Assignment 2: It May Not Work in Politics
Due Week 10 and worth 225 points
Write a three to four (3-4) page paper in which the student addresses the
following three (3) items using headers to separate each response:
Congressional Ethics. Identify one (1) member of Congress who has been
charged with ethics violations. Briefly discuss the reason for the charges
and provide two (2) reasons why you agree or disagree with the verdict
and any penalties. Provide examples to support your answer. Note:
Consider how the verdict and penalties impacts your trust of the members
of Congress.
Third Party Candidates. Discuss two (2) political reasons why a third party
candidate has never been successful in winning a presidential election.
Provide examples to support the answer. Note: Consider the political
impact of the Republican and Democratic Party if a third party was
successful.
Federal and State Authority. Identify one (1) current issue facing the United
States today. Analyze the respective roles of Federal and state authorities
in addressing the issue. Determine whether the U. S. Constitution
constrains the Federal and state responses to the issue. Explain.
In your research, you cannot use Wikipedia, online dictionaries,
Sparknotes, Cliffnotes, or any other Website do that do not qualify as an
academic resource.
Your assignment must follow these formatting requirements:
Be typed, double spaced, using Times New Roman font (size 12), with
one-inch margins on all sides; references must follow APA or schoolspecific format. Check with your professor for any additional instructions.
Include a cover page containing the title of the assignment, the student’s
name, the professor’s name, the course title, and the date. The cover page
and the reference page are not included in the required page length.
The specific course learning outcomes associated with this assignment are
to:
Identify informed opinions on issues and questions involving the U.S.
government, national political processes, policy making, and the notion of
democracy.
Employ terminology used to study political science and American
government.
Develop reasoned written and spoken presentations on issues and
questions involving the U.S. government and national political processes
using information in the course.
Describe the basic values of American political culture.
Explain how the federal system of government works.
Explore different perspectives on issues and questions about the U.S.
government and national political processes.

Assignment 2: Project Paper
Due Week 8 and worth 200 points
The Project Paper focuses on a suggested topic related to art, architecture, history, music, or literature. The project will reflect your views and interpretation of the topic. This project is designed to help you stretch your mind and your abilities to be the creative, innovative, and critical thinker you already are!
Choose one (1) of the topics from the list of topic choices below. Read the topic carefully. Write a three to four (3-4) page paper (750-1,000 words) that responds to each of the items described in the topic.
For the topic you choose:
1. Support your ideas with specific, illustrative examples. If there are questions or points associated with your chosen topic, be sure to answer all of the listed questions and address all of the items in that topic. If your topic asks you to do several things related to the topic, be sure to do each of the things listed.
2. While some of the topics tend to lend themselves toward particular writing genres, you are not restricted to the specific format suggested for the individual topic. For example, you may do an “interview,” a “proposal,” a “letter,” a “short story,” a “blog,” an “essay,” an “article,” or any other written genre for almost any of the topics. The project is intended to be fun as well as informative, so feel free to be creative with the delivery of your information.
3. Use at least three (3) good quality academic sources, with one (1) source being the class text.Note: Wikipedia and other similar Websites do not qualify as academic resources. You are highly encouraged to use the Resource Center tab at the top of your Blackboard page.
Note: Your instructor may require you to submit your topic choice for approval before the end of Week 5.
Topic choices (pick 1):
Women’s Roles Then & Now.Script. Script a conversation between two (2) notable women from the 18th and / or 19th century on the roles women should play in society. Within the dialogue, include:
1. Biographical information for each woman.
2. The historical status for women in general during the time period in which each woman lived.
3. What opinions each of the women might have on the role the women should play in society during their lifetimes.
4. What each of the women might think about women’s current roles.

The Project Paper will be graded on:
• The level to which the instructions were followed.
• The extent to which all four (4) parts in the topic were addressed.
• The adequacy of information, examples, and details which support the general claim or main idea.
• The clarity and relevance of the explanations and descriptions.
• Adherence to standard rules of grammar, punctuation, and mechanics.
• The inclusion of three (3) required references (two [2] additional sources besides your textbook) documented using APA style.
Your assignment must follow these formatting requirements:
• Be typed, double spaced, using Times New Roman font (size 12), with one-inch margins on all sides; references must follow APA Style format. Check with your professor for any additional instructions specific to the selected topic. (Note: Students can find APA style materials located in the Additional Resources section of their Student Center within their course shell for reference)
• Include a cover page containing the title of the assignment, the student’s name, the professor’s name, the course title, and the date. The cover page and the reference page are not included in the required page length.
The specific course learning outcomes associated with this assignment are:
• Explain how key social, cultural, and artistic contributions contribute to historical changes.
• Explain the importance of situating a society’s cultural and artistic expressions within a historical context.
• Examine the influences of intellectual, religious, political, and socio-economic forces on social, cultural, and artistic expressions.
• Identify major historical developments in world cultures from the Renaissance to the contemporary period.
• Use technology and information resources to research issues in the study of world cultures.
• Write clearly and concisely about world cultures using proper writing mechanics.

