Final Project: Proposal

1. You are responsible for submitting a complete short story that is reflective of life experiences related to race or racism. The story must be based on true events, though you can take creative liberty with some of the details
2. You will need to include course content throughout your story:
3. The content must include a minimum of 2 items of content from each of the three (3) parts of the course (Internalized, Interpersonal, and Institutional Racism). For example, your story might contain examples of white fragility and failure to identify ethnically (part I) related to the medical and educational fields (part III) that demonstrates colorblind theory or a microaggressions (part II)
4. So, your goal is to weave concepts, theories or content from the course throughout your story but you will also need to include citations as evidence (e.g., you can reference your general use of a concept with the Module #? in parentheses or you can cite specific/directly quoted course sources with Author last name, year, page # in parentheses)
5. While writing the story, you must engage in deep reflection using the internal and external writing prompts below. But, remember this is a story, not a question-and-answer response to the listed questions. So you should include your responses to these questions throughout. But you could address some questions at beginning and some at the end. Or even address them all upfront. As long as they are answered within the paper without it seeming like a question/answer format.
6. Internal Prompts
7. What is the memorable experience dealing with race, racism, and/or race relations you want to recall/share?
8. How did you feel while this was happening or while watching it happen?
9. What was your response and what was the response of others around you?
10. What impact did it have on you? What did you learn from the experience?
11. Did the encounter change you in some way, and if so, how?
12. What was the context? What were the surroundings? Describe the environment where the event took place.
13. If there was resolution to the situation, how did it come about? If not, why not?
14. How just was the outcome? How do you feel about how just it was?
15. External Prompts
16. What course reading(s) will you remember most and why? What course reading(s) challenged you the most and why?
17. This course falls under the Envisioning Just Worlds theme for the Certificate in Humanistic Inquiry, so we must ask:
18. What did you think about how just our world is before this course and how do you think about it now? Have any of your assumptions or understandings changed and why?
19. Where do you see connections with the theme of a Just World in this class and theme questions in other classes (or contexts)?
20. What are your personal goals for your education and how does what you learned in this course support your goals?
21. External Readings
22. There are additional readings presented in Module 15, which are excerpts of chapters from books by J. Drew Lanham and Ta-Nehisi Coates. Both of these authors write about race related issues like POC and the environment (J. Drew Lanham) and the persistent criminalization of the black body (Ta-Nehisi Coates) in a story-telling manner. Look for creative ways to connect and include either or both of these texts to your story.
23. Illustration
24. As a second part of this assignment, once you have written your story, you will choose how to present it creatively. It should be reflective of your personal style, learning preference and/or artistic ability.
25. You can submit your illustration in one (1) of the following ways:
26. Record yourself reading the story and submit the video
27. Create a comic strip that tells the story
28. Have others join you and record yourselves acting out the story
29. Develop a creative PowerPoint or Slides
30. Create a series of Snapchat stories that illustrate what happened in the story
31. Record yourself performing part of the story as a spoken word, song, or poem.

Guidelines: The proposal for your final project should be no more than 1 page typed, single spaced, Times New Roman or Arial 12-pt font, 1-inch margins.

Before Starting this Proposal: You need to locate the Final Project module and read the outline of the project. The details there will inform what you write in this proposal.

Goal of this Assignment: For this proposal, you will brainstorm possible story events and illustration methods for your project.

1. List & briefly describe three possible race related situations/scenarios/events that you could possibly write about in a 3-page story (1 paragraph each [or 6-8 sentences each] for a total of 3 paragraphs)
2. Include a draft story title for each of the possible stories (3 in total)
3. Identify the target audience for each story
4. Include a key terms list at bottom of every paragraph that includes concepts, theories, etc. that weve already covered this semester which we covered up to chapter 10 that could possibly be identified in each story
5. For each story, list one PRO and one CON of what makes that event strong enough (or not) to be the main topic of the final project
6. In a separate section list two ways you could illustrate your story (see list on Final Project Outline). For each illustration type, list one advantage and one disadvantage.

Textbook: Desmond, M. & Emirbayer, M. 2020. Race in America, 2nd ed. New York: W.W. Norton &

Company.