Website & Campaign Mockup Assignment Sheet

Purpose

In this final major project, you will put your research from the previous module into action. Using the topic and sources that you gathered from the previous project as a starting point, you have the opportunity to do something with that research. The goal here is to take what you have learned from the research about your topic, personalize it with your own rhetorical purpose and audience choices, and present your ideas publicly to a specific audience. You will also have practice with “genre shifting,” publicizing your message in two different media and reflect on your rhetorical choices.

Assignment Requirements

For the final project, you will compose two texts in two different genres for a specific audience using your research from the previous modules. Your first text will be a web article. Your second text will be an open genre campaign mock-up, meaning some form of public outreach intended to meet the needs of your issue.

Text 1: Web Article

Your task is to write a 1500-2000 word web article that communicates the results of your research to an audience of your choice, for a purpose (e.g., persuade, inform, call to action, etc.) of your choice. Because this is a web article, you’ll want to adhere to the genre conventions (and reader expectations) for web writing. So, in addition to meeting the basic requirements above, your article should include:

• Visual rhetoric: Because web readers have short attention spans, web articles are accessible and entertaining. The genre most often includes photographs or illustrations to draw readers in and catch their interest. This assignment will require at least one visual element besides your text. You can choose if those will be photos, illustrations, charts, graphs. When deciding what visual element(s) to include, be sure to keep your specific audience and purpose in mind.
• Page design: Web articles are designed for on-screen reading, so as you plan your article, you’ll put together a plan for your page layout, use of color and formatting. These things are important since they establish your ethos as a writer and help your audience read more easily.
• Hyperlinked References: When you read an article on the web, you don’t scroll to the bottom or flip to the last page to find references, you click on a hyperlink. You are required to have 6-10 functional hyperlinks.

Text 2: Campaign Mock-up

As you are working on your web article, you will also be thinking about what other genres could be useful for your rhetorical purpose. You will produce a second text, of the genre of your choice, that will further fulfill the purpose of your web article. Your text should be public-facing, which means it interacts with a public audience. Some possible texts include:

• Social media posts via Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, SnapChat, etc.
• Letters to targeted professionals or politicians associated with the issue
• Presentation/Performance/Community interaction geared towards the public in a live or meditated setting (ie. podcasts, TED Talk/lecture, workshop or discussion group, music/theater/art/dance/film/video performance, etc.)

Remember that you are not limited to these options. You will create a mock-up of the text of your choice and prepare a 5-7 minute presentation for the class explaining how you chose your second text and how this text interacts with the public.

Topic Summary:
In the past 5 years, more than 130 trangender individuals have been brutally murdered in the United States. While each case varies, it is evident that violence mostly affect trangender women of color, who make up approximately 4 in 5 of all anti-transgender homicides according to HRC Foundation’s “Dismantling a Culture of Violence” report. They are the intersection of racism, sexism, homophobia, and transphobia, depriving them of employment, housing, healthcare, and other basic necessities. This culture of violence is created because of the stigma around transgender individuals, denial of opportunity and heightened risk factors. Regardless of living in today’s culture of violence and hatred, transgender indiciduals continue to overcome unfair barriers. But we must come together, whether it affects us directly or not, and dismantle these barriers. These people are being killed for simply living up to who they are. Imagine you’re walking down the street and someone harrases you just because they didn’t like the pants you’re wearing. It’s not enough to grieve the loss of these victims with social media post and hashtags, “Our lives become a hashtag, we become a part of this ‘dead before 32’ narrative and in two weeks people forget [us],” Desi Hall, a black trans woman and host of the TRANSfigure podcast, tells Vox. We must take actions to honor their memories, prevent and remove this stigma in our community. In my research paper, I hope to address how anti-transgender stigma, denial or oppourtunity and increased risk factors contribute to this violence but most importantly i hope to provide ways that all of us can help directly make an impact in our community to make it a safer place for transgender people.

Sources:

Human Rights Campaign. (n.d.). Violence Against the Transgender Community in 2019. Retrieved from https://www.hrc.org/resources/violence-against-the-transgender-community-in-2019.

The Fatal Shooting of Muhlaysia Booker Is Part of a Larger Trend of Violence Against Black Trans Women; Five black transgender women have been killed in the United States so far this year. (2019, May 21). Miller-McCune.com. Retrieved from https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A593887386/ITOF?u=miam11506&sid=ITOF&xid=f835123a

Burke, M. (2019, September 17). Black transgender woman, 23, found dead in burned car in Florida. Retrieved from https://www.nbcnews.com/feature/nbc-out/black-transgender-woman-23-found-dead-burned-car-florida-n1053006

Sonoma, S. (2019, June 18). Black trans women want the media to show them living, not just dying. Retrieved from https://www.vox.com/first-person/2019/6/18/18679295/black-trans-women-murder-violence.

Lee, M. (n.d.). DISMANTLING A CULTURE OF VIOLENCE. Retrieved from https://assets2.hrc.org/files/assets/resources/2018AntiTransViolenceReportSHORTENED.pdf?_ga=2.192118378.1353825688.1569204382-439776704.1569204382.

Nawaz, A. (2019, May 24). Why violence against transgender Americans is a crisis that’s under reported. Retrieved from https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/why-violence-against-transgender-americans-is-a-crisis-thats-under-reported.

Legal, L. (n.d.). Anti-Violence and Crisis Resources. Retrieved from https://www.lambdalegal.org/know-your-rights/article/trans-crisis-resources.