Status Anxiety Paper Topic

For those who have chosen the option to do Paper 4 on "status anxiety" will choose from the following topics.  Please come to class prepared with a draft on Thursday, December 10.  There will be no other opportunity to hand in the paper since class ends on Dec. 17.

Topic One:  Respond to the NY Times article "No Budget, No Boundaries"
In this paper you will "unpack" the phenomena of people purchasing virtual goods online as part of their participation in online / virtual communities.  Establish an opinion / thesis about it, assess the extent to which this is creating a political fiction in their personal lives and speculate on the short and long-term effects of such an enterprise.

Topic Two:  Find the two New York Times articles (one is a feature, the other is a commentary) on job seekers who are people of color and struggle to "erase" any signs of their color or ethnicity in an attempt to land a job.  Some of the applicants have real concerns about being ignored because they are considered "too black" for some jobs.  It reminded me of the Bayoumi portrait about the young man who faced brick wall in hiring with Al Jazeera on his resume.  In this paper you will explain the situation, speculate on what you think is happening and analyze it as an example of status anxiety.

Topic Three:  Write a personal paper in which you tell a narrative (story) about a current struggle you face with status anxiety.  It can be either public (such as a job search) or private (internally, with a partner or with friends).  You'll need to give a brief overview of the circumstances, explain why you have status anxiety, what you have done to cope with it and assess how you will, if possible, overcome the status anxiety.

Now, you will recall that I was both cursed and blessed not to be raised with conventional pressures around status.  My family DIDN'T say, "Why just work on this farm when we could OWN this farm!"  I say cursed because it probably made me have so little ambition in life and a blessing because I did not have to deal with that kind of pressure, to measure up and to do better than the neighbors.

See you on Thursday!