27/28 February 2017

Today students turned in their thesis outlines, then engaged in a workday. The first draft of the thesis was assigned. First drafts are due on 6/7 March.

Next session, we will begin reading Fences.

23/24 February 2017

At the beginning of class, students turned in notecards. We checked out August Wilson's play Fences, then read "The Crucible of Identity" from John Rickford's Spoken Soul; the article "Turning Back the Pages"; and the article "What August Wilson Means Now". Students also reviewed "The Case for Reparations" and "The Meaning of Serena Williams," then engaged in class discussion exploring the ways each essay raises issues around the idea of barriers or obstacles.

Notecards were passed back at the end of class, and the outline was assigned. Outlines are due next class.

21/22 February 2017

Today was a thesis workday. Students came to class with a provisional enthymeme to use to develop topics for notecards. Notecards will be due next class.

16 February 2017

Students received the Notecards assignment. The first set of notecards (15) are due on 23/24 February.

Students also received Ta-Nehisi Coates' essay "The Case for Reparations," which they will read and annotate for the sessions on 23/24 February.

15/16 February 2017

Students viewed "The House We Live In," an episode from the PBS series Race: The Power of an Illusion. They took notes on the following guiding questions:

1. Who was allowed to become a naturalized citizen before 1954 and who wasn’t?
2. What rights and privileges do citizens have that non-citizens don't have?
3. What were the consequences for those denied citizenship?
4. How did European “ethnics” become white? What changes made this possible?
5. How did federal housing policies institutionalize segregation and wealth disparities?
6. Why do property values go down when a neighborhood changes from white to nonwhite?
7. Who plays a role in this?
8. What happens to measures of racial disparities in terms of education and welfare rates when groups of similar income AND wealth are compared?

This work is part of our background building toward our reading of Fences by August Wilson.

13/14 February 2017

Today was a lab day during which students used time to research their thesis topics, using the databases we discussed last week. Students worked on annotated bibliography entries. Four complete entries will be due on 16/17 February.

10/15 February 2017

Today we began laying the groundwork for our reading of August Wilson's play Fences. We discussed the naming of Serena Williams as Sports Illustrated's Sportsperson of the Year for 2015 and the twitter responses to that designation and performed a close reading of two specific images of Williams to begin to identify what she represents in relation to the experiences she has had as a public figure. Students are to read Claudia Rankine's essay "The Meaning of Serena Williams" for our next class meeting.

8/9 February, 2017

Students reviewed the formal thesis assignment, along with the timeline. Students learned how to search the Multnomah County Library databases most effectively. The majority of the class session was devoted to lab time. The Annotated Bibliography was discussed and assigned.

6/7 February 2017

Today students engaged in some brainstorming activities as we begin the Senior Thesis. We discussed the parameters and timeline for the assignment and generated sets of potential topics under the categories "Passions," "Controversies," "Confusions," and "Curiosities." Students should have several possible topics ready to being exploring during our next class session.