paper

Piaoyao Qi

English 098

3/6/18

The paper prompt I selected: Text to Text Option.

Working Thesis:My Introduction part of the outline will provide a clear illustration of my working thesis. In the movie "Hidden Figures", the cast, Katherine Johnson, Mary Jackson and Dorothy Vaughan play the roles of three black women who were successful in the field of Mathematics and Computers. Their success story is portrayed in their endless efforts put in ensuring the complete launching of John Glenn's' into space by NASA in the 1960s. In the movie, these three women try all possible ways to prove wrong the stereotype threat that women taking a math test will perform worse when they are reminded that women are not expected to do well in math, as outlined by Claude Steele in his book ‘Whistling Vivaldi'.I plan to support my thesis using relevant examples from scenes in the movie that relate to the various societal stereotypic notions connected to racism and women discrimination. The detailed information to support my thesis will be presented in three paragraphs.

In the first body paragraph, I will discuss in details what stereotype threat is and how it can be of impact to the lives of others. According to Claude Steele, it was stereotypic back then that women could not compete with men at advanced levels of mathematics. It was more than obvious that white men could not jump. Some of these beliefs imposed on women back then caused adverse effects on their performance in school to an extent that some, who took mathematics as their majors performed poorly in their assessments whereas some of the white jumpers failed to clear the usual bar.

In my second paragraph, I will discuss how Katherine faces a stereotype threat. In addition, I will provide a clear view of how these stereotypes somewhat limited her opportunities to spread her wings wider while working at NASA. In particular, different racial/gender discriminations and imposed stereotypes faced by Katherine then were for instance; she was restricted of where she could use the restroom and take her meals to the position anticipated of her as a woman. In addition, when Dorothy was eagerly awaiting promotion to be a supervisor but after talks with her senior administrator, that was never going to happen just because of her race. At some time, the NASA astronauts grandly arrive at the research center and the black women are compelled to stand together as a split group, noticeably alienated from the other scientists.

In my third paragraph, I will focus on how Katherine and her African-American female colleagues were able to outgrow this prefixed mindset and excel in their careers. For instance, Mary courageously represents herself in a petition in court after she was denied a chance to take her additional classes in order to seek formal certification in a segregated school for whites-only. In another scenario, Dorothy inquires about a book from a local library where she was thrown out, all because she wanted to increase her knowledge in the programming language. This shows the strife these women go through to overcome these stereotypes.

In conclusion, I will sum up three points I talked about before and show experience I got from this movie.

I would pose the following questions for my peer review group.

What do you think of my brief outline of the essay? Am I on point? Did I meet the threshold in my thesis part of the introduction? Are my examples relevant to my discussion? Is there any additional information that you think I should source from the different scenes in the movie?