Visual Sociology Project
This project is meant to give you an opportunity to demonstrate what you have learned in this course. Each week, you should select a few terms or themes from the required chapters to use in the final project. Read on for more information:
Required Sources
- Schaefer, R.T. 2022. Sociology: A brief introduction (14th ed)
- No outside sources, please
Assignment
The purpose of the cumulative Visual Sociology project is for students to use their “photovoice” as a means of conveying sociological concepts and/or themes. Essentially, act as if you were the editor of our Sociology textbook.
Your task is to find pictures that illustrate concepts or themes we discussed in class this term. You can choose broad topics like discrimination, social problems, and social policies, for example. And, you can use more specific topics like stratification, racism, and sexism, for example.
Once you find a picture that illustrates a concept, write about 100 words on how it relates to the textbook concept, including appropriate APA formatted in-text citation that includes the author, year, chapter the information is found for every photo description, as well as APA formatted reference(s) at the end of your project.
Since this is a cumulative project, you will need to use at least 10 concepts and/or themes from a variety of chapters that we’ve covered this term (i.e., Chapters 1-8, 10-13) with captions and descriptions. The pictures you use can be ones you have taken personally or ones you find online (copyright is not an issue since you professor will be the only person reading your project).
Copy and paste the photos into Word document and add a heading and description below each photo. When you’ve completed the project, add an APA formatted title page.
Below is an example that can help you get started. Make sure you include a title for your photo presentation!
APA Formatting Resources
Make sure to include APA formatted in-text citations and references to textbook. Need a refresher on APA? Instructions and examples of APA formatting can be found here:
Example
Poverty
Approximately 13% of the US population lives below the poverty line, with over 40 million in poverty in 2019. Poverty is an increasing problem since it is difficult to pay for living expenses with a minimum wage job at this point in history in the US. Despite the stereotype that the poor do not work, nearly 40% of poor adults work, compared to just over 50% of all adults. Most impoverished people live outside urban slums, and since World War II, this includes an increasing number of poor women, which is known as the feminization of poverty. In the late 1950s, around a quarter of the nation’s poor were female householders, but that percent jumped to half of the nation’s poor by 2018. Globally, the rise of female-headed households contributes to this issue. (Schaefer, 2022, chapter 8).
