The subtheme for Discourse III is “Civic and Community Engagement”. Think of a community that is important to you personally. How do you define “community”? It’s largely up to you! Obviously, geographic communities (such as a particular town, a particular KC neighborhood or district, etc.) arevalid candidates. But there are many others that students have used to good advantage in the past:◦Racial or ethnic communities
Bayless 4◦LGBTQ+ communities◦Artistic or literary communities◦Other identity- or interest-based communities (including subcultures & fandoms)◦Religious communities (either particular congregations or entire denominations/faiths)◦And, I’m sure, many more!Do exercise some common sense as to what’s respectful and appropriate for the class setting. This does not preclude discussing things such as, e.g., sexuality or drug use—these are legitimately relevant factors in some communities, and we’re all adults here—but for potentially sensitive topics, you should consider what sort of details your paperrequires, and how those details should be presented.If you’re on the fence as to whether a possible topic or details would be appropriate, feel free to email me in advance! You will be returning to this community for the second workshop paper, so I suggest quickly reading ahead and making sure you’re picking something that you think you can write about further. You do not have to draw on this same community topic for your research project later in the semester, although you may.Your job with this first short paper is to give us a glimpse of your chosen community, and help us see why it’s important to you and others. Despite the very length-limited format, you should still do your best to have a specific, discernible thesis—your paper shouldn’t just be a grab-bag of individual sentences about the subject. It’s probably best to focus on a specific aspect of your topic, or something like a specific anecdote that you can use to help illustrate something about the topic.Length:As you are expected to submit it within a few days so that we can try to hit the ground running in Week 2, paper #1 will be very brief. The minimum length is one and a half pages, and you should avoid writing much more than two and a half pages. (Double-spaced and MLA-formatted, as all written work for this class is unless specified otherwise.) Remember, page counts are evaluated on how they look to me in Canvas!