Choose one of the four plays we’ve read this semester, either the play itself or a cinematic interpretation of the play that we watched.
Paper 2 assignment instructions Quick overview: ● compare/contrast at least two sources, at least one of which must be a film ● 5-7 pages, double-spaced Goals of this assignment: ● identify and explain similarities and differences between two sources in order to support a claim about one or both of them ● practice using the language of film analysis ● develop an argument supported by logical and demonstrable reasons and concrete evidence ● demonstrate an understanding of audience needs (your audience is me and your classmates) ● engage critically with Shakespeare Important dates: ● draft or detailed outline due in hard copy Friday 12/1 for peer review ● final polished paper due in hard copy 12/11 Detailed instructions: Choose one of the four plays we’ve read this semester, either the play itself or a cinematic interpretation of the play that we watched. Compare and contrast this text/film to another film. The second film may be one that we watched in class, but does not have to be. You may choose to compare/contrast e.g. two versions of Hamlet, or Olivier’s Hamlet to Brook’s Lear, or Kozintsev’s Lear to the original play. If you want to use a play not read in class, or compare a source from class to a non-Shakespeare film, talk to me first. As with paper 1, you should be conscious of what theory or theories you are using to make your interpretation, whether or not you discuss it/them explicitly. In your paper, you may focus on how the films use cinematic and narrative techniques to emphasize themes, develop characters and their relationships, and/or re-envision Shakespeare’s text. You might examine cinematic techniques in terms of editing, comparing how the films’ cuts draw parallels between particular characters, or in terms of setting, examining how the films use public and private space. You should address, however briefly, why these two sources should be put in dialogue with each other. General guidelines: ● be aware of what theory or theories you’re using. It will serve as the frame of reference for the questions you ask, the evidence you privilege, and the grounds for the comparison you’re making. Often your professors will tell you what approach they want you to take; in this case, I’m leaving it up to you. ● have a thesis expressing a relationship between your two sources. It should be more specific than something like, ‘While Romeo and Juliet and West Side Story initially seem very different, they actually have a lot of similarities.’ That’s a fine – and useful – starting point, but the thesis should be a claim about the significance of one or more of those similarities or differences. For example, a thesis like ‘Whereas the use of nature in Brook’s Lear emphasizes the nihilism of the original play, Kurosawa’s Ran uses nature to suggest the possibility of redemption’ does explicitly compare the two texts, but it draws a specific and concrete distinction. On the other hand, a thesis like ‘While West Side Story focuses more on societal and systemic problems than a doomed individual love affair, both the movie and the original play comment on the redemptive nature of love’ acknowledges key differences between the two texts but highlights an important similarity. ● have an organizational scheme. There are several ways to organize a compare/contrast paper, but two of the most common are text-by-text or point-by-point. A text-by-text essay would provide a discussion of one text and then the other, and bring them together in the conclusion. A point-by-point essay, on the other hand, would discuss the texts together in terms of specific points of contact or disjunction. This is often, though by no means always, a more sophisticated approach. ● use clear signposting to keep your reader oriented. All argumentative papers require you to link each point in the argument back to the thesis. Without such links, your reader will be unable to easily see how new sections logically and systematically advance your argument. In a compare-and contrast, you also need to make links between the sources you’re comparing in the body of your essay if you want your paper to hold together. To make these links, use transitional expressions of comparison and contrast (similarly, moreover, likewise, on the contrary, conversely, on the other hand…) and contrastive vocabulary. Keep in mind: ● you should have a bibliography, even if it is only two items long. Use MLA formatting. ● this should be a critical analysis, not a subjective evaluation – i.e., you should make an argument about the sources, not about whether or not they’re good, or which one is better ● have a title! ● feel free to use screenshots or images to illustrate your point – make sure you caption them with brief descriptions, and refer to them in the body of the text in some consistent way (e.g., Figure 1, Figure 2…). ● when writing about literature and film, use the present tense: Hamlet is losing his mind in the present, Lear is banishing Cordelia in the present, Juliet is deceiving her parents in the present. If you use secondary sources, these should be discussed in the present or simple perfect: As Helene Foley has shown…, Brantley Bryant demonstrates convincingly… (NB this convention does not hold for fields like social and hard sciences, which discuss scholarship and many sources in the past tense.)