Here were my three project ideas that I proposed to Ray:
- Living in Poverty: Perspectives on Socioeconomic Status. For this project, I want to look at socioeconomic status through various disciplines: sociology (inter-group relations), political science (agency), psychology (cognitive development), and so forth. I would also like to frame this with personal experience (anecdotes) by going on a “spending diet,” restricting myself from normal luxuries and to a tight budget.
- The Politics of English Grammar. I would like to make this multi-modal with a digital article. I am thinking of doing an article in the format of a presentation, like seen on Forbes or other major news sites, where there are large pictures to the left with text related to the pictures on the right.
- Fisher v. University of Texas, Austin: Why Race Should Be a Factor in Admissions. I would like to do this possibly in a blog format that presents Texas’s history and concentration of minorities; takes a position on the case, its briefs, and oral arguments; and then establish why race-based admissions are important in terms of diversity looking at multiple disciplines and the precedent in Grutter v. Bollinger.
The obvious link between my three project ideas is politics/political theory. I am interested in how we function as a society and the institutions that affect our well-being, and after looking at my projects more closely, I realized that there was an area that I was specifically looking at within the frame of politics/political theory: social inequality. Each of my projects looks at minorities or groups within society that have marginalized agency and how they relate to social inequalities in America.
