The way you demonstrate your fulfillment of our course outcomes, and the way you earn a grade, is by completing our course assignments. Each of the following assignments is designed to provide you with an opportunity to demonstrate competency with respect to one or more outcomes.
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1. Seminar Participation (20 points total).
A recurring opportunity designed for you to demonstrate your skills and understandings with respect to Outcome 1.
As a colectiva, our class relies on the contributions you make to our collaborative effort. Most visibly, this comes via your participation in our weekly seminars, as you present your understanding of the course materials. But this is more than merely speaking in class; it is contributing to our shared understanding of the historical forces shaping the experiences, social relations, and identities of people of color in the US past. Your participation will be graded using the assessment criteria for Outcome 1, applied to your performance in two ways: as an individual and as a group. As an individual, you earn a grade (worth 10 points) in recognition of your performance over the whole semester. As a group, you earn another grade (also 10 points) for leading one of our weekly seminar discussions.
- Seminar Participation (ongoing)
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2. Critical Evaluation Essays (5 points each; 40 points total).
A recurring opportunity designed for you to demonstrate your skills and understandings with respect to Outcome 2.
Due at nine different times during our semester, these essays are the core of our colectiva. They are short (at least TWO, no more than FOUR page) essays reflecting your critical evaluation of the week’s reading. Your goal is to identify the “essential understanding” of the week’s reading assignment, explaining what the author says, how they say it, all while demonstrating the assessment criteria for Outcome 2. Each is due IN CLASS, to be used in our seminar discussion for that day. You will not be required to write a Critical Evaluation Essay for the week in which you act as seminar leader. Accordingly, you will submit only eight of them by semester’s end.
- Critical Evaluation Essays (ongoing)
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3. Historiography Essay (30 points total).
An opportunity designed for you to demonstrate your skills and understandings with respect to Outcome 3.
A “historiography” is a historical analysis of how historians have represented and studied a topic through the scholarship on that topic—the history of written history. It asks how historians’ understandings, methods, narrative strategies, and conclusions have evolved over time. You will select a topic from historical literature relating to US race relations and write a historiography essay. It should be EIGHT to TEN pages in length and composed in a way demonstrating the assessment criteria for Outcome 3. It may be turned in via email.
- Historiography Essay (April 20 @ 1:15 p.m.)
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4. Final Portfolio (10 points total).
An opportunity designed for you to demonstrate your skills and understandings with respect to all our Course Outcomes.
At the end of the semester, you will collect ALL your written work and organize it into a portfolio. As a prefatory section to the portfolio, you will prepare a reflection essay, a self-evaluation of your work in consideration of your development with regard to our outcomes. There is no set length to this assignment but, as suggested by the point value, it is meant to be comprehensive and substantive.
- Final Portfolio (May 10 @ 1:15 p.m. or May 5 @ 1:15 p.m. for graduating seniors)
