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- QUESTION
HUMN 100 Final Project
For your final project, you will choose a subject, find three expressions of that subject in three different Humanities disciplines, describe the three different presentations, and offer an analysis of each of your choices.
Due Dates
- Part 1: Selection of Topic due at the end of Week 3
- Part 2: Development of your topic due at the end of Week 6
- Part 3: Paper due at the end of Week 8
Purpose
The purpose of this assignment is to apply the concepts and skills you have learned during the semester for how to analyze works within the Humanities.
Skills
This assignment will help you practice the following skills that will be useful to you in your professional and personal life beyond school.
- Research, select, and describe appropriate examples
- Organize materials around a specific theme
- Use concepts and skills learned in class to develop analytical skills
- Use appropriate and proper grammar, organization, and academic-style formatting in order to communicate
Knowledge
This assignment will help you become familiar with the following important content knowledge in the Humanities.
- Available online resources which contain examples of works in the Humanities
- Methods of analysis and interpretation within the Humanities
Part 1: Selection of Topic.
This part of the final project is your choice of topic.
Choose one of the following subjects or propose one of your own.
- One particular emotion or state of mind such as anger, jealousy, fear, gratitude, confusion, etc.
- One specific fairy tale, myth, fable, or classic story from any culture
- One religious or spiritual lesson or belief such as humility, hope, enlightenment, renunciation, reincarnation, the Trinity, the eight-fold path, ahimsa (non-violence), etc.
- One political or social theme such as social justice or injustice, social inequality, social progress, political conflict, etc.
- One form of cultural/societal identity such as race, sexual-orientation, gender identity, ethnicity, or class, or you could combine two of these such as "black women," or "Chinese-American fathers," or "LGBTQ Native-Americans."
- A specific fictional character such as a character from a novel, play or film or a specific public personality such as a news anchor, a religious leader etc.
- One natural force or element of the natural world, like a kind of weather (snow, rain, sun), an animal (cat, dog, horse), a kind of landscape (mountain, oceanic, desert), vegetation (trees, flowers, grass, rivers etc.).
Explain two reasons for your choice in a short paragraph of 4-5 sentences. Be sure to include the significance of your choice to your own thinking about the world and/or its cultural significance.
Due Date for Part 1: This submission is due during Week 3, with the final day of submission being the Tuesday of the third week (11:30pm ET). Please see the Course Schedule for the exact final due date for this submission. The submission should be carefully edited and proofed for standard use of English.
Part 2: Development of your Topic.
This part of the final project is a summary of your ongoing work on the final paper; it should include three paragraphs, one covering each selected work. You should also make sure to re-state what your subject is.
Identify how the subject you chose in Part 1 appears in three different works, each from a different Humanities discipline (visual art, music, dance, poetry, prose, theater, film, religion). For instance, you could choose a poem, a painting and a scene from a film, all of which express and represent the theme of anger. Or, to be even more specific, if you choose the emotion of "love," the final paper could analyze and discuss love as it is expressed in Shakespeare's Sonnet 147 (literature), Boticelli's Birth of Venus (visual art), and in the ballet Swan Lake (dance).
Write one short paragraph (3-5 sentences) about each of your selections in which you:
- Choose reliable and appropriate examples (a good-quality image, recording, video, etc.).
- Identify and cite the source, including the artist, creator etc as well as where you found the example.
- Explain why you find the example relevant for this assignment and mention one tool from the class materials and discussions you might be able to use to talk about it.
Due Date for Part 2: This submission is due during Week 6, with the final day of submission being the Tuesday of the sixth week (11:30pm ET). Please see the Course Schedule for the exact final due date for this submission. The submission should be carefully edited and proofed for standard use of English.
Part 3: Paper.
This part of the final project is the paper that presents your description and analysis of your selected works.
This part of the final project is the paper that presents your description and analysis of your selected works.
In a 750-1200 word essay:
- Explain the subject you chose and why it’s worth exploring in the Humanities
- Describe each of your selected examples, including 1) information about its creator; 2) its historical or cultural context (how it fits into a historical period's or a specific culture's attitudes, events etc. Think about what else was going on in the culture and history when the piece was created); and 3) link to the example or an embedded image with a citation in the paper where you write about each example.
- Use at least one specific interpretative tool from the course to explain each of your selected examples. You should use a different tool for each example, so you should use at least three different tools in your paper.
- Assess the effectiveness or impact of each representation. In other words, how well did the representation present the subject? How effective was it? What impact did this representation have? What specific elements of the representation lead you to your conclusions?
- Provide a correctly formatted paper, complete and proper citations for any references you consult, using MLA format
Documentation Style: The paper is to be formatted and documented in the MLA format. For general assistance, see the links below to the UMUC Library.
- MLA Citation: http://sites.umgc.edu/library/libhow/mla_tutorial.cfm
- MLA Citation Examples: http://sites.umgc.edu/library/libhow/mla_examples.cfm
STOP: Before you hand in your assignment, make sure to ask yourself the following questions:
- Have I included a paragraph that provides one to two logical, concrete, well-stated reasons that this subject is worth exploring within the Humanities?
- Have I included least two to three sentences for each example that clearly and concretely provide information about its creator, cultural/historical context, and where I found it-an image or link?
- Have I included at least one to three sentences that explains and applies a specific interpretative tool that is from the course's learning resources or discussions to each example?
- Have I included at least one to three sentences that contains an assessment of the effectiveness of each example in representing the chosen subject?
- Have I provided a list of resources and do all of my citations conform to MLA 8th edition or APA guidelines?
- Have I proofread this assignment for grammatical, structural, and spelling errors?
