The Final Project, Spring 2005

This page takes on three important questions about the Final Project: what, what for, and how to (here's where you can find the assignment sheet). My goal is to make this page as useful to you as possible, so let me know if it can be improved. If anything is badly worded, unclear, or missing, please contact me with constructive criticisms. Thanks.

What

The Final Project is your chance to propose, research, and write on a topic of your choice that connects the course and your primary academic or intellectual interests in a format of your choice. You may choose to write a research paper or a pedagogical essay; you may choose to do a creative project or a web authoring project. Or you may propose a different format and see if you can get it approved. Whatever format you choose, you must select and use at least three of the critical studies on reserve and find and use at least two additional print secondary sources, in addition to whatever additional non-print research you want to do. Here's more on these formats for the Final Project:

• Critical Essay format: write a critical essay of at least ten pages in which you advance an argument based on analyses of an issue from the course, basing your argument on research relating to at least one of the readings from the course. The goal of this option is for you to incorporate research into secondary sources into the development and support of an argument on an issue from the course--and hence to hone your analytical and persuasive skills by entering into an interpretive dialogue with other readers/critics of the work(s) you have chosen to analyze.
• Pedagogical Essay format: write a pedagogical essay of at least ten pages on how you'd organize a high school class period (or set of meetings) devoted to one (or more) of the works we read in the course and on your reasons for teaching the work in the way you described, drawing on at least three secondary sources to help you develop and support your teaching plan. The goal of this option is to show what you've learned in the course about Critical Race/Ethnicity Studies by making a case for the best way of teaching a set of works from the course through the lens of Critical Race/Ethnicity Studies methodologies in a high school classroom. Your essay, in other words, should not simply describe what you want to do with your class; it should explain why and justify your choices. Your essay should explain and justify your goals, methods, and modes of assessment--it should make a case for why it's important to teach students what you want them to learn, for why the teaching strategies you plan to use will help you achieve your goals, and for why the assessment methods you have chosen will enable you to tell to what degree students have met your goals.
• Creative Writing format: write a story, play, series of poems, personal essay or other work that is in significant intertextual dialogue with an author, work, genre, movement, or issue that we've studied this semester, along with an author's note of at least two pages detailing the critical issues you are addressing and the thought process that went into your composition. The goal of this option is to show what you've learned about Critical Race/Ethnicity Studies by writing a work of your own and analyzing it in relation to works and issues in the course. Rather than, say, analyzing how someone else's text works, or arguing for how you'd teach students to do this sort of analysis, as in the previous options, you'd be showing what you've learned about creative writing in the period by "doing it yourself." By entering into an intertextual dialogue with other writers--by relating your text to theirs using any of the modes and devices of creative writing--you will be able to get across your "take" on the other works, on the critical issues they engage, and the narrative/poetic/dramatic strategies they enact.
• Web Authoring format: create an analytical web site devoted to a specific aspect of Critical Race/Ethnicity Studies that hasn't been treated well on the web (see the links page for an introduction to what's out there, and to help you figure out what needs to be done) that includes an essay of at least two pages detailing the critical issues you are addressing and the thought process that went into constructing the web site, and a bibliography of all your sources (both electronic and print). The goal of this option is for you to provide an educational/critical resource for other readers. Your site should go beyond the usual moves (providing biographical and bibliographical information on an author, selecting quality links for further information) to fill a need/niche that is unfilled or undeveloped or not yet well done on the world-wide web.

Similarly, you may choose one of the following topics, or propose your own and try to get it approved.

