This assignment will help you to achieve the following Course Objectives:
– describe the role of culture in health, illness, and healing and medical anthropology’s contributions to individual and public health in domestic and international contexts
– describe the local and global political, social, and economic factors that influence individual and public health to shape programs and policies
Your RESEARCH PAPER (4-5 pages) is an “authentic assessment”; that is, it asks you to complete tasks that anthropologists actually perform. This assignment is worth 25% of your overall grade. See the Course Schedule for Due Dates.
In this assignment you will build on the work you did for the Literature Review. You are expected to take the information you collected and analyzed in the Lit. Review and use it as the basis for an Argumentative/Persuasive Formal Essay (4-5 double-spaced pages).
You must include and integrate the following as part of your essay:
- A brief Summary (with citations) of any anthropological work on the topic you can find in peer-reviewed journals (not websites unless it’s a peer-reviewed journal website) using the UMUC Library bibliographic Refer to your Literature Review as a baseline. You can add additional peer-reviewed sources beyond your Literature Review if necessary.
- Theoretical Your theoretical orientation is your idea about what factors determine, influence, or shape your perspective and that are important to explain or better understand regarding your topic. In other words, it’s your theory about why things happen or why things are as they are. A theoretical orientation “…determines what questions get asked and how they get answered” (Brown and Barrett, Understanding and Applying Medical Anthropology, 2009, p. 2).
- Your specific Research What do you want to know?
- Your How will you answer your questions? What exactly will you do? If conducting mini-ethnography or interviews: Where will you do it? Who will you interview? How many people? What settings or groups will you compare?
*NOTE* As 300-level students, I will assume that all of you know by now how to write a formal essay/research paper. But as a reminder, you are expected to have: 1) A unique and creative Title that entices the reader and that is tied in with 2) A clear Introduction that flows logically into 3) A coherent Main Body that logically flows into 4) A clear and convincing Conclusion.
Please pay close attention to the formal aspects of your essay: spelling, grammar, punctuation, overall flow (transition sentences), proper APA citation practices (for additional information regarding APA citation please refer to the “APA Citation Help” link in the Webliography under “Course Resources.”), etc. Keep in mind that how you express something, especially in an argumentative/persuasive essay, is just as important (and sometimes even more important) as what you actually articulate.
Sloppy presentation is a bit like shooting yourself in the foot before running a race. You may end up limping to the finish line, but it’s a bloody mess that nobody wants to see and it’s highly unlikely that you performed well. More importantly, bad writing reflects a poor work ethic and a lack of attention to detail while also greatly undermining your ability to communicate your ideas cogently. It also indicates to the reader that you do not actually take seriously what it is you are expressing. Why should the reader believe that your points are valid or even well-reasoned or waste their time reading what you write if you do not care enough to present your thoughts in a clear, logical, and well-written manner? Now, while I am personally a fan of “experimentalist” or “stream of consciousness” writing as genres and art forms, this is neither the course nor the context for you to develop those sorts of skills. Keep it simple, keep it clear, keep it focused.
**The Effective Writing Center has offered a writing lab, which will be available in the classroom 2 weeks prior to the Due Date of this assignment, to help you in effectively preparing and presenting this assignment. I strongly encourage everyone to use this resource as it will help improve your submissions.**
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