Due Date for Part 3: This submission is due during Week 8, with the final day of submission being the Tuesday of the eighth week (11:30pm ET). Please see the Course Schedule for the exact final due date for this submission. The submission should be carefully edited and proofed for standard use of English.
| Subject | Essay Writing | Pages | 6 | Style | APA |
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Answer
Part one: Selection of Topic
I have chosen a political theme which is social injustice. Social injustice is the way unjust activities are done in the society. It occurs when equals are treated unequally and unequal is treated equally. The first reason why I have chosen social injustice is because it denies individuals and groups equal opportunities to have their basic needs met. For example, some people have been denied a job opportunity because of their color. Secondly, social injustice represents lack of equity or fairness which that to hatred and a biased society.
Part Two: Development of the Topic
The resources to expound on social justices have been selected from three disciplines of humanities that include visual art, music, and film.
The first work is from visual art discipline, a painting that can retrieved from https://www.revolt.tv/2020/6/8/21284588/george-floyd-family-un-investigation was created by Apu Gomes in protest of police brutality against the black that recently happened in the United States. While the painting was on several walls in downtown Los Angeles, I found it from the internet. This work is relevant to the social injustice as it provides information about biasness that happens in America based on color an individual.
Figure I: cant breath (https://www.revolt.tv/2020/6/8/21284588/george-floyd-family-un-investigation)
The second work is from discipline of music, a song titled fight the power by hip group known as Public Enemy. The song was released as a single in 1989 on Motown Records. The song that can be found on YouTube channel https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mmo3HFa2vjg is relevant to social injustice as it educates the public to fight the power of discrimination and oppression from the individuals who are in power.
The last work that falls within film discipline of humanity is The Divide (2015). This is a UK/US documentary that was directed by British film maker Katherine Round. The film that can be found in Netlix and youtube is an adaptation of the acclaimed 2009 social economic novel known as The Spirit Level. The film is relevant to my subject since it highlights the social injustices that occur to countries where few individual controls the majority of wealth.
Part Three: The paper
Social injustice is the way unjust activities are done in the society. It occurs when equals are treated unequally and unequal is treated equally. Social injustice come in several ways that include discrimination based on gender, race and place of origin. According to the study conducted by Jones-Eversley et al. social injustice creates certain condition in the sociality that negatively affect the daily lives of discriminated group in the community (321). Basically, social injustice denies people and certain groups an opportunity to have basic human needs. Additionally, it violates fundamental right of lesser group or minorities in the society. Basically, it represents lack of equity and fairness where some individuals are seen as outsiders. According to the study conducted by Cross Jr., because of social injustice, people of color, especially African-Americans are perceived as criminals hence they are more likely to go to jail than whites (129). Lack of fair opportunities and discrimination based on income status, color, and origin is the reason this topic has become of interest to me. In doing so, this paper will provide three works from different discipline of humanities that expound on social injustice.
I can’t breathe image (fig 1) was created by Abu Gomes, one of the individuals who protested about the recent police brutality in the United States following the death of George Floyd. While little is known about Abu Gomes, the cultural context of the image was to send a message about police brutality, especially towards the blacks. It was painted when the United States faced one of the worst protest in the recent times. The image was very effective in sending information about police brutality in the United States. It made the government and other authorities to recognize the concerns of the blacks, especially about unjust killings by the police. The part of the picture where the mouth is covered by the piece of cloth reveals that the black have been denied an opportunity to talk on matters that affect them. This work clearly sends a message that people should be treated equally for a cohesive society.
The second work is a song by Public Enemy, a group of hip hop singers, titled fight the power. Music is one of the political protest genre of this generation that addresses racial and political climate and used to call for change. Public Enemy is a group of singers who specialize on hip hop and have produced several songs that relate to social changes in the community. The song was inspired by the incident in Howard beach in 1996 in New York. In the incidence, a black man was beaten to death while another one was also hit to death by a car that was used to chase him. The chase was carried out by white youths. The song was produced at a critical time in the American history and was effective in informing the public about the discrimination that African-Americans were experiencing. The song did not did not only become anthem of several movies that had themes of unfair killings of people of color but also became anthem in the street.
The last work is a film known as The Divide (2015). This is a UK/Us documentary that was directed by British film maker Katherine Round. Katharine Round is an English documentary filmmaker and the co-founder of the production company Disobedient Films who promotes the work of documentary filmmakers, with a focus on independent, artistic work. The film portrays a cultural context of two division in America, the poor and the rich. The movie weaves seven stories together to depict a picture of how economic division creates social division in the society. It clearly shows the truth of how some people struggle to make ends meet in America. It reveals the truth about the perception that all people in the developed countries are happy. While some are really well-off, some individuals are seriously suffering, and have been oppressed by the rich. The movie effectively reveals the two division that current world is experiencing; the poor and the rich. While the so called the rich have the ability to transform the country and come up with policies and legislations that can positively impact the lives of all people, they are quiet and enjoy their wealth in silence. This is social injustice as some people die as a result of inability to access healthcare when care services can be made cheap for everyone. The suffering of one group clearly shows that despite efforts to eradicate social injustices, it still a vice in the community that cannot be simply eliminated.
References
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Cross Jr, William E. "Disjunctive: Social Injustice, Black Identity, and the Normality of Black People." The Oxford handbook of social psychology and social justice (2018): 129. Jones-Eversley, Sharon, et al. "Protesting Black inequality: A commentary on the civil rights movement and Black lives matter." Journal of Community Practice 25.3-4 (2017): 309-324. Public Enemy - Fight The Power: retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mmo3HFa2vjg
Appendix
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