Race

Credit: imdb.com

Purpose: The purpose of this assignment is to apply the sociological imagination and key course concepts to the assigned video (Race). You will choose your own sociological topic and apply it to Race. This will require a well-articulated thesis statement with ample evidence to support your thesis in the form of in-text citations and examples from Race.

Part 1: Watch the assigned film, Race (run time 134 min), while jotting notes (you will turn in these handwritten or typed notes). Recommendations: Instead of taking notes that summarize the film, I recommend jotting sociological themes that you could use for the topic of your paper. You may want to report time stamps for scenes that seem particularly important for your argument as you may want to review a specific scene later. For example, “18 minutes, 20 seconds: gender inequality is depicted when a woman has a job interview for a soccer coach and the interviewee laughs at her and dismisses her before asking all questions on the list.” Your next note may identify a new topic, “1 hour, 5 minutes: violence in sport is depicted when coach throws notepad across locker room.” After watching the film and reviewing notes, you can decide which theme you have the most evidence for. I recommend typing the notes so they’re easy to attach to your final paper. You can also take a photo of handwritten notes and insert them into the final paper via the Word document.

Part 2: Identify a theme, identify a topic, and take a position (thesis statement). Next, create an outline for your paper, which outlines the evidence to support your thesis (you turn in your typed outline). Below you will find examples of sociological themes. For all themes, you can think about different aspects of sport (on-field, off-filed, athletes, friends/family, community, spectators, team owners, coaches, referees, etc.). You can choose one of the listed themes or create your own based on course material. The listed themes are extremely broad – one would not be able to cover everything regarding race/ethnicity in sport in 3-5 pages. Thus, you must narrow the theme and focus on one topic. You will choose your own theme and topic based on the notes you gathered from the movie. Your thesis statement will 1) identify your theme, 2) identify your topic and 3) clearly state your position.
The purpose of the outline is to identify 3 pieces of evidence to support your claim and/or refute evidence that would weaken your claim. Regardless of your chosen theme/topic, you will need to review and incorporate key terms and concepts from course material. You will need to copy/paste your final thesis statement on the outline. I have included an example outline below. Feel free to use the general layout of the provided outline. Recommendations: take note where you need to include citations on your outline. Identify key terms/concepts on the outline.

Part 3: Write an essay that reflects your thesis statement (position) and provides evidence to support your claims in the form of scientific evidence and evidence from the movie. Make sure to bold your thesis statement which should be located within the first two paragraphs of your writing. Each claim should have evidence in form of formal citations and evidence from the movie. Your essay is not a summary of the film rather a sociological analysis. When providing evidence from the film, keep descriptions brief. We have already seen the film so you can assume we know the characters, key scenes, and plot. Do not describe the movie like this: “Johnny is the main character in the movie who played basketball at Notre Dame for college and goes professional for the Bulls. During his second year pro, he buys a car. His third year, he buys another car after breaking up with his girlfriend.” Rather, use the movie only for evidence in claims: “Johnny demonstrates hyper-consumerism by buying 3 cars and only wearing designer clothing. Then, you would want to include an academic source about the role of consumerism in sports (and cite this academic source), which creates a connection between the theme you observed in the movie and academic literature/findings.