Your creative project will demonstrate your cumulative knowledge gained in the first portions of the course, drawing from at least two sources in the assigned or recommended course materials. You will complete a project that can be any of the following formats: oral history, written essay, zine, drawing, or biography. An oral history project will involve conducting a brief interview with a family member, peer, or another contact about their social experiences and cultural background. You will take notes on the interview and prepare a report of their narrative (250 words). The written essay is 1,000 words minimum in response to the prompt provided. If you choose a drawing or zine, it will be accompanied by a short problem statement and action plan (250 word minimum) that explains the connection to course sources. The biography can be written (500 word minimum), using a narrated PowerPoint presentation (5 minutes), or with an Instagram story/slideshow (10 slides maximum).
Oral History with Report
Oral history is an important methodology in Ethnic Studies. Stories that are told between families, peers, and coworkers oftentimes contain generational knowledge and affirm social skills for navigating diverse social contexts. For this option of the creative project, you will conduct a short interview with someone you already know. The format of this interview is semi-structured, meaning that you should have a few questions in mind, but also be open to following the direction of what they go. Make sure to tell them in advance that you want to ask some questions for a class and that you will be sharing what they tell you, but not including any names or identifying information. You will take notes during or after the interview, making sure to use general terms to avoid identifying anyone’s personal information. Using those notes, you will then write up a short report on what you learned from the interview and relate it to at least two assigned readings from this course. Your report should be approximately 250 words total. Make sure to also include a copy of your notes from the interview.
Below are suggested interview questions. You are not required to use these questions, and you are welcome to adapt or change them based on a topic you want to include or the person you will be speaking with. If you are not sure about what questions to ask, please check in with the instructor before doing the interview. Remember that the oral history must relate to one of our course themes, like the struggle for social justice, the fight for a relevant education, intersectional identities and kinship, structural systems of inequality, inequity, and power, settler-colonialism and displacement, self-determination, and sovereignty of Indigenous peoples.
Talk about a time when you first became aware of your own identities (e.g., race, gender, social class)? What messages did you receive from the people around you?
What’s a movie or TV show that was important for you learning about who you are today? What lessons did you learn from it?
Who’s the most significant role model you have? It could be someone you know or someone you don’t know. What do you admire about them?
Written Essay
In this course, we have learned about intersectionality as a way of understanding the complexity of people’s experience, and how multiple systems of social, cultural, and political influence are operating at the same time. For this written essay, use two or more sources from the assigned reading to demonstrate how an intersectionality lens can be used to understand a social problem or issue. Your essay should follow the following general format: introduce your topic and its general significance related to Social Justice and Ethnic Studies. Identify two or more categories of analysis (e.g., race, gender, class, ability, Indigeneity, or migration status) using specific examples and evidence. Conclude by reflecting on how using multiple categories of analysis better reflects how this issue is affected by social power, along with any opportunities for positive social change. Some topics that you may consider discussing would be equality in education, opportunities for careers, healthcare and access, or historical accounts related to this course.
Zine or Drawing with Problem Statement and Action Plan
The third option for the final creative project is to complete a zine or drawing that illustrates the themes we discuss in class. The drawing may be of any size or style that you choose. Similarly, the zine could be any length of 4 or more pages. You should be mindful of the time, resources, and skill needed to carry out a drawing or zine before committing to this option. Your work must be accompanied by a one-page problem statement and action plan that details how you responded to an issue related to Social Justice and Ethnic Studies, and how it might be used in a larger strategy for addressing this issue. Your drawing must highlight something you deem to be a significant issue that we have learned about this semester. To ensure relevance, these projects must include citations from two sources from the assigned reading.
The problem statement will briefly describe what issue your drawing is responding. The action plan will then detail how your creative project might be used to address this issue. For example, if this could raise awareness, what would be the ideal audience? Is it something that could be put up in classrooms, art installations, or other venues? Is it something that would be included in a book or newspaper? Think creatively for this component about where your perspective would best fit.
