Gender, Race and Class

How to write a final paper for the Gender, Race and Class course

1. Select a topic for your paper :

• Your paper topic has to examine a cross-section between aspects of social stratification (i.e. social hierarchies) such as gender, race or class and social institutions (examples of social institutions include: family, politics, economy, work, media, sports, education, criminal system, etc.)
• Make sure that your paper topic relates to topics that we are covering in class
• Make sure that your topic is narrow enough so that you can find some data and/or articles to support your points
• Examples of topics: Comparison of Gender Relations in Hispanic and African-American Families; Social Class Structure in America: The Decline of the Middle Class; or Race relations in American; Racial Stereotypes: Hurt or Help?, and so on.

2. Start your paper by explaining why you selected this topic and why it is important;

3. Proceed to mention a theory/ or a general principle that speaks to a topic or an issue that you will be exploring;
4. Make sure to use additional sources of information while describing various sides of the issue that you are exploring: you can use newspaper articles, scientific journals (the Library has databases that contain scientific journal articles), and internet data posted by non-profits or think tanks that research your chosen topic.
5. Describe an example or two of real life or hypothetical situations that pertain to your topic.
6. Conclude with discussing solutions to the issue that you explored: it can be a mix of your own ideas and other people’s ideas that you have read about in mass media.  Your final paper should give a larger space to solutions to the issue as compared to your mid-term paper.  Make sure that you explore at least a couple of possible solutions.
7. Make sure that you list all of your references, spellcheck your paper, and make sure that it is at least 1400 words in length (you can submit up to a 7000 word long paper).
8. Bring a printed copy of your paper to class and post it on Self-Assign on Blackboard.