English 1A Final Research Paper
Wed. May 6th
For your final research paper, you will focus on the driving question for this course “Are reparations necessary or possible?” Of course, you need to find a specific situation or series of events where reparations may or may not be appropriate. We have already looked at several cases of historical injustices. In Vietnam, the population is still dealing with health issues related to use of Agent Orange during the war almost a half century ago. There is an ongoing debate about whether England should repay India with some form of reparations. Belgium occupied the National Republic of Congo and committed genocide, killing about ten million Congolese. There are numerous countries who have had their art and antiquities stolen during European colonization. If you desire, you can expand your definition of a colonizer beyond a government and examine the injustice created by a corporation. You can look for instance at Schell’s oil extraction in Ogoni region of Nigeria or Chevron in the Yasuni rainforests of Equador
In your paper you need to discuss the history of an injustice, the arguments for and against reparations and what those reparations would look like. Your research paper needs to be a minimum of eight pages, not including your works cited page. You need a minimum of six outside sources, with at least three of them from primary sources. In addition to our library’s research tools, which you will understand after completing the workshops, you can certainly use Google Scholar or other search engines and YouTube.