You have now developed your skills in recognizing and using pathos, logos, and ethos; using sources appropriately; integrating quotes into your work as support for your ideas; and evaluating the completeness of an argument. It is time to integrate these skills into a project that demonstrates your expertise.
For our last project, you may write about any topic that clearly relates to the very loose theme of our class, social justice issues. I have listed a few examples below, but you may focus on any issue that interests you. If you are uncertain about the appropriateness of your topic, ask me about it, and be sure to post it on the Blackboard Discussion Board for my feedback. Below are the specific requirements for this assignment:
1. Your paper must have a thesis statement that is deniable.
2. Everything following your thesis statement must clearly work to support it; I.e., prove your argument!
3. Your paper must clearly deal with a topic that relates to our course.
4. Your paper must be correctly formatted according to MLA standards.
5. You must properly integrate the sources in your annotated bibliography.
6. Your sources must be scholarly, and where they are not, bias must be identified. Popular sources must be counter-balanced by scholarly sources.
7. Your essay should be a well-constructed argument including pathos, ethos and logos.
8. Please use SafeAssign to check your paper for proper attribution.
Below are a few examples of social issue topics. As long as your work clearly deals with some social issue, however, you may write about anything you like. These are merely examples:
• Is Affirmative Action fair? Should it be done away with, or is it an important and necessary policy? Why?
• Does white privilege exist? If so, how does it exist? Where do we see it at work in our society? What steps should be taken (if any) to address this issue? If white privilege doesn’t exist, explain why this is the case? In what ways are people misunderstanding or misrepresenting this issue? (You could instead focus on male privilege or heterosexual privilege as well.)
• To what extent should music artists be held responsible for influencing behavior, whether it be inner-city violence, drug use, misogyny, etc.? Can music rightly be blamed for societal ills like those listed above? How so? Explain.
In what ways does sexual objectification work within US culture? How prevalent is sexual objectification today? How should it be addressed?
