Required Resources
Read/review the following resources for this activity:
- Textbook: Chapter 1-16
- Lesson: Week 1-7
- Minimum of 4 outside scholarly sources in addition to the textbook/lesson
- One personal interview of another adult of your choosing
Introduction
As you learned in Week 3, for your Socioautobiography Narrated PowerPoint assignment, there is a strong tradition of creating both sociologically informed biographies and sociologically-informed autobiographies in the discipline of sociology. The socioautobiography is a “disciplined, systematic exploration of one’s life from a sociological point of view” (Hill, 2009, p. 3). Also, the sociobiography is the systematic exploration of another person’s life from a sociological point of view.
For this assignment, you will be building upon the work you began in your Week 3 Socioautobiography Narrated PowerPoint. For this week’s assignment, you will interview an adult person of your choosing and complete a sociobiography of that person, and present that in a narrated PowerPoint. You will also compare and contrast that person’s sociological characteristics with your own.
To begin this assignment, consider the sociological concepts you focused on for your Week 3 assignment about yourself and consider what sociological concepts you would like to compare and contrast with the person you interview.
Interview
Locate an adult willing to be interviewed about their life story. The person can be any adult you choose, whether in your family or outside your family. Be sure to inform that person that you will be writing up your observations from the interview in a presentation for your Society and Culture course.
Present
In a narrated PowerPoint, compare and contrast your sociological observations about yourself that you shared in your Week 3 assignment with your sociological observations of the person you interview. Address the following 2 important sections:
- Explore the interconnections between the life story of a person you interview and the larger social structure or culture.
- Compare and contrast the sociological themes and concepts related to your own personal story with the sociological themes and concepts related to the story of the person you interviewed. Apply the sociological imagination in the analysis.
Include the following in your analysis:
- Quotes or paraphrases and citations from 4 outside scholarly sources and assigned readings (online Lessons or textbook readings), to support your observations in your presentation.
- 6 different concepts, key words, or vocabulary words from Chapters 1-16 in your analysis and observations on your slides, formatted in boldface and underlined on slides.
- You may repeat these 6 terms throughout the PowerPoint presentation if you want to, but you are not required to.
Instructions
For this comparative case study project, you are required to create a narrated presentation PowerPoint file.
The presentation must include the following:
- Part or Parts of the Life Story of the Person You Interview: Explain and analyze the life story of the person you interview, or parts of the life story of the person you interview, as a sociologist might, examining sociological categories relevant to that person’s life story.
- Include details of family, culture, and background.
- Consider what types of categories a sociologist might use to describe the person.
- Comparison and/or Contrast of the life story of the person you interview with your own life story that you presented in your Week 3 assignment
- Engagement: Be sure to deliver the presentation in a professional and engaging manner.
- Visual Aids: Images or symbols as visual aids should still be included. Include photos or symbols that represent the sociological concepts you are analyzing in your presentation. If you use any images from the Internet or from any sources other than your own personal photographs, you must include citations for those and those citations are *not* part of your required 4 outside scholarly sources plus the online Lesson or textbook. Key Words in Bold and Underlined: Be sure to include 6 different concepts, keywords, or vocabulary words from Chapters 1-16 in your analysis and observations on your slides, formatted in boldface and underlined on slides
- Visual Appeal and Organization: Do not include slides with large blocks of text. Use bullet points, brief text, and clear organization to create an organized and visually appealing presentation.
- Citations: Include parenthetical in-text citations in the slide presentation citing at least 4 outside scholarly sources and assigned textbook/lesson reading to support observations made in the presentation. Remember, cite sources for all images, too, that are not your personal photographs and those sources do *not* count as part of your 4 required outside scholarly sources plus the textbook/lesson.
- Questions to Consider
Consider the following questions for potential use in your interview:
How might a sociologist introduce you?
How have social influences shaped you?
What were the social forces that constructed your life or lifestyle?
How have you negotiated the crisscrossing pressures of autonomy and conformity?
Who are you in social context and what does it mean to understand your life using the “sociological imagination,” or utilizing a sociological perspective?
What sociological concepts would be most helpful in understanding and interpreting your life experiences, whether class, or reference group, conformity, agents of socialization, gender socialization, racial socialization, norms, roles, significant others, total institutions (particularly if you were in the military), achieved status, ascribed status, deviance, subculture, culture, culture shock, ethnocentrism, folkways, mores, peer groups, and any others described in the textbook chapters, to interpret your life experiences?
What events, moments or relationships in your life have impacted you significantly?
Presentation Requirements (APA format)
- Slide Length: 8 slides (not including title slide and references slide)
- Speaker notes to elaborate your bullet points
- APA-style parenthetical in-text citations on slides for a minimum of 4 outside sources plus the textbook/lesson
- Title Slide
- At least one Comparison/Contrast Slide; though you are welcome to include more than one slide comparing and contrasting your life story characteristics with those of the person you interview
- References slide (minimum of 4 outside scholarly sources in addition to the textbook/lesson)