• The Major/Minor Option: In this option, you either (a) draw on issues and methods from your primary or secondary discipline and use them to shed light on some topic connected to the course, or (b) draw on issues and methods from the course and use them to shed light on some topic connected to your primary or secondary discipline.
• The Ferrante/Brown Option: In this option, you choose a contemporary American debate involving race and/or ethnicity that the Ferrante/Brown anthology The Social Construction of Race and Ethnicity in the United States introduces us to and do your own research on it. This may include a debate that is loosely connected with the issues presented in the Ferrante/Brown anthology--for instance, choosing to analyze how another institution than the census, the law, or science constructs race and/or ethnicity (like, say, choosing some aspect of the media's or literature's or visual art's or world fairs' or museums' contributions)--so long as you recognize that doing that will involve more independent research on your part. Depending on the format you've chosen, you would either write an analytical/persuasive essay in which you articulate and support your position on that debate, write a pedagogical essay in which you describe and justify a lesson plan you would use to 'teach the conflict,' write a creative piece and author's note that engages your readers in the debate, or create an informational/analytical web site devoted to the debate.
• The Linebaugh/Rediker Option: In this option, you research the origins of race and ethnicity as concepts, the archeology of those discourses, the social history of racialization, or any other topic that would help your readers gain perspective on constructions and intersections of race, ethnicity, class, gender, and religion in our own times. This can express itself as a critical or pedagogical essay, or as an educational/critical web site, but you can also craft a creative piece based on your research and make your author's note be about the relation between the history you've examined and the story (or poems, or play) you wrote.
• The Mamdani Option: In this option, you research a recent or current conflict involving race and ethnicity as well as different interpretations of it, and then use methodologies from the course and from your research to generate a new analysis of it and proposals for resolving it. This option may lend itself better to the research paper or web authoring formats, but you're welcome to try the pedagogical essay or creative writing formats, as well. Unfortunately, the options are endless: Afghanistan, Bosnia, Chechnya, Cincinnati, Colombia, Congo, Cyprus, Darfur, East Timor, Iraq, Israel/Palestine, Kashmir, Kosovo, LA, Lebanon, Somalia; the politics of immigration and citizenship in the US or Europe (France, Germany, the Netherlands, and the UK have all had recent controversies); the issue of refugees and humanitarian crises; the question of colonialism and imperialism.
• The Prashad Option: In this option, you research some topic relating to polyculturalism and offer your own analysis of cross-ethnic or cross-racial exchanges and interactions in which you contrast your approach to color-blind, primordialist, and multiculturalist approaches.

What For

So far this semester you've already done a good deal of writing--ranging from the informal free writing on specific topics in class, to generating more open-ended discussion questions and reflective essays on the course listserv, to writing and revising a personal essay in the Identification Project. You've gotten good practice at noticing things about a range of texts and asking questions of them; we've focused a lot on making connections between texts and identifying tensions within and between them, as well as interpreting significant passages and patterns. You've gotten a chance mix personal and theoretical writing in the Identification Project. What the Final Project allows you to do is to pull together all the skills you've developed in these smaller assignments and move through the entire research and writing process: from considering what texts and questions interest you the most, to identifying a research topic or inquiry, to developing your own perspective on that topic or question though critical reading of primary and secondary texts, to conveying your perspective in the form you feel would best showcase your research and critical or creative skills.

The other major purpose of the final project is for me to indicate clearly what I see as the central questions and modes of analysis in the course. This should provide you with something of a framework for understanding and reviewing each unit and the course as a whole. Hence, it is highly recommended that you consider carefully each of the suggestions listed above as you try to develop your own focus for the Final Project. It's easy to miss the forest for the trees, especially when there were so many different "trees" we were analyzing each day, so seeing the range of topics I think are most important to consider when looking back on the course can give you a new, better perspective on what we've read, as well as lay out possible directions for the Final Project.

So, in a nutshell, the Final Project is designed to give you the chance to connect this course to your primary academic or intellectual interests. By choosing a topic and a format that you are most interested in, you get a chance not only to pull together but also to deepen your learning in the course. The hope is that this project will provide a bridge between this introductory consideration of race and ethnicity and your future examination of related issues, either in other courses or outside of an academic setting.

