Project 1
TELL A STORY FOR SOCIAL JUSTICE
Over the last few weeks we’ve read and viewed a number of compelling stories for social justice. I say “for social justice” rather than “about social justice” because, although the stories have indeed been about a variety of social justice issues, the creators of those stories tell them in order to advance a cause. By seeking not merely to describe the world but to change it, these storytellers act for social justice.
In this project, you’ll attempt to do the same thing: You’ll tell a story that aims to change how your audience feels, thinks, and acts about a social justice issue that is vitally important to you.
- WHO you tell the story to depends on the issue you’re trying to affect. So ask yourself: Who is in a position to do something about the issue I want to affect? Whose emotions, thought, and actions am I trying to change? Your audience may consist of a single, relatively small group (say, students on campus), or it may be a large and various group (say, conservative Christians + liberal Muslims + Conservative and Reform Jews + engaged Buddhists). Who the audience for your story is will depend on what you're trying to do.
- WHAT story you tell depends on who you're trying to reach. It might be the story of a personal experience (like The Photographer and The Long Loneliness) or of the experience of someone you know (like The Road to Guantanamo), or of someone you’ve never even met (like Taylor Branch’s America in the King Years). The important thing isn’t where the story comes from; the important thing is that it be compelling: i.e., that it serve to move your particular audience and advance your cause.
- HOW you tell the story depends upon who you're trying to reach and the nature of the story you're telling them. You might tell it in words; you might tell it in pictures; or you might use both. You might create a video; you might create a podcast; or you might create a photo-essay, graphic novella, or suite of poems. Here again, the important thing is that your story be told in the most compelling way: i.e., that it move your particular audience and advance your cause.
Due dates, etc.
In addition to your rough draft, you should bring a roughly 500-word reflection on what you’ve done so far. That reflection should explain: (1) who your audience is, and why, given the change you want to bring about, you’ve decided to focus on this audience; (2) why you believe the particular story you tell will move your particular audience; and (3) why, given your audience and the story you want to tell, you’ve decided to tell it in the particular form that you do (i.e., as a short story, or a video, or a podcast, or a photo-essay, etc.)
A polished draft and revised reflection are due to John and Catherine by the start of class on October 18.
Your final draft and reflection are due to John and Catherine by noon on Tuesday, November 22.
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Project 2
WHAT DOES YOUR WORK MEAN?
The Assignment
The struggle for social justice takes many shapes and forms: from the mass movement politics led by figures such as Martin Luther King and Dorothy Day, to the high profile artistic interventions of, e.g., Michael Winterbottom and Vik Muniz, to the considerably more ordinary, everyday work of laundering clothes at the Saint Francis Center or creating a newsletter for the GrowHaus. All of this work is significant — indeed, vital — to the struggle. However, understanding the significance of one’s work emerges only from a careful process of reflection. We need to place our individual efforts in the larger philosophical and historical context of the social justice movement in order to grasp what our work really means.
In this project, you’ll reflect upon the significance of your own social justice work. Using terms and concepts from Lynn Hunt’s Inventing Human Rights (or from any other appropriate work of philosophy or history), you will describe and analyze the larger meaning of a specific experience you’ve had this term working with one of our community partners: How has your work contributed to the mission of the organization? How does that mission, and your contribution to it, serve the cause of social justice more broadly? And perhaps most importantly: What fundamental questions about or insights into the nature and pursuit of social justice does your experience offer?
Format, due dates, etc.
Please bring a first draft of your essay to class on Tuesday, 11/15, and email a copy to John and to Catherine. Your first draft should be complete (i.e., it should include both your description and analysis of the experience), so that we can give you useful feedback
Your final draft is due by noon on Tuesday, 11/22.
And finally. . .
1. If you didn’t work with your community partner this term, you need to write to John and Catherine ASAP to explain what happened. Working with a community partner is a crucial element of your participation in the LLC. So, if there’s been a problem, we need to solve it.
2. Don’t freak out if, at first, it’s hard to imagine how your experience of, say, sweeping floors, or filing papers, or planning a party constitutes social justice work. It does. You just need to step back and think in a larger context about what you’ve been doing.
