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Diversity Issues

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Assignment

Diversity Issues - CHC Fall 1 2008

STRANGERS AND STRANGE PLACES

Your assignments here are to both to participate in, and to make observations of, some gatherings of people that are outside your own cultural, or gender, or religious, or ethnic/racial/national frame of reference, produce notes, then do some book research that speaks to the experiences, then write up a report of your experience and your subsequent researching.

Do not be limited by these following examples, they are just suggestions of some possibilities - the point is for you to go into a sociocultural milieu that is strange TO YOU:
if you are a Christian, go to Buddhist or Islamic or Greek Orthodox prayer meeting/service - go with a guide if you know someone;
if you are a man, go spend an afternoon getting your hair done at a place that is all women; have a guide.
if you are elderly, go to South Street in Philly on a Friday night with someone young enough to explain the scene to you;
if you are young, go to a senior citizen center or club and take the bus with them to Atlantic City;
if you are rich, go hang out at 5th and Venango for a couple of hours, or go shopping around Kensington and Allegheny on a Saturday morning.
If you love hip-hop music, go to the Kimmel Center and be part of the mosh pit at a performance of the Philadelphia Orchestra.
If you are Gay and Black, go to a Flyers game and make sure you get the cheap seats way up high.

If you have an acquaintance that is culturally, linguistically, ethnically different than yourself, see if you could be invited to spend an evening or an afternoon with their family.

OR come up with your own ideas - I want you to experience, be with, talk to, some people/events/places that are outside your usual cultural comfort zone.

The assignment is

To go into the field, spend time participating and observing. . Notice everything that seems different, distinctive, diverse from your own experience.

Immediately after you have left, sit down someplace and SCRIBBLE OUT NOTES to yourself of everything you found remarkable - sights, sounds, smells, setting, dress/fashion/costume, age, color, language, ceremony, music, art, behavior, attitude, values etc. As much as possible note observations (that is don't make judgments of value, or make summary conclusions, or just your reactive impressions, as in "these people are weird/ wonderful/ friendly/ unfriendly/evil.") Note the fact of the matter - "All the women wore short pants", not "The women were a bunch of hoochie-mamas". Do take note of your feelings, perspectives and judgments, write them down also, but separately from your observations. Write down whatever comes into your head, that you observed

After a some time has gone by, I want you to take these scribbled notes (I expect that this would be a few pages) and type up these field observations- these will become your- "FIELD NOTES". In class and on the electronic discussion board, you will present your field notes and speak about your field work.

Next, in library or on internet, search for authors,articles, books that will deepen your understanding of the diversity that you encountered in your field experience, that struck your curiosity (your research quest or question). Read, take notes, think. Also return to the field, if necessary, to clarify or to re-observe.

Finally, polish up the writing of your field experiences; include insight that you gained through the scholarly research; and add a concluding summary that will communicate to your readers (me and your classmates) what you learned from this project - your experience and your research into it, and your thinking about it all. Be sure to check in "Links", under "APA Format" for instructions on how to cite your sources in the body of your final text and also in the bibliography.

Next add your bibliography, or references section

Finally, print out your final text, add a cover/title page, print out your reference section, make sure that it is as presentable in print format as you can make it, staple it, and submit to be by the seventh week of class.

DEADLINE for this project is at the beginning of our -last class. Students will make informal presentations to the class and submit papers. No late submissions will be accepted.