Socioautobiography Assignment Guidelines

 

 

The purpose of this assignment is to give you the opportunity to apply the sociological imagination to your everyday life: To make connections between your everyday life and the broad sociocultural structures within which you live. In this assignment, you will reference appropriate Terminal Course Objectives (TCOs) that relate to your socioautobiography. You can find the TCOs in this course listed in the Syllabus and in the weekly objectives. This assignment can be related to any and all of the TCOs.

The socioautobiography is a reflective paper that allows you the opportunity to explore the interconnections between biography (a slice of your life), the social structure, and culture. In preparation for this paper, please read this document, Socioautobiography Assignment Guideline. At the end of the paragraph where a concept is used, indicate which TCOs your sociological concept refers. This should be done using parenthetical citation. An example of how to do this is provided below.

The final paper will be due at the end of Week 5. It should be three-to-four pages in length and may be in any format you choose. Feel free to get creative. You may choose to do a standard APA style paper or you can do your socioautobiography as a news story, movie review of your life, letter home to family, obituary, poem, lyrics, dialogue, old time radio program, or Shakespearean play, whatever format you choose. Be sure to identify your format, double-space your paper, and correctly use a minimum of six sociological concepts covered in the weekly readings or lecture. Your six concepts should be in boldface and underlined. Consider the following example.

As I think about my experience growing up, I realized that I was at an advantage compared with some of the other students. I came from a middle-class family. In my family gender didn’t matter, boys and girls were raised with the same expectation that they would be going off to college right after high school. As such, writing and speaking properly was considered a high priority. (TCO 3 and TCO 6).

Note how, in this mini-socioautobiography, there are references to social class and gender.

Below are guidelines to follow as you work on your socioautobiography assignment.

 

• Papers should contain 3-to 4-pages of text, double-spaced (this does not include the title page).
• Refer to and properly use at least six sociological concepts covered in the lectures or textbook reading.
• Underline and boldface these concepts.
• Connect your concepts to the TCOs. Indicate the TCOs covered in parentheses, as demonstrated in the assignment instructions.
• Cite the textbook and/or lecture for the concepts and the Syllabus or course objectives for the TCOs in addition to any outside source material used both in body and on your reference page.