How To

The first stage of the Final Project is to write a proposal and get it approved. In it, you must identify which topic and format you have chosen, describe specifically what you want to focus on, explain your interest in the subject and justify making it the focus of the final project, lay out your research plans, and provide a bibliography of works you've already consulted in developing the proposal. In other words, you must try to persuade your audience (in this case, me) that what you want to do is worth doing. As with any proposal, your job is to pique your readers' interest and get your readers excited about seeing the results of your research and analysis. Often, this involves laying out a key question, explaining its significance, and suggesting how your approach to answering it will improve on existing approaches. Usually this takes at least 2 pages, and for the sake of my eyes, let's make it typed or word processed. This proposal will be due no later than Monday, April 11, 2005, although you are encouraged to get it to me as soon as you can. We'll meet to discuss your proposal soon after you turn it in.

The next stage is to research your topic. Actually, your research should begin before you start your proposal--a good proposal is the result of a good amount of research into what precise question to ask, who else has asked it, how they have attempted to answer it, what their answers have been, and why you are dissatisfied with any single answer. So it's not like this is a stage that happens after you've turned in your proposal and we've talked it over; it overlaps the proposal drafting stage. You should use the reserves, the links page, and the library databases to help you accomplish this research. Learn how to use the ILLiad interlibrary loan system and how to take advantage of advice from your professors and reference librarians. A lot of what we talk about in discussing your proposal will be research-related.

The final stage is to use your research to help you draft, revise, edit, and hone your final project itself. Again, this can be an ongoing process--you don't have to wait until your research is complete until you begin drafting your project; in fact, you shouldn't. I'll be happy to discuss any stage of the writing process with you--from brainstorming to organizing your thoughts, from drafting to revising, from editing to proofreading.

So here's the assignment sheet for the Final Project.

Due: no later than 5 pm on Friday, May 13, 2005, either in my mailbox in the English department main office (Fenton 277), or in the envelope on the bulletin board outside my office door (Fenton 240).

Format: typed or word-processed; minimum of ten pages; double spaced, with reasonable fonts, font sizes, and margins (be warned that barely getting onto the 10th sheet of paper does not a ten-page essay make!); heading that includes your name, the course name or number, and the date; title that alludes to main themes of the essay; subtitles that indicate your focus in each section; formatting, bibliography, and citations (the latter two of which should appear only in the author's note if you are doing the creative format) in a recognized style like APA or MLA (see the links page for explanations and examples of MLA style; the basic template is: Author. "Title of Poem, or Essay, or Story." Title of Book from which It Comes. Ed., Editor of Book [if any]. City of Publication: Publisher, Date of Publication. Page Numbers.); proper quotation format in body of paper according to the citation style you've chosen (for MLA, it's typically author's last name and page number in parentheses in body of paper--"..." (Du Bois 17).--and blockquote format for quotations five lines or longer).

Audience: In general, think of your immediate audience as someone who may be interested in the core issues of the course but who has not been taking this class; hence, you can't assume that your readers have read the texts you're writing on, so you have to include the kind of background that someone not taking this course would need.

Grading Criteria: Dependent on the format you've chosen, as follows:

• Critical Essay format: I will be grading this essay in terms of how well you make your case for your argument, how well you base your argument on research, textual analysis, and interpretation, and how well-organized and well-written your paper is. Hence I will be evaluating the coherence, validity, and persuasiveness of your paper's argument, the effectiveness of your paper's structure, and the quality of your paper's prose (diction, grammar, syntax, and punctuation).
• Pedagogical Essay format: I will be grading this essay in terms of the quality of the lesson plan itself, how well you make your case for your pedagogical goals and strategies, and how well-organized and well-written your essay is (including diction, grammar, syntax, and punctuation).
• Creative Writing format: I will be grading your project on the quality of the fictional work and of the author's note, the inventiveness with which your work engages the work or works and critical issues it is responding to, and the quality of your writing (including diction, grammar, syntax, and punctuation).
• Web Authoring format: I will be grading your web site on the quality of its content and design, on the originality and thoughtfulness of approach to the topic you have focused on, and on the quality of your writing (including diction, grammar, syntax, and punctuation).

INDS/HIST 220: Introduction to Ethnicity/Race, Spring 2005
Created: 3/8/05 5:29 pm
Last modified: 3/8/05 5:29 pm