During this unit, you will investigate and discuss a body of readings in order to explore an aspect of identity that interests you. The result will be a well-researched text that shifts readers’ perspectives about some aspect of social identity.
First, you will develop a research question that you want to investigate. This should be a question about social identity. During the unit, we will learn how to craft a strong research question. This question might come from your personal interests. Or, it might be inspired by one of the ideas about social identities that we’ve discussed this semester.
Next, you should choose an audience that you would like to address. Who would benefit from this investigation?
At the end of this document, I have included a section called “Examples of Social Identities” that might help you develop ideas.
After you have crafted your research question, you will research how other people have tried to answer it. Over time, you will find the sources that are most useful for your purposes. First, you will gather 15 sources that you might want to work with. Sources can include peer-reviewed scholarly sources (From which fields? Psychology? Evolutionary biology? Literary studies?), media outlets (web magazines, newspapers), pop culture (film, TV, music), social media (posts that you’ve seen), or your life (your experiences, experiences that you’ve heard about or read about). Eventually, your goal is to use 5-8 of these sources in your text. At least one of these sources must be a peer-reviewed scholarly source.
The way that you write your text will depend on how you want to affect your audience. However, your text must do two things. It must (1) present, summarize/paraphrase, and discuss multiple perspectives about your research question. You should discuss other people’s perspectives about the question. You should also discuss your own perspectives about the question. Discussing perspectives means testing them, exploring them, challenging them, struggling with them, supporting them, etc. Your text should also (2) bring these perspectives into “conversation” with one another. When you discuss multiple perspectives, you should compare them to one another. This can help you evaluate their validity, relevance, or usefulness. By exploring these similarities and differences, you can arrive at a clearer understanding of your topic. With a clearer understanding of your topic, you can argue for an “answer” to your research question.
Audience:
It’s up to you. Who would benefit from this experience?
Goal:
It depends on your audience. What kinds of perspectives do you want to explore? The goal of your text is to shift readers’ perspectives about some aspect of social identity. The way that you do it is up to you.
Grading:
Your project portfolio will be graded in two ways. I will consider …
1) how successfully you discuss a body of readings in order to shift the perspectives of your audience (demonstrated by your Final Draft), and how successfully you reflect about these practices through discussion of theories of writing (demonstrated by your Writer’s Statement)
2) the success of your writing process (demonstrated by your Reading Notes, Pre-Writing Statement, Initial Draft, Revision Statement, Final Draft, and Post-Writing Statement)
Your final draft must …
… include a heading (name, professor’s name, College Writing, date)
… include a title
… be approximately 1,500-2,000 words (a little bit more is ok)
… be double-spaced, 12-point font, Times New Roman or Calibri or Arial
… have in-text citations and a Works Cited page, either in MLA or APA format
