Final Project

Your topic should be anything under the umbrella of race, class and gender. You will likely narrow down your topic from what you started with.

Your outline for your paper/project should contain at a minimum. Please note this is not meant to be the format of your paper, but items contained:

Please make time to learn more about and relate to your topic. Please bring in your own perspective, items from the peer reviewed journals, and other sources. You should have:

· at least 3 peer reviewed journal sources referenced

· minimum of 6 references total

· 1 reference should be from course materials

· minimum 1300 words

· note what style guide you are using.

· Please note the grading criteria or prompt is not meant to be the format. Please use a communication style like standard essay or storytelling.

Please incorporate ethical analysis, address your bias, and if you feel strongly on a position, look into sources that differ from that position. Please consider how bias shows up in your major and within these topics. Becoming less biased starts with awareness and cross disciplinary understandings.

Please discuss how decolonization show up in your work. It doesn't have to hit every aspect, but please demonstrate that you've thought about it.

-Goals around ethics should include when folks reflect back on your work they can see that you considered different angles and systemic oppression.

-You should consider that most ethical guidelines required for research look at individuals and there may be community or collective level impacts.

-It is worth noting that assuming "no bias" is a way that certain disciplines may perceive their own work as more valid, which is a bias. Please be open to learning more and considering ways that bias shows up in relation to your topic.

An Introduction, a thesis statement, and or the main points you intend to discuss and background.

(Evidence, details about the topic you are interested in and information that you refer to for your analysis. If your evidence is from older sources, you should consider some of the ethics or points of view that researchers may have and offer some insights given your understanding of decolonizing ethnobiology.

Analysis. Bring your insights in and contemplate the implications of different sources. For example if you are discussing the traditional farming relationships to climate change you might want to look into various experiences with that and make some inferences. Like I would assume that folks used to climate extremes and are in an areas with resistance to colonial disruption may figure out how to best work with their more extreme environments.

-Please make reference to what decolonizing would look like in relation to your topic. It does not have to be holistic, but I would like to see strong connections with at least one citation.

Your interest it would be helpful to include how you connect to your topic of choice. This is where people often address their bias too

Conclusion

You may choose to recap some of your major points. You may also branch out and mention how learning more influenced your perspective. Additionally, it would be great to hear your perspectives on how things could be different. I like the idea of futurities, although also enjoy discussion about those types of visions for today.

Ethics/antibias your paper/project should include considering how ethics and antibias might show up. I will be looking for a reference to decolonization in relation to your topic. I will also be looking for references to how your topic might relate to anti-oppression.

For instance it is important to consider that sometimes Indigenous knowledge is extracted from communities,

· there might be bias that assumes consumer culture as better than traditional relationships,

· when things are past oriented, there might be romanticization,

· cultures are often dynamic, yet current efforts dismissed

· there may be mistrust of researchers and some knowledges are meant to be kept closer to community or shared in a certain way.

· some fields only allow in information from certain approaches. With the exclusive nature of having research supported its possible that alot of the information within a field does not include diverse perspectives or methodology to produce knowledge reducing scope, depth, and creating space for group think. There is also data that never is published if findings do not align to what is expected, which may skew understandings within the field.

Grading Criteria. Please read above for the details in addition to what is in the rubric

1) Contains Introduction, (5points)

2) Evidence and analysis (5points)

3) Discussion/ Conclusion (5points)

4) Ethics, Decolonization, and bias (3point)

5) Situating yourself (2 point) within the topic. Your voice should be present and please share what interests you in the topic. This also connects to ethics and bias.

6) employ writing and communication Convention s (4point) associated with an academic essay or project. Use a standard essay format, although can use formatting and subsection.

Please cite using a style guide and use other writing conventions; such as organization, flow, transition sentences, grammar, and punctuation. You may choose to describe your work in a story telling fashion, which overlaps with the standard essay format, but can be more personable and easy to follow. The learning center is there to support, so please plan accordingly.

7) Supporting your peers , (1 point) offering peer feedback, you may choose to write a note to your peer reviewers requesting what sort of feedback would be helpful. Please provide feedback within a week, although the sooner the better.

Also, plan to incorporate peer feedback, although not required