English 102: Southern Culture and Diversity
Research Project & Presentation
The Essay
Length: 5 pages (minimum)
Due date: 12/12 via Blackboard
Value: 100 points
Resources: 5 (minimum); only one can be an internet source.
The final project for this class is a research-based essay that will incorporate five resources. The topic of the essay is very, very flexible, provided that it seems relevant to the course theme of Southern culture and diversity.
Over the course of the semester, we’ve touched on the question of “What does it mean to be Southern?” We’ve studied race. We studied film. We’ve studied music. We covered a load of other cool topics as well. But throughout it all, the presence of the South has been felt inside all of it. Feel free to incorporate one or more of these topics into your essay. Have fun with it, please. Don’t pick a topic that you hate.
Remember, we’re making a case. We’re not just looking up interesting facts and writing them down. That’s a report. We’re developing a central thesis, and we’re proving it.
As always, I’m quite happy to answer any questions that you have, and I’m especially happy to help you formulate a thesis statement to spur you in the right direction.
The Presentation
Due date: 12/10
Length: 5 minutes
Your presentation should be a well-considered and thoughtful overview of your final research project. The presentation should be organized and well-rehearsed so that the presentation itself mirrors your paper in that it has a beginning, middle, and end. You don’t need to make a PowerPoint or a Prezi, but that would be like, you know, awesome if you did.
What I do NOT want is one minute of jibber-jabber that amounts to, “I, uh, did my paper on race and stuff. Basically, I just, you know, looked up stuff on race and wrote it down. Race is, like, still a problem, like, in this country. Know what I’m saying? I mean, this one dude, I forgot his name, but it’s in the...