Diverse Ways of Thinking

LRA 1: Choosing a Topic and Asking Questions

1. Go back to the syllabus, and reread the Course Description and peruse the course textbooks. In 2-3 sentences, please explain which of the 4 first themes (Humans and the Environment, Globalization, Inequality, Diverse Ways of Thinking) you find most interesting, and why. Note: You may choose more than 1 theme.

2. Ask 2 big “How” and “Why” questions about this theme, which you would be interested in exploring through your research this semester. Hint: Not all questions have question marks. Try identifying a major contradiction, tension, apparent paradox, or unsolved problem, and asking about its origins, causes or potential consequences.

3. Identify a specific ‘site of conflict’ in the world today. A ‘site of conflict’ is a specific case study, or single example, of a global problem. It can be any significant set of events occurring between specific groups of people, in a specific place and time within the past 25 years. It does not need to be a military conflict. It can be social, political, ideological, cultural, etc. If it is environmental it must focus on people. It should not be based in America. 1-2 thoughtful paragraphs: Describe this conflict: Who’s involved? What is the conflict about? Where is it happening? When did it start? Why does it matter?

4. Please list the title, source, and publication date of at least 3 credible articles about this conflict from internationally recognized investigative journalism sources.

5. Going back at least 100 years, use Wikipedia, the CIA World Factbook, and the BBC Country profiles to provide a brief summary of the general history of the place or people involved in your contemporary conflict. 2-3 paragraphs.

6. Write 5-6 key words to use in library searches.

7. Write 2-3 follow up questions that focus on any interesting part of the history of this people or place. Remember, historians ask how and why human societies change. We ask about the causes, consequences, continuities, and connections that tie events together across time and space. We ask questions about the diversity of human experiences, and about the evolution of human cultures. We also ask about the political, social and economic structures that shape our lives, even when we are not aware of them

Example: How did the British industrial revolution impact the economy and social structures of India in the 19th century? You can also ask comparative questions – for example, if you wrote about Algeria above, you might ask how the case of French colonial Algeria compares with the case of French colonial Ghana, or British colonial Nigeria, for instance.