Biography
This assignment is an opportunity to showcase your knowledge of Social Justice and Ethnic Studies through describing and analyzing the lived experience of a key figure in this area. You can write on any of the individuals identified in the list linked here or any of the authors from this course. If you would like to write about a different person, please make sure to include this in your biography and obtain instructor approval if you make any changes.
Your Biography should address the following questions:
What is significant about the individual that you chose?
What can we learn about your broader topic from this person?
How can their experiences be interpreted using the lens of intersectionality?
What are the multiple layers of their experience (e.g., individual, structural, and political)?
You must include at least one image of the person you are featuring.
Sharing Your Work
On your assignment, please indicate if you would be comfortable with me sharing your project with other students, teachers, and community leaders. You would have the option to have your name included or not. To help me keep things organized, please include on the first page one of the following: (1) Yes, please share my Creative Project with my name. (2) Yes, please share my Creative Project without my name. (3) No, please do not share my Creative Project. Whatever option you select will NOT affect your final grade. If you do not include any statement, I will include your project without your name.
For all options, the written component should be formatted with 12pt. Times New Roman font, double-spaced, with 1” margins on all sides.
In-Text Citations and References
Please cite your sources in-text in the following manner:
When referring to authors vaguely [paraphrasing], use: (Author year) e.g. Ethnic studies scholars have said X, Y, Z (Smith and Warrior 1996).
When directly quoting always include the page number, e.g. Ramón Guitérrez (2019) defines the Chicano movement as, “X, Y, Z” (#).
If you are citing the textbook from the online platform or a printed version that does not have page numbers, you can include the section number, in place of the page number. For example: (Hund et al. 2022: 1.2.1)
If you do not present the author before a direct quote then it would look like this, “Quotation X, Y, Z” (Langston 2003: #)
What about pieces with more than two authors? Only list the lead author’s last name and then the phrase “et al.” which standards for “and more.” For example: The reading discussed X, Y, Z, topics (Jones et al. 2022)
If you are quoting a portion of the textbook or reading that has a reference as its own, make sure to introduce the author of the textbook. You can do this by included “as cited in” in the in-text citation. For example: (Cohen 2020 as cited in Rodriguez 2021).
See the informational page on ASA style for further guidance on in-text citations and reference lists.
Make sure to include a reference list at the end of your assignment. It can be immediately following the main text, or on the next page. Format the reference list using ASA style. For all assigned and recommended class materials, you can use the syllabus and assigned reading list to see the ASA formatting information.
One important difference is that you should format the references using a “hanging indent,” which means that the first line is flush to the left margin of the page, and the remaining lines in that same reference will start 0.5″ indented from the margin. You can apply this formatting using the keyboard shortcut “Command + T” (Mac) or “Ctrl + T” (Windows). You can also apply the formatting by selecting the text and using the “Paragraph” settings window in Microsoft Word. There are detailed instructions for Windows users and instructions for Mac users linked here.
Another thing to note is formatting. The Word processor may remove the italics from the source. Make sure that the journal publication title is italicized for an article, or the title of the book itself for a book or chapter.
Finally, please remember that you should capitalize the names of ethnic and national groups, such as Black, Latinx, Native American, European American, or Arab American. You should also capitalize the name of Ethnic Studies and related disciplines, like Chicanx Studies and African American Students. Outdated and derogatory terms, such as “colored” should never be used, unless it is absolutely necessary to convey a historical or contemporary experience, and described in context of their harmful nature.
Student Learning Outcomes
The Creative Project and Proposal primarily address the following course student learning outcomes:
Describe key concepts as they are used by Ethnic Studies scholars, such as race, ethnicity, Indigeneity, citizenship, racialization, identity, and intersectionality.
Critically analyze systems of historical and current-day racial/ethnic oppression using social scientific and humanistic approaches, including ethno-centrism, eurocentrism, white supremacy, and settler-colonialism.
Evaluate and compare the historical struggles of Indigenous peoples and Native Americans, Black communities and African Americans, Chicanas/os/xs and Latinas/os/xs, and Asian Americans through the lens of traditional knowledge systems used within communities of color.
