustrate and critically discuss how cars signify as part of a semiotic system.
• The art historian Ernst Gombrich insists that 'pictures cannot assert' - still or moving visual images cannot make statements without the aid of words. Critically assess the evidence for and against such standpoints.
• Explore, illustrate and critically discuss the role of animal imagery and symbolism in the marketing of cars.
• Identify which visual signifiers distinguish an upmarket magazine from a downmarket one, focusing either on magazines for males or on those for females.
• Compile a photographic essay on the visual semiotics of cafe culture in Aberystwyth or your own home town.
• What are handbags for? Offer a critical semiotic analysis of how handbags signify.
• Offer a semiotic analysis of the montage sequence from The Parallax View (Pakula 1974).
• Offer a semiotic analysis of the connotations of different typefaces.
• Illustrate and critically discuss the visual semiotics of hats.