Final Project: Pulling It All Together

Infographic Due: March 26rd (On Canvas)

Annotations Due: April 2nd (On Canvas)

Rough Draft Due: April 9th (Paper Copy)

Final Draft Due: April 23rd (Paper Copy)

Part One: The Infographic (40 points)

Choose a broad subject you’re genuinely interested in; e.g., baseball, genetics, skateboarding, polygamy, sheep farming, gangster T.V. shows. It doesn’t need to be a traditionally “academic” discipline.

Look for three quotes from experts and three data points that you can use to acquaint someone with the basics of your subject. A data point is a fact that involves numbers/statistics. To take mafia television shows as an example, data points could include: the pilot episode of the mafia show Boardwalk Empire cost $18 million dollars to make, and one third of all Hong Kong residents have seen John Woo’s triad film A Better Tomorrow. These points help show what a big business gangster media is.

Use this data to create an infographic that serves to introduce someone to your subject. You will be graded on 1) if you use three expert quotes and three data points, 2) if you represent these data points visually, and 3) use of other visual elements we go over in class.

Part Two: The Annotations (0 Points, but They Will Help You A LOT!)

Do some general research on EBSCO and Google to see what more specific questions people are currently debating within the subject you did your infographic on. For example, if you’re interested in gangster T.V. shows, current questions include: why mafia crimes don’t horrify Americans the way serial killings do, racism and misogyny in gangster television shows, how Snowfall compares to previous shows about organized crime, why gangster T.V. shows in China induce nostalgia in their viewers, and why are gangsters so often portrayed as heroes.

When you’ve found a question you think is interesting, run it by Kate.

Do annotations (see below for what that means) for eight sources that will help you answer your question. Four of these sources must be scholarly; the rest can be either credible or scholarly.

Part Three: The Essay (Rough Draft: 40 Points, Final Draft: 200 Points)

Write an 8-10 page, MLA- or APA-style essay arguing the solution to your research question from Part Two. You must use at least eight sources, four of which must be scholarly.

I encourage (but am not requiring you) to use first-person experiences and personal sources (so long as they’re credible) in this essay like you did in your first two essays.

How to Do Annotations

For each source on your topic you must:

Cite the source in MLA format (see the MLA Works Cited sheet in the Essay #2 module)

Write 3-4 sentences briefly summarizing the source, and explaining how you intend to use it in your second essay. You may use first-person.

Give two direct quotes from the source that you think you can use in your essay. You may also give text you want to paraphrase as well.

Rose, Mike. “Blue Collar Brilliance.” They Say/I Say: The Moves that Matter in Academic

Writing. 2nd ed. Eds. Gerald Graff, Kathy Birkenstein, and Russel Durst. W. W. Norton & Co., New York: 2012. Print. Pgs. 243-255.

In this article from 2009, UCLA education professor Mike Rose argues that blue collar jobs in industries like food service and manufacturing are just as intellectually demanding as they are physically exhausting. He uses his mother and uncle (both life-long blue collar workers) as his main examples. His conclusion is that Americans need to stop assuming those who do physical labor are less intelligent/use their brains less than those in other professions. I intend to use a quote from Rose to back up my claim that intellectual burnout is one of the biggest reasons behind the high turnover in the food service industry.

Quote 1: “Like anyone who is effective at physical work, my mother learned to work smart, as she put it, to make every move count. She’d sequence and group tasks: What could she do first, then second, then third as she circled through her station? What tasks could be clustered? She did everything on the fly, and when problems arose—technical or human—she solved them within the flow of work, while taking into account the emotional state of her co-workers. Was the manager in a good mood? Did the cook wake up on the wrong side of the bed? If so, how could she make an extra request or effectively return an order?”Quote 2: “Although writers and scholars have often looked at the working class, they have generally focused on the values such workers exhibit rather than on the thought their work requires—a subtle but pervasive omission. Our cultural iconography promotes the muscled arm, sleeve rolled tight against biceps, but no brightness behind the eye, no image that links hand and brain.”