Assignment Overview:
Octavia Butler’s novel (and adapted graphic novel) uses time travel as a tool to show how the racial and gender injustice that exists in the present are rooted in the past. For your paper and graphic representation, you will choose a topic that is a problem in our current time (see suggestions below). You will write a research paper explaining why this is a problem – following the guidelines below – and then adapt your argument to a comic strip/graphic novel format.
Requirements:
- 3-6 page research paper on a topic inspired by the graphic novel Kindred.
- The essay should be argumentative and persuasive.
- All essays must use a minimum of 3 relevant scholarly secondary sources. You may also choose to use primary sources (interviews etc.) in addition to your 3 secondary sources.
- All essays must use MLA formatting
Assignment Details:
After reading Kindred, do some brainstorming to find topics of contemporary problems that interest you. Possibilities include (but are not limited to):
- Environmental issues
- Racism/Racial Profiling
- Mass incarceration
- Human Trafficking
- Drug abuse
- Social media
- Food Deserts
- Obesity
- Lack of public transportation
- Other social justice issues
At first, for this essay, I was going to go with racial profiling because that’s a big issue that genuinely interests me. However, due to the given restriction in which we couldn’t write about the same problem from Just Mercy– I had to think. I begin to look at what was happening in the world that needed immediate action but yet at the same time interests me: gun violence. I was able to come to this conclusion using the attached methods provided by Dr.C.
Next, after realizing which theme was better for me, I then moved on to work on my outline.