Assignment Guidelines

In order to explicitly connect the themes and concepts of this course to the world around us, this assignment asks you to identify a contemporary social issue or event to blog about to share with the rest of the class and public.  Specifically, this assignment asks students to relate course content and to contemporary issues and problems happening locally and/or nationally in current U.S. society. 

You should construct an informed blog post about your chosen topic, applying a critical feminist framework and analysis.  You are not expected to be an “expert” on your chosen issue or event; however, you should be able to ask questions about it, reflecting your understanding of applying a feminist lens.

I am asking you to help us, as a class and the potential readership of our course blog, to better understand the nuance and complexity of social inequity as well as the resilience of active dissent and disruption of this inequity. 

To help you construct your blog post, the following set of questions adapted from Mary Ellen Kondrat to be used as a tool to link the structural level with one’s personal self:

•  What social structures, in particular, those structures related to power, inequality, and marginalization, are related to your contemporary issue?

•  On what basis are these structures being rationalized in relation to your issue?

•  What is my location in relation to each of these structures?

•  Who benefits from structural arrangements and who loses? How do I benefit or lose?

•  In what ways do my assumptions and activities contribute to the maintenance or transformation of such social structures? 

Report Guidelines

1.      Find a current issue or event related to the week’s topic.

2.     Provide a web link to information (video/article/organizational site/ect.) about the issue or event. 

3.     Construct a blog post (at least 300 words) that covers the following assessment areas:

Knowledge & Comprehension	Application	Analysis	Synthesis	Evaluation
Identifies, defines, describes, gives examples of, summarizes, discusses the issue or event. Explain what and how this issue and your analysis of it expand our collective knowledge on the course topic under consideration.	Identifies and applies the weekly topic’s key terms and concepts connected to the report.	Analyzes structural and ideological barriers that create and maintain systems of oppression.	Creatively applies prior knowledge and skills to produce a new or original knowledge product.	Reflect on the value of the material--explain knowledge gained..  Offer your critique, conclusion, rearticulation, interpretation, or support of the contemporary issue or event.