The purpose of this assignment is to deepen your thinking about race, ethnicity, and immigration as represented in the historical record and in the form of fictional narratives (short stories) and to practice skills in critical thinking and academic writing.
Response paper #1: History
You will write a short response paper of 800 to 1000 words that addresses one or more of these prompts regarding the introduction and first two chapters of Defining America through Immigration Policy by Bill Ong Hing:
What surprised you the most about the information presented ? Why? What strikes you most when you compare the experiences of the early European Americans and the early Asian Americans? What questions are raised for you in these chapters? To what extent are you convinced by Hing's interpretation of the historical data and what alternative interpretations come to mind?This response paper, like all work for this course, must be a Microsoft Word document and must follow MLA formatting.
This paper will be submitted electronically as part of your midquarter portfolio no later than 1:00 p.m. on Monday, April 28, for which instructions will be provided later.
Response paper #2: Short stories
You will write a short response paper of 800 to 1000 words that addresses one or more of these prompts regarding the short stories we read in Imagining America: Stories from the Promised Land, edited by Wesley Brown and Amy Ling. You may not write about any story that your small group is covering in a small-group discussion. I want you to be thinking about other stories.
Which story moved you the most ? Why? Which story raised questions for you? Why? How did one or more of the stories influence the way you thought about the history presented by the Hing book?Please see the formatting instructions above.
This paper will be submitted electronically in the Catalyst tool called CollectIt, for which instructions will be provided later.
Each of your response papers will be graded according to the following criteria:
Content | 50 percent |
Organization | 10 percent |
Reasoning | 20 percent |
Rhetoric | 10 percent |
Conventions | 10 percent |
TOTAL | 15 percent of final course grade (each) |
This page last updated March 28, 2008.