Final Project Assignment

Posted: Wed, Apr 23, 2025

Due: May 15, 11:59pm, to D2L > Assignments

Please choose one of the following options for your final project.

Cheers to Love

Length: 1,200 to 2,000 words.

Assignment: Offer your own encomium to Love as an additional symposiast at Agathon’s.

• Your speech should try to put in dialogue ancient Greek and our contemporary perspectives on love, gender, and sex, and it should be informed by materials we have covered since the Symposium.
• You may choose when it is your turn to speak during the course of the night, but you must make this explicit by starting your speech with a direct response to the previous symposiast.
• Please be sure to include a few sentences explaining the backstory of your character (who are you and what’s your deal?), though these need not constitute part of the speech itself.

Love at the Right Swipe

Length: 1,200 to 2,000 words.

Assignment: Analyze carefully and critically the ways in which sex, gender, and love are constructed in a dating app of your choice.

• You should actually use the app for a while. Pay special attention to the hidden logic of the app’s operation, including whether this lives up to the explicit marketing: how the app approaches gender and sexual orientation, how it designs and presents profiles, how its matching system works, etc.
• Be sure to include a critical reflection on the kind(s) of sex, gender, and love that the dating app in your view steers its users toward.
• Be sure also to engage with concepts, ideas, and/or views from the class.

Getting Together

Length: 1,200 to 2,000 words.

Assignment: Propose an event to engage the campus and local communities on an issue that bears on the themes of this class.

• Your proposal should include: what the event aims to achieve, why this is needed/important, who the target audience is, what will happen at the event, what your budget is and how you intend to acquire the necessary funding, how you will advertise and execute the event (with the help of others as appropriate), what risks may be involved and what your contingency plans are, and how you will assess the success of the event.
• Think carefully about what event you wish you could attend but is not currently available to either the UofA or our local community.
• I want to see you actually make the event happen, perhaps in the next academic year! So, treat this as a real action plan.

Real Talk

Length: 800 to 1,500 words.

Assignment: Draft a newspaper opinion piece defending your view on a current issue directly relevant to our course.

• Your aim is to persuade your audience of a single point in a snappy, accessible manner.
• Your argument should engage with concepts, ideas, and/or views from the class.
• Be both succinct and polished. Think carefully about your audience, title, thesis, structure, opening, and ending. Try to make sure that every paragraph/sentence/word in some way contributes to your overall argument.

The following are some models representing a diverse range of styles, formats, and lengths.

• Kian Braulik, “Plastic Love: On Face Surgery,” Liber 2, no. 4 (Winter 2024).
• Zoë Hitzig, “On the Grid: How Surveillance Became a Love Language,” The Drift, December 11, 2024.
• Sophie Lewis, “All Reproduction Is Assisted,” Boston Review, August 10, 2018.
• Sophie Lewis, “How British Feminism Became Anti-Trans,” New York Times, February 7, 2019.
• Amia Srinivasan, “Who Lost the Sex Wars?” New Yorker, September 6, 2021.
• Andrea Long Chu, “On Liking Women,” n+1, no. 30 (Winter 2018).
• Rowan Bell, “Gender Together: Identity, Community, and the Politics of Sincerity,” APA Blog, January 11, 2023.
• Carrie Jenkins, “What’s Love Got to Do with Sex Ed? Maybe Everything,” The Globe and Mail, May 15, 2015.
• Alexandra Petri, “Save Us from Women’s Shoulders, Missouri State Legislature!” Washington Post, January 13, 2023.
• Kate Manne, “Women Can Have a Little Power, as a Treat,” New York Times, July 28, 2020.

Wild Card

Assignment: With instructor permission, you may also decide to write a research paper or pursue another creative project (a zine, a play, a game, a short story, a video essay, a mini-album, a podcast episode, an exhibit, a website or an application, a reenactment, an alternative history, etc.). You must discuss your wild card idea with me by Friday, May 2.