• Intercultural communication culminating project: 
  An exploration of oral histories and the complexities of culture
   
  This semester, you will work act as an intercultural communication researcher. You are to establish a relationship with someone whose identified culture is different from you. This can be accomplished by attending a meeting (you must get permission from the organization first!), having a cup of coffee with member(s) of that culture, going to church, attending a cultural event, participating in campus activities, etc. Acting as an intercultural communication researcher, you will submit a power point report of the person and culture that you choose to study. In addition, you are required to write a 7-8 page report of your experience and findings. Papers that exceed 8 pages will NOT receive a point deduction for going past the page limit.
   
  You must choose someone that you presently know only slightly . A close family member or friend will not work for this assignment.  Often times, the most interesting work arises from a relationship with someone who is very dissimilar from you. You will spend time getting to know this person and will engage in many conversational interviews discovering this persons’ culture and make any cultural correlations based on the material that we cover in class. You must spend  no less than 3 hours conversing with this person throughout the course of this semester.
   
  Through your interviews and interactions with your interviewee, you are to discover the complexities and richness of your partners identified culture and investigate and understand this persons cultural, social, and personal history. In addition to gathering information through your interviews, you will also be required to engage in academic research on the culture that you choose to study. Books and academic journals will be vital to successfully complete this project. You are required to have at least 4 ACADEMIC sources cited within your paper. Yes, this means you are going to have to visit the library! As students of CLC, you have access to library support via reference librarians, 24 hour chat availability online, or the ability to email a librarian for help. There are plenty of options and opportunities to seek guidance in obtaining academic and credible resources for this project and I highly encourage that you take advantage of this unique opportunity to work one on one with one of our fine librarians!
   You will share your knowledge and insight regarding the culture of your interviewee with your classmates via power point, prezi, google slides which will be posted on discussion board. You will also turn in a research paper that only I will read.  Essentially, this is a research project on the selected culture of the person you are interviewing. One of the goals of this project is to provide an oral history of the person you interview. Although, you must be careful to NOT focus the whole paper discussing this person or what you learned in the interview. Instead, you are to spend the majority of the power point presentation/ paper discussing immigration history, cultural variables, and communication practices of that person’s culture that you discovered via research. Be sure to connect and apply at least 7 course concepts in your paper. This means that you are to incorporate a discussion of what you have learned from our course text within the body of your paper. Simply mentioning a course term in the body of your paper will not be enough.
   I encourage you to think outside the box and include elements of creativity to your presentation. Your power point presentation will be graded on content, creativity, and ability to follow directions and provide us with a greater understanding of the culture under investigation. I URGE you to not wait until the last minute to do this project. This is a final culminating project and will require a good amount of time to complete successfully. Please start thinking about who you are going to interview in the first few weeks of class. You should spend at least one contact hour with your interviewee by Midterm week.
   
  The following is a list of questions that you are required to cover in your presentation and paper:

• How is language used in this person’s culture?
  • What values, beliefs, and perceptions are attributed to this person’s culture?
  • What is the history of this person’s culture?  How does history of this cultural group tie into the larger story of U.S. history?
  • What is this person’s immigration history?  Does their ethnic or racial culture have a dominant presence in the U.S. (Chinatown, Greektown, etc.)
  • How does this person identify his or her culture/ethnicity/ race?
  • How does culture impact the way this person’s nonverbally or verbally communicates?
  • Is religion a significant part of this persons culture or identity?
  • Are there any significant cultural celebrations or traditions of this culture?
  • Are there any cultural rituals that are significant to this culture?
  • Is this culture privileged and powerful within the U.S.? How so/ how not?
  • Has this culture been faced with social challenges or hardships? (prejudice, discrimination, racism, etc.)
  • How is this cultural group perceived by dominant U.S. Society? Are there any stereotypes associated with this cultural group?
  • What did you learn about YOUR culture through this process?

Specific Paper requirements (100 points):
– 7-8 pages typed
– double spaced
– at least 4 academic references that are cited within the paper in APA style (not including our textbook)
– A bibliography of a minimum of 4 sources cited in APA or MLA style (not including our textbook)
– A discussion of at least 10 of the 13 required topics listed above
– At least 7 applications to course/textbook concepts. Please bold the terms/concepts/theories that you apply in the paper.

– free of grammatical and spelling errors.

Specific Power Point/Prezi/Google Slide requirements ( 25 points):
– A presentation of at least 10 out of the 13 required topics
-Creativity (use of color, images, interactive design)
-Professionalism
– A good balance of text and images (please include images and not just text- this will help illustrate the richness of the culture you are reporting on)
-Providing your classmates with a greater understanding of the culture and person under investigation.
– Power points will be submitted under the “Final Project Power Point” discussion board tab. Any power points that are not submitted in this discussion board will not be graded.

1)I am going to explore Russia for my final project. Russia culture is very different culture  compare that I already read.

 2)However I born and grew up in Belarus. I found a lot of similarities in our traditions,food ,cultures, our language is similar, but still has some variety of accents and sometimes a different vocabularies . It is interesting to explore about  Russia because it has rich and deep history, beautiful architectures and cultures. Personally for myself It’s significant that my parents were born in the Soviet Union  and had completely different morals and views on everything. Because they raised me differently and tried to show me how important to respect everyone with different race, ethnicity, genders.

3)The person I’m going to be interviewing for this project is my classmate Karina Gubieva. She was born in Russia  (Saint Petersburg) and lived there for 20 years ,then she moved to Chicago with her parents. She is the perfect candidate for my project, because she’s had a lot of experience with their society, and know a lot of political and cultural aspects.

4) First I’m going to interview Karina with questions, and I will encourage her to be more specific and detailed so I can get more information for this project. I would like to spend every Monday to answer each  2 questions by typing paragraphs . I don’t want to type everything at once , because I don’t want to lose a track of my thoughts , and especially when we keep studying and reading new chapters .. If I need to ask her more information I can contact her when we will have class together .