Advocacy Project Assignment
Introduction:
This quarter, we have been reading, discussing, and analyzing literature that provokes, reflects upon, and responds to revolutionary ideas and actions. This revolutionary literature is a form of advocacy: most of the literary texts and essays we have read advocate for social justice and social or political changes by voicing opposition and speaking back to oppressive power structures, bearing witness to acts of injustice, articulating and either critiquing or celebrating revolutionary ideas and actions, and calling readers to revolutionary action.
Project Overview:
This assignment asks you to take the ideas, perspectives, and histories we have considered this quarter and use them to help you better understand a recent local, national, or global social justice issue and advocate for social and/or political change in relation to that issue. Your goal is to convince a specific audience to change their thinking and/or commit to action.
Project Options:
Your project must either advocate for a specific type of revolutionary change that you have conceived on your own OR offer your support for an ongoing revolution (the definition of revolution can be quite broad—remember that Kroeber defines revolution as “all demands, suggestions, and attempts at radical change”). There are several different options for ways to fulfill the task for this assignment. All projects, regardless of option, must fulfill all project requirements listed under “Project Requirements” on the next page.
Option 1: Write a 1800-2500-word advocacy paper (minimum word count is firm, maximum is flexible). This should be a thesis-driven paper that makes a specific, well-supported argument geared toward a specific audience.
Option 2: Create a substantial website devoted to your issue that includes a homepage and 4-5 additional pages of content (be sure to cite all sources and acknowledge ownership of all links and images used). Because creating a website requires additional work, the minimum word count for all pages combined is 1400 words. Students typically use free or free-trial website-building sites like Wix, Weebly, WordPress, and SquareSpace. These have easy-to-use templates, so you don’t need to know Html to build a website.
Option 3: Create an original work of revolutionary literature or other revolutionary art form (song, painting, collage, multimedia work, video, etc.) accompanied by a 1100-1400-word paper that does the following:
Identifies the audience for your creative work and explains how it was designed for and directly appeals to that audience;
Establishes and specifically discusses the researched background for your creative work, including which academic and course texts you used to inspire and inform your process;
Discusses and explains in detail the revolution your creative work is supporting, including how/why you’re conceiving of it as a revolution and what you want your art to do in relation to that revolution;
Meets all the other criteria listed under “Project Requirements” below.
Option 4: If there is something else you would like to do, please make an appointment to meet with me so I can approve it and help you make sure it is in line with the assignment requirements. Alternative projects that have not been pre-approved will not be accepted.
Project Requirements:
The following requirements apply to all projects, regardless of which option you choose:
Your project must be designed for and must somewhere name a specific audience. (“Americans” is not a specific audience.) This means you must take into account the values, needs, prejudices, and perspectives of that audience in order to most effectively advocate for change. Your project will be evaluated partially on how effectively you appeal to this audience.
If it’s not clear in some other way who your intended audience is, state your audience underneath your title if you’re writing a paper (i.e., Audience: SU Students). If you’re designing a website, you might have an “About” page that includes information about who the site is intended for.
Your project must include discussion of at least one course text. All course texts are eligible for this requirement (literature, essays, theoretical texts—most students find Kroeber and/or Goldstone most useful for this project, but you’re welcome to use any course texts you’d like). Remember that your audience is likely unfamiliar with these texts, so you will need to introduce and contextualize these texts for them. Please don’t refer to course texts as course texts (e.g., “In the poem we read for the Irish Revolution unit”) since this will confuse your audience.
Regardless of which option you choose, your project must include research. Your project must acknowledge and cite at least two academic sources in addition to at least one course text. These sources may serve as background or evidence for your argument, demonstrate opposing views on the issue, or inspire your creative work.
Academic sources can include previous works of advocacy on your issue or on issues that you think are analogous to your issue; historical or biographical texts that shed light on some aspect of your issue; or texts that inform your work as an educator, writer, activist, or artist.
Academic sources are usually academic articles from peer-reviewed journals. These can be accessed online through the library’s website using library databases. I assume that all of you have had some training at SU using library databases and distinguishing between peer-reviewed journal articles and periodicals, but if you haven’t you can always meet with and get help from a research librarian by making an appointment online: http://www.seattleu.edu/ library/services/research/. I am also always happy to help you find or evaluate sources for your project.
While you may also cite sources from the open web, and for some projects this will be very important, they do not count for the academic source requirement. Be sure that any open web sources come from websites that create or report original content—no encyclopedia sites. Also make sure you fully vet each website for accuracy and authenticity. If in doubt, feel free to ask me!
Your project must be organized in a way that is appropriate for the content, genre, and audience, and it must include a content-appropriate title. If you want to experiment with a non-traditional organizational structure, please feel free to do so, as long as your structure will still effectively appeal to your audience.
All papers must include a thesis and also address and respond to potential objections to your argument that your specific audience might raise (these are fundamental principles of sound argumentation). This applies to all options, including the papers that accompany creative projects.
Your project must include in-text or footnoted citations and a Works Cited page formatted in MLA 8th edition citation style. Please use the Purdue OWL link on Canvas for help with citations.
I encourage you to bring your interests, knowledge, and skills from your major to this project, where relevant (though this isn’t a requirement—please follow your interests and passions, even if they’re not related to your major!).
Finally, please understand that if you are advocating on behalf of a group of people and you are not a member of that group (for example, if you are a white student advocating on behalf of the Black Lives Matter movement or a cisgender student advocating for transgender rights), it crucial that you do not try to speak for that group or to tell that group what they should be doing. Instead, you can amplify their voices and stand in allyship with them. For instance, an Asian American student might choose fellow Asian American college students as their audience and work to convince them to support the Black Lives Matter movement’s goals. Similarly, if you are creating artwork, you should create it from your own perspective rather than trying to inhabit the voice or perspective of someone whose lived experiences are different from your own. For example, if you are a straight-identified student, it could be harmful to write a poem in the voice of an LBGTQ+ person. If you need ideas about the best way to approach this work, please don’t hesitate to ask.
Presentations: In the final week of class, you will be asked to present your work to the class. Please see the Presentation Assignment for detailed instructions.